2009-01-03: Planks and Friends at the Little Mountain Studios!

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!

and one last pic for the road!

2008-12-31: New Year's Eve Party with Petunia & the Vipers and the Highballs

It ain't Portland, but sometimes us Planks don't have to travel quite so far afield to find friends to hang out with on New Year's Eve.  We'll be sharing the stage at Chapel Arts (304 Dunlevy Avenue at Cordova) with our pal Petunia and the Vipers as well as the Highballs.  All that plus appetizers, champagne at midnight and a chance to get an eyeful of the Galatians 3:19 group show currently hanging there! Admission is $40 in advance, $50 at the door and $20 after midnight.  For further information, you can go right to the source!

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And here we were!

2008-12-21: Planks play at the Winter BEERstice

The Creaking Planks’ alter egoes, the Clinking Pints, come through here in musical celebration of some tasty brews that, though they may not quite be our hallowed and vaunted "Schmutzigesocken", still get the job done. Also, there’s some solstice thing happening -- ask a Wiccan.

Doors at 8:30 pm, inexpensive drinks ("$3.25 beers; excellent, high-end scotch for $4.50; coolers for $3.75") until ~2 am.  Further entertainment (but really, when you have a gaggle of Planks, what more is truly called for?) is suggested as including "the comedic stylings of Richard Lett" and "the gorgeous ring of Jill Binder's ukelele!"  This all goes down in the rented Jericho Garrison Combined Mess hall at 4050 West 4th Ave.

Julie Peters made a report on the events on her blog!

Never Give A Puppy For Christmas

Last summer (August 2007), following a kind word from our rare musical saw player par excellence Rusty Sawbones during a recording session at Rave On Studios, the Planks were invited to contribute a tune to the second annual Very Vancouver Christmas SPCA benefit compilation (of which volume three is now available!)  Taking a tip from Andrea Hector's "Old Mutt For Christmas" the first year around (as well as perennial holiday novelty favorite "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas"), during a reading material-less Greyhound trip back from a silent-movie-themed wedding in Washington State, Blackbox drew up a list of holidays and animals associated with them, aiming to distill them down into a document stating a central core thesis: that animals are pals for all year round, not just holidays.

Of course, knowing that everyone else on board would capitalise on the donation of their work to demonstrate their soft-pop radio friendliness, and knowing that even if we tried the Planks could do no such thing, instead we perversely went for contrast and dwelled gleefully glumly in our trademark melancholic sound... but with goofy lyrics, however cogent to the matter at hand.

Our local animal shelters are still earning royalties from our somewhat terrifyingly sloppy recording (second only to the terror of the photoshop jobs that incrementally crammed the entire band into a single frame), so it can't be dished up for your enjoyment without stealing valuable pennies from the pound (but here's a fun way you can send some kibble their way!), but Plank alumnnus (and filk superstar!) Strong Brew Lundervillain did record an uncannily spirited version of her own with musical partner John (and here is their website) and here you can even download it.  Gadzooks!

Now, for the first time, if you like you can even have the option of reproducing the tune for yourselves courtesy of one of Blackbox Squeezebeard's bastard streamlined lyrics/chord arrangements, not entirely dissimilar to the ones the Planks learn all their songs with!

  intro:
     A-          D-          E7
  (I want a hippopotamus for Christmas...)

A-           E7        A-       E7 A-           E7              A-  A7
Never give a puppy for Christmas / Never give a chipmunk in the fall...
D-           A7            D-              E7            F+         E7
Never give a woodchuck for Groundhog day / Never give an octopus at all!
A-           E7       A-    E7 A-           E7           A-     A7
Never give a bunny at Easter / Never give a cat for Valentine's...
  D-                A-  E7 A-           B7            E7              A-     A7
A Passover pig is a bad idea, and don't even think of New Year's porcupines!

  D-       A-                        E7                                   A-          A7
 On St. Patrick's Day don't bring in any snakes / St. Patrick drove them out but you can't undo his mistakes...
       D-                             A-                 B7                          E7
 Don't give a caged bald eagle on the day of July 4 / On Hallowe'en a raven we'll be giving NE-VER-MORE...

(two instrumental verses, restart first line of first verse, then)
D-                         A-              E7         F+       E7                             A- D- E7 A-
Never give a woodchuck for Groundhog day / Never, no never, no never, give, an octopus at all!

2008-11-30: Creaking Planks feature at Thundering Word Heard

Vancouver's favorite open mic series on and off since its inception under T.Paul Ste.Marie and DJ Dutch Boy in 2001, we first featured there slightly over a year ago, following a strong reception at the BC:Clettes Rouge et Noir cabaret, and probably spent as much time trying to jockey everyone into place on the cozy stage as we did playing.  We ended up performing several times over a period of a few weeks and then totally dropped off the radar for months.  Let's see if we can't stagger things out a bit this time!  Thundering Word is now hosted by Bill McNamara and Wanda Nowicki, and it doesn't just have featured performers -- it's also a fully fledged open mic!  Turn up to Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main at 28th) around 7:30 pm to sign up and you, too, could share our stage.  Though probably not while we're on it -- there's hardly room enough for us as it is!  DJ Cassady will get you hooked up and we'll see what spoken word / music fusion may result.  (I'm on the edge of my seat!)

We should be returning to Cafe Montmartre January 11th to be the filling in a Petunia sandwich again, but you'll be hearing more about that closer to the date.

