Most of the tidbits we’ve been sharing here to reward fan interest and closer scrutiny by people whose support we’re trying to muster up to vote to send us (only ’til noon Tuesday!) on that Tracks on Tracks musical train ride to Toronto for the NXNE festival… well, many of them have been more than a little fallacious. The pictures, especially. A picture is worth a thousand words and most of them are BS. But what follows is a mostly-true account of hidden Planks history punctuated by, well, very sporadic photography. We took lots of pictures, and somewhere in the haze of time lost almost all of them. But when discussing one grand trip, why not finally air the accounts of this epic voyage? So without further ado…

It just goes to show you that you never know where the ripples in a pond will go from its initial splash. In a January 2010 show we covered very cursorily (our website was down, we had no choice!) the folks at Accordion Noir invited Renée de la Prade (of Culann’s Hounds) and Amber Lee Baker (of the Anomalies) to visit Vancouver to promote their fabulous Accordion Babe cheesecake pin-up calendar / CD and put together a squeezy show here — the first of their Pleasing Squeezing series — to help display them in a relevant and exciting context. The supporting acts were grand, but as so often happens, the Planks were provided to headline, to help sweeten the deal with their regular venue and just to take the sometimes unglamorous closing slot. The night had so much entertainment the Planks ended up barely getting a chance to take the stage before we had to shut down, but we made a strong impression on our visitors and when we parted ways they vouched to put in a good word on our behalf back in their stomping grounds.

Fast-forward two months and we found ourselves the recipients of an unsolicited invitation to play at that year’s Cotati Accordion Festival! Clearly this was an offer we could not refuse. And yet clearly, due to the distances and time involved, ultimately it was an offer that many of the Planks couldn’t accept, either. At the last minute the to- and fro- portions of a 10-day journey of gentle drives were axed from the itinerary, replaced by a glamorous rump of an unlikely Planks trio — accordion, cello and bari sax — salvaging the tour through triage, determining to fly down, rent a car (”the Hearse”, the rental folks called it) and play 5 gigs in the Bay Area over 4 nights, making the most of our weekend staging ground.

… for various reasons, incognito:

Basing ourselves out of Berkeley, where friends Ben & Rachel (of Vancouver’s epic but defunct folk combo Tarkin) were temporarily calling home (gosh! land of huge jade plant bushes! sulfured apricots! the Cathaus’ front gate!), we extraordinarily rented some equipment from Oakland’s Best Music Co. (only traveling with one of our three axes for several reasons, not limited to our airline’s sterling reputation for safely transporting instruments) and headed forth to play a test set at the Delta of Venus in Davis Thurs Aug 19th, trying out our rented and borrowed gear with Ben (later issued the impromptu pirate codename Hawknose Stilton) sitting in on banjo and mandolin. We didn’t make a huge impact in the hollowed-out summer-vacation college town, but a good time was had by a few and we worked out some parts for our extraordinary instrumentation… then got some much-needed shuteye after being up for 40 hours.

Friday the 20th had us inadvertently taking a scenic detour (a recurring theme in our generously-scheduled navigation) through the heart of California’s wine country en route to Santa Rosa and an exciting gig at the Toad in the Hole with our Babe-ly friend Amber Lee. The Toad is the kind of neighbourhood pub that you only wish you had down the street in your hometown, a fun and whimsical place where the regulars might decide to mount a parade and re-enact the Sgt. Peppers’ album cover on a lark, later refreshing themselves with a startling array of artisanal beers and what must be the Platonic ideal of pub food, deliciously made with simple and local ingredients. Recovering from the discovery that Blackbox’s borrowed instrument had, following 50 years of survival traveling from Sweden to Canada, lasted precisely one night in his hands before becoming inoperable, we followed up Amber’s adept opening set to her hometown crew and kept their attention through to the end of the night, joined by friendly resident squeeze-weirdo J D Limelight.

Amber put us up that night (with her fabulous snake) so we’d be well-situated for the 20-minute commute to Cotati the following day (she had to leave early that morning for pre-fest rehearsal with the astounding Hubbub Club marching band, but we left her with a very relevant bottle of “Accordeon” wine for her troubles). Then we promptly got lost in Sebastopol, going down the road in precisely the wrong direction.

