2012-09-14: ACCORDION DANCE PARTY at the 5th annual Accordion Noir Festival

The jug band of the damned (that’s us!) return again to the Grandview Legion (upstairs at 2205 Commercial Drive) for our annual appearance at the Accordion Noir Festival of all squeezings dark and gritty (this is their 5th annual! Yow, outta sight!) Hopefully this party will simmer only slightly under the fever pitch of our last AN Fest appearance there, and perhaps be a bit less explicit than our last visit to the Grandview Legion.

We’re joined by two other East Van all-star bands, High Society (who we’ve been waiting a year to play with) and the Flying Folk Army, recently reconvened after a 7-year hiatus, for what’s been described as “a night of bellows-driven foot-scooting and boogying”. So bring your dancing shoes and come prepared to cut a rug!

The jug band of the damned THE CREAKING PLANKS (ab)use old-timey instruments to pull modern pop music back in time, kicking and screaming, to a folksy bygone era with more dancing and less chin-stroking.

The soul groove of HIGH SOCIETY screams out joyful into the night and leaves you drenched in sweat and eager for more. Chelsea Johnson and Adam Farnsworth will be flipping coins to see who has to give up squeezing their heart out to give the other one a chance.

Because politics don’t have to be dull, the FLYING FOLK ARMY has come off of a 7-year hiatus to remind people why music that matters… matters! Alison Jenkins rocks the box here while her crack squad of rebel folkies display precision musical maneuvres.

Thanks to Julie the Bruce for the accordionista avatar artwork.

2011-07-30: Creaking Planks back at ArtsWells!

At the time the performance was a bit of a headache — a beautiful historical chapel in a refurbished ghost town, but one mysteriously without electricity to even out our disparate sound levels. (Little did we realise, the entire district was temporarily without power. Worst of all, the ice cream in the coolers was starting to melt and being given away for free!) But we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that set, first on the inside cover of last year’s festival program, and now again, thrusting us front and centre on Page A8 of the July 22, 2011 edition of the Vancouver Sun:

Did You Know: The Creaking Planks are a duo? It’s going to be very awkward breaking the news to the other dozen or so of us… I suppose this is why it is so vital we publish our book, that at least one other print source compete with this bold claim from our newspaper of record. That said, it’s nice to be considered the epitome of what a Vancouver-based folk ensemble looks like. (And it will be nice to Mike Fawcett to get credit for that photograph as well.)

We’ll be playing at the ArtsWells festival this year at 8:30 pm at the Downstairs Hall on Saturday, July 30th. Unlike last year, we’re not playing any other shows up there, but the festival is of course very worthwhile with sets from our friends in Blackberry Wood, Fish & Bird, the Joey Only matrimonial band, Raghu Lokanathan and Jeremy Stewart, Nice Verdes, Namgar, Mind of a Snail, High Society, Linda McRae, T. Nile, Jeff Andrew, John Pippus, and of course Geoff Berner.

Blackbox Squeezebeard (or, after last year’s fundraising depilation, “Airbeard”) will be hosting the Accordions in the Round session noon to 1 on the 31st also at the Downstairs Hall, and the Rev. Lucian Rumblebucket will be teaching a washtub bass workshop at 2 pm in the school.

But first, we’re playing for a private wedding party July 23rd!

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2010-04-02: Planks play at the Peculiar Poetry Cabaret!

You probably missed us March 12 playing an intimate acoustic living room set to celebrate a new line of Venus’ vintage jewellery. That was too bad, but her works live on and you can find them online! Performances are ephemeral however, none more than poetry performances — even the loudest among them often fly under the radar just outside the front door, while a jerk with a car stereo can be belt blocks away. Musicians, though, we straddle the line between poet and jerk, and tomorrow night we will be making a spirited ruckus on behalf of the quiet poets of page and slam, making our sound and fury to benefit the upcoming 1st annual Vancouver International Poetry Festival.

Joining us will be such mouthy titans as Al Mader, the minimalist jug band, as well as Barbara Adler of Fang and elder statesman of the harmonica beatbox C. R. Avery. Also on the bill are Lucia Misch, our friends in High Society, and even a very literary turn by our own Travis the Magician. (A wizard of words, perhaps?)

Admission runs on a sliding scale from $10-15.

Our standard pre-set warm-up.