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!)