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!

Because Hallowe’en comes but once a year (but Hallowe’en weekend is three nights long) it’s the profound pleasure of the jug band of the damned to present our spooky show for a second night in a row, next up Saturday, October 29th at Cafe Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive) from 8-11 pm with our ominous pals Tarran the Tailor and Jeff Andrew, who we did this same gig with this time last year. (This time, though, he’ll actually get to play!) $10 for the funnest unofficial Parade of Lost Souls afterparty ever!

(Turn up early and you get to ring in Daisy Jones-Locher’s birthday from 6:30 on!)

Bonus! It was a heck of a show, and here’s a gallery of photos from it! Thanks to Graham Ballantyne for snapping the shutter again…

How better to follow Vancouver’s biggest party but with another party? That’s right, folks, Vancouver’s Car-Free Festival wraps up at 6 pm (8 pm on Main Street) but its fabulous afterparty will already be opening its doors a mere one hour later — almost precisely as long as it takes for Festival volunteers to fold up tables — at the ANZA Hall (3 West 8th Avenue at Ontario Royal Canadian Legion hall at 2205 Commercial Drive (at 6th, upstairs). Admission is free for Festival volunteers (a humble $5 for everyone else, though no one will be turned away due to lack of funds) and those who just can’t stop giving of themselves should have a blast at the start of the night with a jam session. It’s true! That unscripted musical mayhem will be followed by live music from two acts — a blast of Balkan brass with the Orkestar Slivovica and an uncanny visitation from East Van’s jug band of the damned, the Creaking Planks. All this plus sest on the decks from DJs Osmunda and Kaminanda, hosting by Jessica Rabbit, and the much-vaunted blinking lights of the Revelry Society!

PS — if you’re not careful, you might catch us earlier in the day visiting John Barbour’s musical barricade and logging an appearance at Venus’ birthday party amidst all the festival hubbub bustle and hustle.

As an experiment into filling a whole night at Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main Street at 28th Avenue) with varied textures of performance from members of our multifarious crew and extended family, the Creaking Planks celebrate Blackbox Squeezebeard entering into his fourth decade with the April (Ship of) Fools Variety Show from 8 pm through “late” (past midnight!) Saturday, April 4th. Performances will include magic from Travis, interstitial improvisation and ukulele from Ehren Salazar and John Barbour, new music from familiar faces Paul Hendriks (aka the Rev. Lucian Rumblebucket), possibly demonstrating his banjo aptitude, and Eryn Holbrook (aka Daisy Jones-Locher — who worked a wonderful whimsical adaptation of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Ship of Fools” into the show’s poster!) contributing a solo set a couple of months earlier than usual, sharing her voice-and-keys songwriting not much heard since the days of her Perpetual Dream Theory project. Also joining us will be a very special set from washtub bass outsider Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band, and of course a couple of sets of Creaking Planks creaking and planking.

At Montmartre we play for tips, but we anticipate your generosity in support of this jam-packed night and its auspicious occasion.

Edit: phew! What a night! Check out VanCityMike’s gallery of shots from the variety show up on Flickr!

We had so much fun at Horace Phair VI that we couldn’t keep still. (Especially Scruffy Bigbass, who had a claustrophobic call of the wild in the middle of past-midnight highway construction in the vicinity of Everett.)

This year, for HPVII, with under half as many Planks on board, things were a little more sedate for us…

though Nite Brite, The Pathogens and Oven Mitts were quite literally rocking the block while everyone else drank their head off with a pint of the homebrew Budd Dwyer ale on tap.

Then our timing belt broke in Olympia on the way back, but that’s  a whole ‘nuther story (and a happy departure to a Planks tradition of strewing dead automobiles across the West Coast.)  Do you have your copy of our HPVII mix yet?

…

A week later, we hunkered down with Whiskey Jar to wish our mutual friend Wyoming Johnny a very happy birthday, and tonight, Saturday October 25th, we are letting our online following (all other locals have already made up their minds about attending this regardless of our participation) know that, following a seasonal squash-mangling, we will be logging an appearance (an earful at least) at tonight’s Parade of Lost Souls, from six to nine pm in the Black Zone (at the intersection of William and Maclean, for the living.)

