We haven’t played a show with our Victorian friend Natasha Enquist since the Accordion Noir festival four months ago, but her luscious leiderhosen made a compelling case for welcoming her back to town. Besides, she sat in the front row when we played the Solstice, so we owe it to her to make her feel welcome. Similarly, with some false alarms accounted for it’s been a while since we last played the Little Mountain Studios (almost seven months! can it truly be? unprecedented!), but perhaps the absence will make our return to our first “house band” assignment all the sweeter. And how better to cinch the deal than draw on our renaissance man of the arts, Ehren Salazar, improvisatory master of every medium he sets himself to. (Need we remind you of the thrilling account of the reverse zamboni?) All that plus we hope to fool Dr. Steelhand into bringing out the cards and coins again for some legerdemain and fine trickery, and it can be yours for a suggested five dollar donation to help us float Natasha out with her squeezebox. (For a sneak preview, catch her the night of Friday the 2nd from 9:30-10:30 pm on Accordion Noir at CFRO 102.7 fm!)
Nice photo, eh? It’s by Samantha King!
Edit: arguably our best LMS performance ever, despite virtually no PA and the bitter end of Vancouver’s surprise winter weather (the LMS formerly being a butcher’s shop, the back area is actually designed precisely for making meat cold; in any case, the hoary frost kept Daisy Jones-Locher away, but otherwise it was a nice Planks reunion to get the year off to a good start) — we filled every chair in the place and all the acts were well-received, with special audience guests the Mezamazing crew who we hope to join us on stage there in a few months.
Calgary visitor Sean handily took a photo of the proceedings, the space still decked up for the holidays. Can you spot the new member?
Sean took a photo of the Planks in full array
What’s more, Cap’n Jack Spareribs posted a live video from the concert of Natasha playing the old Russian standard “Dark Eyes” or Ochi chyornye … and Planks Lee Shoal and Wyoming Johnny cutting a rug to it!
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 somemore!) 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!)
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 8)
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.