Ultimately we made it to Cotati and managed to unload, whereupon Blackbox had to take off on a quixotic quest. Ironically, following the disintegration of the loaner instrument in his hands, he had found himself committing the egregious faux pas of headlining at an accordion festival without an accordion. Fortunately, if there was one place in the world he could be reasonably assured of being able to borrow a squeezebox, it was here. And lo, the clouds parted, and the sun shone down on a dealer’s tent… revealing the kindly gents from Victoria’s Tempo Trend music store, filling their RV with surplus squeezeboxes and taking to the summer festival circuit in an attempt to offload some of them. Just bring it back to Victoria in good shape, they told him, after attending to a long line-up of prospective customers. Meanwhile, he was missing a great line-up and a chance to have Dick Contino autograph the record sleeves he’d brought down carefully packed away in his luggage!

Backstage, things were gloomy. To have come all this way, to this, the largest crowd we’d ever played to… and have so few Planks to show for it… fortunately, someone flipped the “festival magic” switch, and suddenly Alex Meixner’s drummer was sitting in with us. (Why not? After all, he came here to drum, and drumming is what he loves to do!) Matt Tolentino asked if we could use a clarinet, and finally Alex Meixner concluded that while we were poaching nearly his entire crack band, he may as well join us also. Hats off to the Cotati tech crew who was able to accommodate a more than doubling of our band size with about 20 minutes’ notice. The Great Morgani suddenly wrapped, and then there we were, on stage, blinking in the sunlight (and holding on to our charts for dear life, as galing gusts threatened to whip them away at every turn!)

Click to enlarge

The advantage of playing simple arrangements of well-known songs is that talented musicians can parachute in on literally less than an hour’s notice and grandstand all the way home. (Also for members of an act who play to crowds who may leave the room if a Polish polka is followed by a Slovenian polka, we represent a chance to play the songs we love to play, not necessarily the songs we have to play 8) With Meixner’s band providing a new heart for us, we gave up the gusto and were well-received. Also, we had a blast on-stage.

Cotati being an alt-accordion fest, it represents all kinds of traditions as well as having a strong strain of the bizarre from the Bay Area punks. So you get polka, zydeco and cojunto along with Dick Contino, but sometimes the crowd is really ready for some Gogol Bordello and Nine Inch Nails without knowing that it’s even on the table, and then they get it served up to them. (Polkacide was prepared to bridge the gap, piercing implants shined up and faux sausage links dangling out of leiderhosen leg holes, but not for a little longer yet.) Duckmandu relieved us on the side stage, and there was a lot of outrage backstage when they found that by “we have four CDs to sell” what we meant is that our total stock of CDs was four, not that a selection of four different albums were up for sale. We had a blast with Alex Meixner (I crashed an interview he was conducting backstage and some version of our story ended up in the final account 8) and his crew, and they were dismayed to hear that instead of jamming all night in the party suite nearby we had to scoot on along to San Francisco in order to make our gig later that night at the Revolution Cafe.

But first, you can get a great eyefull of the festival milieu and us in it courtesy of Rachel, who posted a whole gallery of shots from this impossible and wonderful event. Someday we hope to return, and we hope to have our act a lot more together when that time comes 8)

You can also hear a terrible live recording of our entire set. Killer playing at very low levels, buried beneath the incessant blowing of the wind over the mic. If you crank it, you can hear our great performances clearly and imagine you’re hearing us playing an exclusive engagement in the eye of a tornado.

Creaking Planks At Cotati 2010 (feat. guest players Hawknose Stilton, Shirley Temple, Razorneck Chowder, Bones McGrew, and introducing Eurus, the East Wind!) set list:
01:20 — Insane in the Membrane
05:45 — Womanizer / Toxic
12:28 — Fight For Your Right to Plunder
16:59 — Dead Man’s Pants
19:10 — Psycho Killer
24:01 — the Song of the Count
28:20 — Kishka Anthem
31:09 — Kiddie Closer
35:31 — American Wedding
44:09 — Snazzy Portland