Tomorrow night, Sunday Oct 26th, we take to Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main Street at E 28th Avenue) to join roots showman Petunia in a brief opening set around 8 pm… to be followed by a drunken pumpkin-carving contest.

And as for Hallowe’en?  Do keep posted… we have a special surprise in store.

Not all of our functions have turned up here, sometimes due to certain last-minute qualities of their booking and promotion, other times because they were essentially private parties and we had no business inviting strangers into our friends’ homes.  All the same, we had a blast nonetheless and would like to commemorate those gigs here among the rest of our performances.

* June 6th we were invited to perform at Tally’s fundraiser, the “Pan-Van Variety Hour” at the Rio Theatre, hoping to generate proceeds to help send her to Tanzania to do work with Youth Challenge International! We were invited to play in the middle of the night, which amounted to Squeezebeard taking the stage solo at the conclusion of the proceedings, performing a set to the other performers (including Jill Binder and the Baby Jessicas) before they went home.  Somehow, Tally ended the night up $400 and we ended up with a bottle of red wine, so all’s well that ends well.  A good debut at the Rio, and I can’t wait to return!

* June 13th was back to the Foxy House for the second party in three days, this time a joint celebration of Jhayne and Venus’ birthdays.  Shortly following a visit from Vancouver’s finest boys in blue, Dr. Steelhand wrapped up another incredible display of magic and legerdemain and a gaggle of unruly Planks crammed into a window vestibule to make a room sweat and tremble.  We have foxy resident Chelsea Johnson to thank for getting the dance groove started, one so unshakeable it would not be stymied even by the end of the planned set.  Greetings also to the Slavic lads of Mezamazing who came by to say (bellow is more like it) hello following their surprise appearance on that night’s episode of Accordion Noir!  (Here’s a photo by Andrew Bankley demonstrating our cramped dance floor.  (And some more!) We demolished that living room!) (Only figuratively speaking, however.)

* June 15th we streamlined down some grand plans to take to the Car-Free Festival, meeting up at the great granddaddy of them all on Commercial Drive for some of us to play a set directly opposite a drum circle.  If ukuleles could cry, they would.  Instead, we shuffled over a block south of Kitchener and stopped traffic for a glorious quarter-hour or so. Later, some of us reconvened on Main Street to catch Wyoming Johnny sitting in with Whiskey Jar.

* The next day, June 16th, traditional Monday evening Planks practice was derailed by hopes to crash a poetry party at the site of the emerging Cedar Cottage Community Gardens beneath the SkyTrain tracks, at the old Austrian-Canadian Friendship Park between Broadway and Nanaimo Station.  (Fortunately for us, the plans are all that were derailed.)  One by one all the Planks conked out until Squeezebeard was once again left by his lonesome with enough baked goods to feed the band that wasn’t there.  Fortunately, the poets and gardeners were quite receptive (one might even say… hungry) for what he had to offer up for their mouths and ears.  Perhaps someday the full ensemble will revisit the stage there and perform a work especially commissioned to work around the indeterminicies inherent in the noisy movements of the trains rumbling overhead.  (Hey, a guy can dream!)

April’s been a busy month of catch-up for us! In the aftermath of A Dybbuk, we enjoyed a fragmentary turnout at two after-parties (Squeezebeard keeps losing the addresses; he says, just gimme a treasure map an’ I’se kin find X well enough!), played two great shows back in our goofy element, the first (Apr 11th) back at Trees (to which we will be returning again in early September) and the next (April 14th) a homecoming show of sorts, acoustic with friends sitting on the floor in the gallery of the Little Mountain Studios, where we’re the house band, site of so many practices, rehearsals and residencies… as well as a big noisy party celebrating Squeezebeard’s birthday. On top of the shows, a swell arrangement with some charming PAVI students had a couple of us recording some backbone tracks at Blue Wave Studios, drawing on the next-door-recorders Company B to provide some zombie gang groans with improbably professional equipment. We’ll let you know how those turn out as we put down some overdubs on top. All that plus Lee Shoal and Planks pal Allan Macinnis got us a mention in the current issue (edit: huh! and an earful on the website) of the UK music magazine The Wire. Not bad for a couple of weeks getting back into the swing of things!

