2012-04: Stupid Tricks for Tracks on Tracks

To demonstrate our tremendous suitability as candidates for inclusion on the CBC’s “Tracks on Tracks” musical train tour to Toronto in June, (and specifically, our eminent “good fit” as parties deserving of your vote to progress through the second round of crowd polling — which you can, ahem, corroborate at http://cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 ) we’ve been going on a whirlwind blitz through the albums of imaginary photos of rail-related gigs the Creaking Planks never played — but might have.

Don’t think we didn’t hear you snickering behind our back at how safe and conservative our last two rail visit photos were. Those horrific disasters were done with and we were just ambulance-chasing, you claimed, visiting the site of tragedy after the fact to safely mug at the camera like Langley teens taking Instagram shots of each other in front of a previously burned-out cop car at Vancouver’s Stanley Cup Riots! (Yes, that was oddly specific.) Well, we fired up our Creaking Time Machine again to see about pushing the boundaries and came up with something a little more “extreme” for you:

One of our coldest gigs, to be sure, and the sound check was hellacious — we had the hardest time achieving a balanced stage mix in the monitors. And the green room was, as you can see, quite draughty. But at the end of the night we each took home a cool fifty dollars in cold cash, so it evened out.

2012-04: Creaking Planks for Tracks on Tracks — Time Tracks!

Not content with our previous travel through time, in search of grand historical train trips from which to draw inspiration for our upcoming prospective rail voyage, we visited Paris’ grand Gare de l’Ouest in 1895. Wacky hijinks ensued. I don’t know how this happened, I guess we’re just not well-trained.

What a ruckus… it sure was hard to hear ourselves in the monitors! Why all the trains on the brain, anyhow? Well, you may have heard that we’re in the running to participate in a little contest which might send us on a musical voyage by rail to the sunny shores of Toronto! This prospect has us so excited, well, to be honest, it’s short-circuited our brains a little bit. Anyhow — would you consider voting for us? (We’re down in the “T” section, for “T”he Creaking Planks.)

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks contest — second round!

It’s true, folks, somehow we garnered enough votes to ascend through the ranks of the 300 applicant bands and ended up among the top 50 in the second round. What this means is that we need for you to vote for us — again! — over at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 !! Thanks a lot for voting us in the first round, and we hope for your return electoral business.

If we’d realised that we’d need to be campaigning for a second round, we probably wouldn’t have exhausted all of our colour Planks-on-trains photos in the last post. However, tipped off to the new, ongoing nature of the business, we hopped in the ol’ Creaking Time Machine (did you know that drummers kept time?), and snapped off a few more.

You can’t tell, but Pavel is actually incorporating the fallen locomotive here into part of his kit. What can we say, we brought the house down.

Creaking Planks… on a train? Tracks on Tracks contest!

As you can see, the Creaking Planks have been on a train before:

… that was back in ‘09, outside Longevity John’s Duncan Garage Showroom on the Flogged ‘Round the Fleet tour. We look good in a locomotion context! (These glamour shots were snapped by Wyoming Johnny’s pappy, who knows his way around a camera!)

We had fun hanging out with Raghu Lokanathan on a chock-blocked train car in Valemount the following summer, but since then our days have been disappointingly rail-free. Individual Planks have more than a little train experience, both cross-Canada and south along the West Coast (and let’s not bring Euro-rail into this particular conversation) but never since have we all been on a train together. (Maybe a SkyTrain, which isn’t quite as glamourous.)

Well, the “Tracks On Tracks” contest the CBC and VIA Rail are presenting is here to change all that! If we’re one of the three winners, as determined by… profuse fan-voting! … we could be sent on a multi-stop trip to Toronto, playing music and being filmed all the way. Comparisons abound to the 2003 documentary about the 1970 Festival Express train trip, except that this edition would have significantly more Canadian content… and of course rail travel wasn’t strictly for the rich back then. (And BC Rail… well, don’t get me started.)

TL;DR? Click here to vote for us and up to two other bands that you think would make this train trip one for the ages. Then cross your fingers, knock on wood and see if you can get your friends to do the same! If the chips fall in our corner, we might well be posting new photos of Creaking Planks On A Train in July!

We sure are an animated bunch!

In celebration of our Jaan Pehechaan Ho video breaking 15 thousand views (and the Heineken campaign fuelling its accidental virality showing no sign of slowing), here’s a low-fi video — an animated .GIF made out of snapshots virtuous band photographer Jonathan Dy took of us the same night as that viral video was made, three-quarters of a year ago. We have listened to the masses, tightened up our arrangement, and even learned the words to the second verse! There’s a round of recording coming up and this tune is definitely on our hit list.

(Haven’t you always wanted to have a little band in your desk, to take out and put on the shelf to caper and cavort for your amusement at the drop of a hat? I’m of half a mind to violate every design tenet on the book (where’s my blink tag?) and put this little animation on the top of our website, for viewers to enjoy on every page.)

Two items of further note: we missed telling you about a gig we played Tues, Jan 31st, fundraising for the Federation for the Organization of Open Desire at the Little Mountain Gallery (where we’ll be back Thurs March 1st presenting you a re-match with Portland’s Underscore Orkestra — but I get ahead of myself) and this Saturday night, Feb 18th, we’ll be joining Blackberry Wood at the Big Blue House again for another jam-packed album fundraiser show there, shuffled among such luminaries as Geoff Berner, Carolyn Mark, and the Orkestar Slivovica. Just keep your ears open as you walk along Salisbury Street, there’s no way you’ll miss it.