Barring one or two wrong turns, there we were pulling up to the Revolution Cafe, where we discovered resident weirdo Count Z Bop defending his territory by insisting that we let him accompany us on bongos. No problem, we needed percussion anyhow! The crowd was pleasantly baffled by our set, by the end of which Blackbeard was singing with the Tom Waits voice (the gurgle of a dog that has barked until it cannot bark any longer, and tries to continue nonetheless; the sound of two pieces of beef jerky rubbing against each other) from overuse. But our musical cold-call there was well-received, profitable and got us an invitation to a Hungarian picnic the following day (which we couldn’t find, another side-story.) Sunday was our day off and our pay was getting to see the sights of San Francisco, the platonic ideal that Vancouver tries, stuntedly, to emulate. To Taqueria Farolito where we quaffed off-menu horchata and consumed burritos the size of babies (and discussed with Ludwika the doula dressing them up in baby clothes) and compared technique with the notorious donair vampire of the Outlaw Band. Off to gawk at wild parrots in the neighbourhood trees and the sea lions delivering the oceanic equivalent of Hastings & Main! The mechanical amusements museum provided plenty of quarter-powered diversions (including a mechanical accordion-playing device demonstrating the horrors of automation and a kinematoscope revealing just what exactly the belly dancer does on her day off.) Then we briefly dipped our toes in the Pacific (though there was no real need to, as we have plenty of it up here), and then we were off to our final gig: at Peri’s Saloon in Fairfax, a venue with the longest contract we’d ever seen (admittedly, much of it codifying common sense).

There we posed for a photo (since lost) of us under our name on the marquee, and deeply entertained our barmaid Denise, who enjoyed our set so much she got on the phone and brought all her friends in to enjoy our performing our set a second time, at the end of which Blackbox’s voice was really done, for reals. Rachel sat in with us on mandolin, tipping us off to the someone-beat-us-to-it pirate codename Amanda Lynn Peg. As the hour got later the venue mysteriously filled leaving us to wonder exactly who goes out to drink at midnight on a Sunday night? The answer is: plenty of wonderful weirdos, one of whom got to enjoy a moment of XKCD t-shirt solidarity with Cap’n Jack Spare-ribs for the second time that day.

That wraps the whirlwind visit! We managed to get the Hearse back to the airport car rental office essentially by coasting it into the parking lot in neutral gear. The flight back north was uneventful (though an observation: many more settled, illuminated areas are passed continuously when flying north-south than east-west) and to avoid a repeat of the World’s Most Expensive Cab Ride fiasco which we started the tour with, saved money by chartering an airport limousine to return us to our domiciles.

A year and a half later, we told you about it. The statute of limitations has got to be up on that one, right?

In conclusion: can’t wait to do it again! Even this hypothetical trip to Toronto won’t top it, but maybe we can shoot for a close second. Big thanks to Renee and Amber Lee.

North, south, east, west, we’re the jug band that’s the best… at tightly scheduling in the most performances into one evening.

Southwest, we start off playing to your corner at the Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery of the Jewish Community Centre (950 W. 41st), sounding off like a shofar for a half-hour at 7 pm to ring in the latest instalment of the Pandora’s Collective’s Word Whips, wherein local poets share works written in response to the photos of Judi Angel’s Cambodian journey in the exhibition up there TIKUN OLOM: HEALING THE WORLD.

AN EVENING OF MUSIC, ART & POETRY IN THE GALLERY
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012, 7-9 pm
Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery,  JCC of Greater Vancouver, 950 West 41st Avenue
Free Admission, Everyone is welcome.

This event features THE CREAKING PLANKS as well as Pandora’s Collective poets inspired by the photographs in TIKUN OLOM: HEALING THE WORLD, a photography exhibit of ‘people and places’ in S. E. Asia. The photos were taken by JUDI ANGEL, while on a three month AJWS volunteer placement in Cambodia.

Co-hosts, BONNIE NISH and PAMELA BENTLEY, ROWAN LIPKOVITS and THE CREAKING PLANKS along with poets, FRAN BOURASSA, MAUREEN EGAN, TIMOTHY SHAY, CHRISTY HILL and DIANE TUCKER will dish up an inspiring & entertaining potpourri of sounds, rhythms, poetry and prose.