There are of course more shows coming up. Some of them are quite imminent, in fact. Tonight, Planks will be taking to the stage as features at the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House’s (3981 Main Street at 24th Ave.) weekly Thursday night open mic, hosted by the man who put the cur in curmudgeon, Rick Keating! Our fiddler Johnny Wyoming, a regular at the series, recounts that the evening tends to unfold with socialising around 7:30 pm, the open mic rolling on at 8 through 8:45 for a brief intermission before an hour of feature performance starting around 9 pm.

More is coming up quick — Planks should be playing at Beans (1804 Lonsdale Ave.) in North Vancouver next Monday (April 28th) 8-10 pm, then we have a special Tuesday morning engagement with FreeGeek, our other “house band” engagement, and new shows cropping up in May and beyond… but one thing at a time. First let’s get through tonight and see what remains when Rick’s done with us!

Sarah MacDougall presided over the “raw & cooked” series of new work at the Western Front that was the Creaking Planks’ first public performance back on January 20th, 2005, so when accordionist Blackbox Squeezebeard (who first met Lee Shoal + Lord Eel that night while promoting the performance poetry cabaret “That’s My Brain… And You’re Killing It!”) somehow got invited to host an alt-country concert she was running in that same space (with her band, the Heroes — a truly heroic Shawn Killaly, Tim Tweedale, Russell Sholberg, Joanna Chapman-Smith, and “Sexy Pierre”) and at that magical time of year, he immediately got on board and brought along as many Plankian stowaways as he could hide under his coat. Also on the bill is AC Fields (once stopped in her tracks dropping off flyers at a CP practice session in the LMS gallery and compelled to sing along) and her Dark Blue Horse (Pierre Lumoncel, Larissa Ardis, Elise Boeur, and Christine Allen), giving the fabulous multimedia (courtesy, presumably, of Aleah Dunfield) cabaret its name. Rounding things off are Roger Dean Young and the Tin Cup, who none of us have ever heard but who we all agree have a most intriguing name.

This show runs the night of Friday, January 25th from 8 pm through midnight at the Western Front (303 E. 8th Ave at Scotia), with Planks shaking things up before, after and between sets, but if you’re not yet convinced ($15? But you get four bands!) you can get a sampling for what the evening has to offer Friday, January 18th at Trees Organic Coffee (450 Granville Street) from 8 pm on (possibly to be broadcast the morning of Monday, January 21st on CJSF 90.1) courtesy of John Pippus as well as by tuning back in to CJSF at 8 pm on Tuesday, January 22nd where the frontmen of the respective ensembles will be playing in a song circle on the Melodies in Mind show.

Originally posted Jan 17th, 2008 @ 17:42

How’d it turn out? Well, we made enough of a splash at Trees to be invited back for a longer set, likely April 11th… but you’ll hear more about that closer to the date. Melodies in Mind was a fun regular hootnanny, with members of all three ensembles jamming together to croon out soulful renditions of… public service announcements. That’s right. As for the main attraction… well, due to delays (ah, cabarets!) there wasn’t quite as much Plank performance as we’d anticipated (apologies to anyone who came out hoping for a big, fat slice of us!) but between the three headliners a full, satisfying concert was nonetheless delivered. Happy third birthday us, and as bonus content here you get the joke I’m contractually obligated to open every Western Front engagement with — Q: What do you get when you cross a mafioso with a performance artist? A: (ahem) Yuz gets sumwun whos makes yuz an offa ya can’t unnastand!

Hosting indie rawk shows is not Hoko’s traditional bread and butter (well, vinegar and sake); however, the proprietors have determined that the kids are alright and the beer money of tight-jeans’d hipsters is as good as that of soulfully-crooning Filipino longshoremen (for no one takes on the karaoke challenge as sincerely as someone from south-east Asia!) The sound system may not be everything you might hope for to pipe a six-piece band through clearly, but that’s because it’s optimised for two drunks to be dueling on Snowbird. But Vancouver being what is, we work with the venues we have if not necessarily the venues we want, and we’re darned grateful to them for supporting live music at all!

