2012-01-18: Creaking Planks’ 7th anniversary with Raghu Lokanathan & Ana Bon-Bon!

And just like that, it’s that time again: another year, another anniversary show. It almost feels like we’re still recovering from last year’s! But some things, sufficiently repeated, grow into custom — almost tradition. We’ve still got a crack squad of sharp acoustic players with demented musical tastes, and again we’ve managed to bolster them with opening sets from some of our favourite acts: in this case, Prince George’s philosopher-king of the singer-songwriters, Raghu Lokanathan, as well as Vancouver’s accordion-queen-in-absentia, Ana Bon-Bon taking a rare tour of the colonies from her new seat in London, England! And as with last year, this year we also congregate to celebrate with this show at the Railway Club, upstairs at 579 Dunsmuir Street. The show should be rolling by 8:30 pm, and again, admission is $8, or $6 for Railway Club members.

We’re learning some new songs (at least one of which is not only new to us but to the world!) and exhuming other lost and forgotten works from the great 20th century popular songbook… and of course polishing up the favorite of the discriminating Heineken fan, Jaan Pehechaan Ho. It should be a great time (the only thing going downtown on a Wednesday night!) that we won’t see the likes of until, well, January 2013, so we hope to catch you out Wednesday, January 18th, 2012!

Many thanks to Daisy-Jones Locher for the amazing poster artwork; you should be seeing it on some of a new run of buttons, and who knows what other goodies we’re going to come up with for the merch table of the damned?

This performance is a presentation of CFRO 102.7 fm’s Accordion Noir radio show.

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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2010-08: Planks Cariboo tour

Did you see our Church set from last year’s ArtsWells festival in the Barkerville ad on the inside front cover of this year’s Summer Festival BC Musician issue?

Look a bit more closely…

Well, we had so much fun at last year’s ArtsWells Festival at Wells and Barkerville, BC, we’re going back this BC Day weekend.  Around 1:15 pm Saturday, July 31st, the Creaking Planks will be performing at the Sunset Theatre for just about an hour, following Blackbox Squeezebeard’s hosting the “Bellows on Fire” accordion workshop at noon at the outdoor stage.

You’ll see more Planks at the festival, including Blackbox hosting the mainstage Saturday night (featuring our friends from Fish & Bird, Geoff Berner, and The Burning Hell!) and being ritually shorn at Sunday’s 1-Minute Play Contest to further fundraise for the festival beyond what we raised hosting the WellsAid concert earlier this summer… the question on everyone’s lips is of course Will he have to be issued a new pirate codename?

Following the ArtsWells Festival, while we’re all up in thar part of the world we’ve planned to join our favorite songwriter in his hometown, turning the tables, and join Raghu Lokanathan for a show in Valemount Tuesday, August 3rd, at the Anglican-United Church hall (1175 7 Ave).

The next day, Wed, Aug 4th, the Creaking Planks swing over to Prince George’s ArtSpace (above Books & Company, 1685 3rd Ave) to play a show with Johnnie Ninety-Nine, our most northerly gig yet!

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.)