There will be time for the audience to participate by writing to the exhibit and reciting their poems during the ‘open mic’ portion of the evening. This event is presented by the Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery with Pandora’s Collective and the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library and made possible by the Yosef Wosk Poetry Initiative Grant. For more information, contact Reisa Schneider reisa@jccgv.bc.ca or 604 638 7277

Then we’re off to the northeast — into the Prophouse (1636 Venables at Commercial Drive) to take our belated spin as the features of this month’s occurrence of the Vancouver DIstrict Labour Council cabaret. Rumour has it we’ll be teaching attendees a folk song after our set there starts at 8 pm!

Don’t feel that you have to slavishly adhere to your neighbourhood — maybe the crosstown trip would be good for you! And maybe you’ll enjoy one set by us so much, you’ll wish you could have had twice as much! Well, on this one night, you can.

Nearly three years after our stint at the first installment of this series, the Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway at Commercial Drive) swings back into action with another night of East Van bands playing its stage, this time all providing soundtracks to silent film screenings behind them. All the major players are back from last time, plus more more more!

Instead of working in tandem with the magic of Dr. T as we did before, this time we’ll be doing music and foley for a black and white animated classic on the theme of responsible libation, which will this time be possible at the Rio! Your $10 (in advance from brownpapertickets, $12 at the door) doesn’t just get you these filmic interpretations from some of East Van’s most delightfully twisted musical minds, but also an electro-swing dance party at the end!

Depending on how things go, we may have to get together an expanded set to allow us to provide soundtrack to a whole film festival at some point! And speaking of how things went, congrats to the Lunchgroup Heavy Industries’ raising of over $1100 at last week’s fundraiser show.

Bonus! For your enjoyment, a picture-in-picture presentation of the Creaking Planks providing a soundtrack and foley effects for the 1928 Felix the Cat short Woos Whoopee, performed at this event to great acclaim.

Well, we must all do our part. Perhaps remorseful at their petrochemical contributions to our carcinogenic milieu, the hotly-disputed Enbridge corporation has, since 2008, also presented the annual Ride to Conquer Cancer, a fundraising bike ride. The Lunchgroup Heavy Industries consortium, including our own Daisy Jones-Locher, is participating in that ride and in the fundraising. To, er, fundraise for the fundraising, we are performing two sets of our best whimsical music at a benefit dinner at Amber Jack’s Tap House & Grill in Surrey (at 9850 King George Highway, or just next to the King George SkyTrain station.) Tickets are only $20, and include dinner! (You can also donate to their cause even if you aren’t able to attend.)

(Fans of Daisy-Jones in her other musical incarnations are also invited to the 7:30 pm supper show at the Railway Club this Wednesday, Mar 14, to hear her latest project, The Inference.)

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.

We would have blacked out our site today in honour of the SOPA / PIPA protests, but as Cap’n Jack Spareribs said — here in Vancouver we had a white-out instead. Besides! There’s too much at stake! If we closed our doors today we might lose one last opportunity to remind you about our fabulous concert tonight tonight tonight, celebrating our 7th anniversary as a band, down at the Railway Club.

The West Ender didn’t forget…

(And thanks to Robin Hunt for snapping that shot back during the Steamer Tea Party in Feb 2010)

And we hope that you don’t forget either!

Now you can’t say that nobody reminded you. But wait, there’s more! Of course, our 9 pm show features the Creaking Planks, but also two other grand acts you don’t get many chances to enjoy in these parts — Raghu Lokanathan of Prince George, and Ana Bon-Bon visiting from London, England! If those names don’t mean much to you, perhaps you’d enjoy a refresher while you’re not killing your lunch hour surfing Wikipedia. We took over 4 hours on the air last week in promotion of this show and here’s two and a half of them for you to enjoy, resplendently chock-full of the music of Raghu, Ana, and even some relatively recent recordings by our very own Creaking Planks to bring you up to speed. First we devoted 60 minutes to canned tunes on Accordion Noir Wed the 11th, then on Fri the 13th we did much the same for 90 minutes on Sound Resistance — but this time with SpongeDev SquarePlanks joining in, allowing some spirited, if rump, dual-Plank performing live over the air.