It’s also a suitable site for the Planks for two reasons: one, no sound system has never been a real impediment to our path considering that our history has mostly consisted of playing living rooms and backyards; and two, since we write (virtually) none of our own material, as a cover band what we’re doing is already essentially karaoke — this just formalises it. It doesn’t hurt that GoGo and Stallion seem adept at packing the room with people ready to party, so when we were invited to play for her birthday, we enthusiastically girded ourselves and prepared to grapple with one of Vancouver’s most charmingly curious (but essential!) rooms. We knew the crowd would meet us half-way and, true to form, they were still ready to dance after sitting through our feedback-squeal-inducing sound check. (Admittedly, Larry Stallion — or at least his Vincent van Gogh song, and (the other) Dylan Thomas (PS, thanks for the CD!) got everyone warmed up for us… no stiff feat considering the frosty climes outside! In any case, when we were ready to give up a show, they were ready to get one.)

A handful of performance notes: the downright tragic turnaround at the end of the Song of the Count (”when I’m alone… I count myself!”) really gets the air taken out of it if someone bops you on the forehead from across the room with a birthday balloon. The only way to follow that up is really with having your music stand fall over. Also, your ears weren’t deceiving you — Peg-Leg Right-Eye Ryan wasn’t multiplexing; those horn harmonies were courtesy of Trike’s Stephen Taylor (who wonderfully writes back: “thanks for letting me blast my brass with you”… any time!), trombone-equipped courtesy of an earlier spot performing at Cafe Deux Soleils’ riotous open mic (and, one should note, playing at Hoko’s the day after us — one more complication for a busy Jan 25th!) The next time I turned around there was someone else on the same trombone (PLRER reports: Nimish Parekh, the bass player from 5 Alarm Funk, to which I said: “Well, he knows his stuff. Actually, sometimes he seemed to know his stuff better than we did, which is odd considering it was our stuff!”), and, well, let me just tell you that after you’ve played Beastie Boys on an accordion and trombone it’s hard to go back. (A horn section is a pretty splendid luxury we probably can’t afford to get used to.) (And yet how else will we ever truly realize our manifest destiny of becoming a gypsy Balkan brass army in an Emir Kustirica movie?) We may see some photos up courtesy of Trike’s Xania, to which I say thanks in advance! (Too bad we probably aren’t going to get a chance to play with them in Victoria, but… we’ll be better organized next time!) (Especially if it turns out that it’s easier to secure a booking at Logan’s than the Solstice

Certainly people drank and danced (Adi from Mezamazing sang along near the front of the stage for much of our set) and had a great time (and, really, were quite demanding… after playing 150% of our planned set length, well past 1 am a cadre of ’80s fashion victims were petulantly demanding more!) so — mission accomplished! As for us, we got to workshop some of our new material for the Valentine’s Day Blue Letter Cabaret at the Secret Location and, more to the point, once we resigned ourselves to having no control over the variable sound situation… had a blast. What more can you really ask for?

…

Adrienne took a couple of pictures of us playing, which was grand; really we need to take pictures from the stage to show what a great time the crowd was having.

Oh when oi was a little lad, or so me mammy told me / way, haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe
That if oi didn’t kiss the gals me lips would all grow mouldy / way, haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe

While Blackbox, Lee Shoal, Wyoming Johnny an’ Peg-Leg Right-Eye Ryan may be orphans o’ the sea, that doesn’t mean that they can’t pay their respects to those that came before… albeit with the Birthday Dirge. Possibly a Planks first — a gig on the West Side? Sure, there’s an absolute paucity of conventional venues, but since when have we been restricted to those? Since Trent Reznor and Peaches aren’t such cultural touchstones among the cohort of the earlier generation, we arranged a set so as to come across as almost decent — distracting them with Bill Oddie’s Taking My Oyster For Walkies before coming in under the radar with Big Rude Jake’s The Girl In the Pink Canoe. What nice young people! Little do they suspect…