2012-04: Tracks on Tracks — Hardcore!

Who knew that our stint as a supporting act on Jason Webley’s Monsters of Accordion tour would lead to our landing an opening spot at OzzFest? This particular image captures perfectly a moment in the set as we transition from Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” to Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” to Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” to Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train”. Our cross-genre sensibilities have always engendered “train wrecks” (startling, jarring sudden transitions between genre and mood) and so why not our stage shows also? This train may not have crashed yet, but it’s so badass it leaves a shipwreck in its wake — in the sky. (The conductor is actually a really nice guy but too many years in green rooms has done a number on his face. As for the angel, she just missed her entrance cue.)

To be sure — this scene never happened. But remember — pictures never lie. And art is the thing that uses fiction to tell greater truths — just ask Mike Daisey. Are you confused yet? Here’s what you really need to take home from these bewildering blog posts: as a band, we really like trains and rail travel, which all these demented imaginary photocollages are, in a sense, celebrating. And you could help us to experience some this June as part of the Tracks on Tracks tour to Toronto, by voting for us at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 ! Now don’t forget to stop by tomorrow for the final stop on our tour of the locomotive collective subconscious!

PS, unrelated, but make sure to check out the new video of our live classic cartoon soundtrack accompaniment from two weeks ago!

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks — miniaturized!

When will it end? Why, when we’re in Toronto. Until then, we are campaigning this week to get you to send us there by voting for us in the second round of the Tracks on Tracks popularity contest, at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3

This campaigning takes the form, this week, of demonstrating pictorially what a great fit we are for the rail medium featuring so prominently in the contest by sharing great imaginary photographs from the Creaking Planks Album of Gig Photos That Never Were But Maybe Should Have Been… surprisingly many of which feature calamitous rail voyages of one kind or another.

For this next photo, for instance, we not only traveled back in time to 1964 but also into a wholly fictitious universe — and then shrunk down to model train size! Because, y’know, if you’re going to do one impossible thing, why not three? So here we are, celebrating Hallowe’en with Gomez Addams by playing a spirited set at the bandstand in his model railway set. And because Gomez plays by his own rules, his toy trains aren’t always arranged optimally so as to get everyone where they’re going on time — unless their destination is the afterlife! Of course, model railroad figures don’t have an afterlife, do they? (Hm, the theological implications are staggering!)

In conclusion… please vote for us!

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.