We’ll have many more than two Planks on-stage tonight, with our lovely show running until midnight! Three swell acts will run you only $8 ($6 for Railway Club members!) and we look forward to you helping us with some ridiculous audience interaction antics.

And just like that, it’s that time again: another year, another anniversary show. It almost feels like we’re still recovering from last year’s! But some things, sufficiently repeated, grow into custom — almost tradition. We’ve still got a crack squad of sharp acoustic players with demented musical tastes, and again we’ve managed to bolster them with opening sets from some of our favourite acts: in this case, Prince George’s philosopher-king of the singer-songwriters, Raghu Lokanathan, as well as Vancouver’s accordion-queen-in-absentia, Ana Bon-Bon taking a rare tour of the colonies from her new seat in London, England! And as with last year, this year we also congregate to celebrate with this show at the Railway Club, upstairs at 579 Dunsmuir Street. The show should be rolling by 8:30 pm, and again, admission is $8, or $6 for Railway Club members.

We’re learning some new songs (at least one of which is not only new to us but to the world!) and exhuming other lost and forgotten works from the great 20th century popular songbook… and of course polishing up the favorite of the discriminating Heineken fan, Jaan Pehechaan Ho. It should be a great time (the only thing going downtown on a Wednesday night!) that we won’t see the likes of until, well, January 2013, so we hope to catch you out Wednesday, January 18th, 2012!

Many thanks to Daisy-Jones Locher for the amazing poster artwork; you should be seeing it on some of a new run of buttons, and who knows what other goodies we’re going to come up with for the merch table of the damned?

This performance is a presentation of CFRO 102.7 fm’s Accordion Noir radio show.

Bonus!

We got to play with Raghu at the show, on his anthemic “theme song”, and here’s proof:

Friday night, Dec 2nd, we’re heading out to the Big Blue House (1624 Salisbury) to help an intimate private residence groove and gyrate to the vibrations only a dedicated crew of folk music misfits can coax out of their infernal contraptions. Also on the bill, we’re crossing paths with Tarran the Tailor again, plus ESL, the Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts puppet show, and our friends in Blackberry Wood, singlehandedly buoying up RIM stock this quarter with their infectious energy!

Has it really been almost a year since Memewar magazine invited us back to the Railway Club stage? Well, we’re on our way once again to their comedy night Wednesday, November 30th, starting around 9 pm, with Memewar stalwart Aubyn Rader sitting in again on drums. (Plank codename pending!) Jen Miller will be playing Very Serious music, and improv troupe The Fictionals will be trying to spin comedy cold from the audience’s straw. We will try our level best to be comical, but… well, you saw the joke in that last blog post. Normalize? Chuckanut Drive? Maybe we can play instrumentals and double the humour content…

NB — our next appearance at the Railway, Wed Jan 18th, will be our 7th anniversary party with Raghu Lokanathan and Ana Bon-Bon!

Well, on Sunday, November 6th — the day after our fantastic visit from the Accordion Babes — we had a rump Planks delegation visit the Roseblade house to help celebrate a bonafide 1st birthday party for a 40-year-old, busting out songs from the Planks’ feature set at the Cobalt’s “Ink” open mic five years ago or so.

Then, yesterday, Thurs Nov 24th, we were supposed to join David Roy Parsons (of “Beat Up Old Guitar” fame) for a set in Victoria at the Fort Cafe… but the hoary winter winds of a fierce seasonal storm put the kibosh on that ferry crossing after a very spirited afternoon spent sitting inside a wind-buffetted car. Well, what’s something that CAN go right?

Here’s something difficult to ruin (worse than it already is, at least) — a visual gag a long time in the conceptualising:

Editing some outrageous Creaking Planks live audio in Audacity…

okay, let’s clean this up a little bit…

and… voila. Wait — what?!

Thank heavens for the “undo” function, that’s all I can say. (”Accordion Insanity” photo by Jonathan Dy, and that “normal” band is Clyde Stacy and the Nightcaps. They probably sound all right!)

Update: more normal than normal, and more abnormal than, well, than pretty much anything!

PS: Creaking Planks 7th anniversary show coming up Wednesday, January 18th at the Railway Club with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan!