2011-11-05: Creaking Planks with California’s Accordion Babes

We first crossed paths with them during the Great Website Outage of early 2010 and we were all so blown away we nearly neglected to leave ourselves time to play a set! Then they did us a good turn, bringing three of us into their home turf later that summer (a tale still to be told). Renee de la Prade of Culann’s Hounds and Amber Lee Baker are the two roving ambassadors of the Bay Area’s thriving accordion community, championing the underdog instrument with their annual pin-up cheesecake calendar / album, presenting sights and sounds of a bakers’ dozen of awesome lady accordionists, and thanks to our ties with them through the weekly Accordion Noir radio show / podcast, they will be playing two shows in Vancouver this weekend.

Ours is the latter of the two: Saturday, November 5th, from 8 to 10 pm, the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th Avenue at Main) will be huffing and puffing with an intense and intimate acoustic squeezebox session, when the Accordion Babes Renee and Amber Lee are joined by the jug band of the damned (that’s us!) and, for a $10 admission fee, you as well. This could well be your only opportunity to get your hands on the 2012 calendar without having to resort to the hassle of mail order, and they can autograph and dedicate the calendar in person to whichever fan of kick-ass female-fronted bands is on your holiday gift list!

(If you can’t make it out Saturday night, the Accordion Babes are also performing in town the night before, Friday, Nov 4th, at Spartacus Books (684 E. Hastings), also from 8-10 pm, with a babelier line-up of our friend Natasha Enquist from Victoria and Katheryn Petersen (with Trumpet Babe Melissa Hammer in tow). And, of course, there is nothing keeping you from attending both performances!)

2010-12-10: Planks play at Little Mountain Gallery FUN-raiser at the Rickshaw

It’s time to throw our weight behind a cause that’s directly benefited us, the little Little Mountain Gallery where we’ve brought so many good times to so many. When the house falls, you can no longer call yourself a house band!

Denied its bread-and-butter, indie live music performance, by ossified regulations from No Fun City’s Big Book of No Fun, the LMG is compelled to mount another fundraiser, charitably hosted by David Duprey at the Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings.)

Acts on the bill will include Zachary Gray (of the Zolas), Pineapple, Resorts, Dandi Wind and the SSRIs… along with the jug band of the damned, of course!

“THIS NIGHT WILL BE LIKE WASHING DOWN CAKE WITH MILK SHAKE…”

Your all-ages admission is a suggested $10 – $20 sliding scale fee but they want everyone to know that no one will be turned away!

2010-08-12: Planks play Alex Cieslik’s “Outside Access” art opening at the Little Mountain Gallery

Alex “Scruffy Bigbass” Cieslik, who once had a painting stolen while playing guitarrón with Planks at that fateful Rouge et Noir cabaret, hasn’t been seen much in a Plankian context since our Gibsons visit of June ‘09… but does have a new body of visual work ready to present to the public’s scrutiny at the old Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th Ave.) we’ve all logged so many hours into propping up. It’s been Quite Some Time (two and a half years?!) since the last time we played an art opening there, but these strange little gigs were positively fundamental in the development of the Creaking Planks. I highly recommend playing art openings on a regular basis to all new bands!

The exhibition runs from Thurs Aug 12th through Thurs Aug 26th; we will however only be performing there opening night.

2010 Winter/Spring — What We Missed Telling You About PLUS a homophonic side project

For a season, from mid-December to mid-April, we temporarily lost control of our domain name (in fact, it switched off while I was in the middle of composing a promotional draft here!) and information about the Planks was unavailable from this site. We still played lots of great shows, however, and this is just an attempt to keep the historical record in order. Just because nothing turned up on the website didn’t mean that we weren’t busy little buccaneers!

2009-12-26 – the Maclean’s Boxing Day party in Deep Cove.
2010-01-06 – at Bandidas’ anniversary party.

2010-01-12 – Blackbox Squeezebeard on Melodies in Mind.
2010-01-14 – at Trees Organic Coffee.
2010-01-15 – featured at Beats on Broadway.

2010-01-16 – at One Two One Studios‘ launch.

2010-01-22 – A Night of Pleasing Squeezing with Renee de la Prade and Amber Lee Baker (the Accordion Babes), Gerry O’Brien, and Jack Garton of Maria in the Shower at Cafe Montmartre.

2010-02-26 – Dollhouse Tea Party.

2010-02-28 – Another Night of Pleasing Squeezing with Jeff Andrew, Marie-Josee Houle, Jason Webley at the LMG.

2010-03-28 – with Convertible Kids at the LMG.

2010-04-08 – with Raghu Lokanathan trio at the LMG.

2010-04-15 – Can You Hear Me Now? F*Word fundraiser at the Railway Club.

2010-04-21 – at Ubuntu LoCo at the HD Lab.

We’ve enjoyed a couple of shows since that we’ve mostly been able to keep you abreast about here, and are on the verge of splitting for the summer (one more — set aside noon, June 13th!), but before we go we can tie some Plankian threads together with a Go-Your-Own-Waste presentation of the Music Waste festival featuring frequent CP collaborators Erin Graves and Ehren Salazar with bonafide Plank Eryn Holbrook (aka Daisy Jones-Locher of the santur) and marvelous improv outsider weirdo Aaron Read at the traditional Plank venue of the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th at Main). This Friday, June 4th! Only $5, and free for festival passholders! 8 pm ’til we’re done! The most homophonic bill of the year: Erin, Ehren, Eryn and Aaron in Err On: the Side of Caution. It’ll be a slice. (Actually, imagine a pizza divided into four slices, all of which are different flavours, and at least one slice of which isn’t even pizza… but maybe apple pie.)