2009-11-12: Creaking Planks on Live From Thunderbird Radio Hell

Picking up on an invitation from former Butchershop Floor cohort Ben Lai, the jug band of the damned convokes at UBC for the first time ever in order to spread our curious musical taint out over the public airwaves (CiTR 101.9 fm or later as a podcast) as the second hour of a special two-hour station fundraising extravaganza installment of the long-running live music radio show Live From Thunderbird Radio Hell. Beware! We go live from 10-11 pm!

Edit! Missed the live broadcast? Fortunately, the show podcasts!

Track listing:

• 1. Dead Man’s Pants (1:31)
• 2. I’m A Lousy Lay (3:58:)
• 3. The Girl In The Pink Canoe (10:31)
• 4. I Want You (But I Don’t Need You) (13:52)
• 5. Rhymin’ And Stealin’ (20:15)
• 6. Fight For Your Right (To Plunder) (23:15)
• 7. Insane In The Membrane (31:33)
• 8. Womanizer / Toxic medley (34:51)
• 9. The Song Of The Count (45:07)
• 10. Kiddie Closer (48:23)

2009-01-26: Planks feature on Melodies in Mind at CJSF 90.1 fm

Building somewhat from the somewhat meagre turnout the previous time we had representation on this show a year ago, Ryan Fletcher kindly invited us back and we now offer a wider selection of Planks for delightful infernal noisemaking from 8 through 8:30 pm, after which we give up the mic for a half-hour to Seva … then jump back in to the song circle from 9 through 9:30, with Sayde Davis Black, Sillken and Vanessa Silva. If you can’t catch the station on the air, you can try to stream its signal online!

Then we’ll be back in a week to play the Highland Pub Monday Feb 2nd… if we have it in us to scale Burnaby Mountain twice in one month! Phew!

Update: Blackbox, Rumblebucket and Cap’n Jack Spare-ribs made it up through the fog and snow and had a gas on the air… then, later, the episode was kindly made available to us. A groomed recording of the show (largely omitting the other guests) will shortly be made available in this very spot (and here it is)! Highlights of the show include:

• 01.22 Dead Man’s Pants
• 08.27 Osasa
• 13.48 Song of the Count
• 18.22 Numbers and Names
• 23.10 our new kid-friendly version of Closer
• 28.14 Insane in the Membrane
• 37.24 Lousy Lover and
• 43:09 Snazzy Portland (guess we shouldn’t have bothered with that kid-friendliness!)

Bonus! Our stalwart horn stepped in to join Sayde Davis Black for a tune, “Livin’ it Right” from 32:12-36:44! Also from 41:01-42:07 we improvise a tune to a public service announcement (a bit of flavour particular to this show) which is unlikely to turn up on any of our set lists despite its distinctive and unmistakable Plankian flavour. All that plus a pile of interviewish remarks and sorry wordplay. Makes you kind of wish you were there… and now, through the miracle of technology, you can be!

2008-10-03: the Creaking Planks close the 1st annual Accordion Noir festival of Squeeze!

With all September’s transitions, we’ve been a bit out of sorts recently, as a result of which some of our recent performances have slipped past without being commemorated here, including a three day spree — this year’s community circus at the Four Sisters Co-Op (Sat Sept 13th), the start of a new GoGo season at Hoko’s with Francis Mantis and the Sun Aristocrats  (Sun Sept 14th), and a monthly cultural night at the Cedar Cottage Community Garden (Mon Sept 15th)… plus another great evening at Trees Fri Sept 5th at which some of our number sat in with Erin Graves! ( — an impromptu backup stint that can be witnessed through Youtube videos.)

But that’s not what this post is about!  Not catching up, but boldly bounding forward, like a hell-bent golden retriever hurtling lemming-like off a cliff in pursuit of a glowing tennis ball.  (But not quite as, y’know, ominous.)  Squeezebeard Blackbox’s weekly side project Accordion Noir, the world’s only all-accordion radio show / podcast, is putting on the first annual Accordion Noir Festival of Squeeze… mainstage performances from 9 pm on at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir at Seymour, upstairs) Friday, October 3rd! Admission should be in the vicinity of $10, a bit less for Railway Club members.  The Planks will be giddily closing the night sometime after midnight!  (And please, dismiss those nepotistic thoughts from your head — we were hand-picked by festival headliner Geoff Berner, the man who first inspired Squeezebeard to pick up his blackbox, along with Amy Denio from Seattle and Natasha Enquist from Victoria, making this a Pacific Northwest summit of sorts.)

For your entertainment, education, edification, and for interior decorating purposes, here is its poster:

… and here is an audio promo for the festival!  For further synergy, the Planks will be sitting in on the episode to be broadcast Friday, September 26th, in order to promote the festival to local listeners with (as before) some live performance on the air.  We should be audible during the show’s typical runtime, from 9:30-10:30 pm Friday night on CFRO 102.7 fm CO-OP Community Radio… or, for those of you who plan to be huddling in concrete bunkers deep underground, on their audio stream. (For those who enjoy deciphering cryptic filenames, it should also turn up for a couple of days after broadcast in their mp3 archives… and several weeks later on the AN site 8) (Edit: and here it is!  A short set, a small Plankian turn-out… but still a good time!)

…

Natasha Enquist caught us in action!

Squeezebeard feels it would be remiss were we not to mention, as does the poster, that the Railway show is actually only the second day of the festival, which opens 7 pm the previous night Thursday Sept 2nd at Spartacus Books’ new location (684 E. Hastings at Heatley and no, it doesn’t just sound familiar — I knew we’d find a way to play at that site again!  It’s Gabe’s old Gaff Gallery!) and will include not only hot live performances by real squeezeboxers (and not just him! as is so often the case at the monthly squeezebox circle regularly held at that place and time) but Bruce’s pet project the accordion fashion show and a 9 pm screening of the Accordion Tribe movie. (5-minute teaser trailer!)

(For posterity’s sake, though it’s long since been forgotten in the post’s narrative, here is the poster from our Trees show.  Since we always have such a nice time there, we should be back like clockwork in six months’ time, March 6th 2009!)