Edit: Bill made a new drawing to promote our appearance this night!  We only just found out about it upon arrival, but it's a swell "Night on Bald Mountain" rendition of our "jug band of the damned" tag-line.  Stand back and enjoy!

2008-11-28: Creaking Planks back at Velofusion for Spartacus!

We must have made a good impression last month, since we've been invited back to play the same party again! (The "Velofusion" Critical Mass afterparty at the ANZA Club, 3 W. 8th at Ontario.) So to make up for past misdeeds, we're going to play the exact same set, but entirely in reverse -- undoing everything we did previously!  We'll pay for our stage time, dancers will lift their stomps right off the dancefloor and everyone will spit fountains of beer back into their little red plastic cups.  What do you mean that's crazy talk? I think it's a great idea!  But, admittedly, perhaps one whose time has not yet come.  OK, you won me over -- we'll mix things up with some different players and different charts, but don't think that the mere passage of Hallowe'en can hold back the Song of the Count!  The Planks set is slated for ~9-10 pm.

The Orkestar Slivovica must have done something good last month also, since they've been invited back, too!  It'll be like a little reunion.  Oh, how much can change over the course of 30 days!  Also taking the stage that night are The Heard, Vital Divine, and DJ sets from Bee Winter and Adrian Blackhurst's global funk & Balkan beats!  The proceedings are fundraising this time around for Spartacus Books, the little anarchist bookstore that could, not only home to Squeezebeard's monthly "57 Varieties" open stage and Vancouver's only Esperantist group but also the ultimate wellspring for Accordion Noir! Admission is $10, but only $5 if you arrive with the Critical Mass.

2008-11-24: with the Lawn Dogs at the Railway Club

As part of a noble (if irrelevant) lineage of shows going back to the spring's SeaBus pirate party and further yet to an appearance at the Railway in April of 2006 that Tamara Nile set up for us, the Creaking Planks (need I remind you: THE JUG BAND OF THE DAMNED!) are once again descending upon the stage of the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) like a plague of, I don't know, sizzling bacon bits hurtling hatefully from the angry sky.  We've been paired this time around with The Lawn Dogs, a band billed as the best-dressed bluegrass band on Bowen Island... at our most elegant and dandified, conversely, we wear basic BC:Clette black and red with costume facial hair in places and styles it should never, ever, be growing.  These baying hounds should be taking the early set ~9:30-10:30, leaving us to close the night in our fourth Railway appearance in as many months.  As Mike Zinger of Whiskey Jar would be inclined to exclaim... "Not bad!"

2008-11-04: with Sister DJ's Radio Band at Zawa

This is it -- we can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel the world has been trundling through for the past eight years.  The question is: is it the headlight of an approaching train or a flicker of the genuine illumination of hope and freedom?  The accordion has been used to propagandize for both sides of the US Presidential election (strangely not so for our three rounds of voting municipally, provincially in by-elections, or nationally -- surely an underutilized gambit!) and Blackbox Squeezebeard for one would like to keep things non-partisan.  That said, tonight's show has gotten caught up in optimistic posturing as a welcoming party for Barack Obama (who will surely be weighing in approval on our renditions of Bob Uker's songs about unemployment and hopelessness, albeit via the television in the corner broadcasting his acceptance speech.)  And if the unspeakable should happen, we plan to follow the edicts of Leonard Cohen, as put forth in his poem The Music Crept By Us: "However since it is / New Year's Eve / and I have lip cancer / I will place my / paper hat on my / concussion and dance."

Hype and bombast aside,  the show promises to be a lively one with an 8 pm opening set from The Ahs (aka Lovenschtein and Schteigel) for a half-hour, Riel Hahn's comedy at 8:30 for another 30 minutes, then an hour of the humourous nostalgia of Sister DJ's Radio Band, who kindly invited us to play for an hour (starting at 10 pm) following their set.  All this hosted by Dave Malicki, plus that business on the TV set. All this goes down at Zawa (formerly Zesty's) at 920 Commercial Drive, with doors at 7 pm, for only $5.

...

This show has struck a chord!  Coverage not only by S.R. Duncan's "The Drive Is Alive" and Allan Macinnis' "Alienated in Vancouver" blogs (first promotional, then a review!), but our show was also mentioned on the front page of the Monday, Nov 3rd issue of the Vancouver Sun!

...

And here we were!

Photo by Femke van Delft

2008-10-31: Creaking Planks at "Veloween" Critical Mass afterparty

What with our tremendous success last time around we figured that we'd be a shoe-in for next year's (May) Pirate Critical Mass afterparty and that we'd be hearing back from the (pedal-)powers that be at that point.  Perhaps remembering our Zombiewalk introduction into Vancouver, they've seen fit, however, to invite us back to join them for the Velofusion party this month on Hallowe'en!  (We are the Jug Band of the Damned, after all.  We're humbled and flattered, but I hope they don't think that this Squeezebeard is just a costume merkin!)  Things get underway around 8 pm, with admission stated as $10 or $5 if you arrive with the Critical Mass in costume!

Other performances slated for the evening include our hornier separated-at-birth pseudo-sibling band Blackberry Wood, the Balkan marching band the Orkestar Slivovica, Miss Titty Kitty (come now, that name speaks for itself -- but let's not forget just how many titties kitties have!), a final performance from the full slate of Inject before percussionist Amrit parts ways to tour around India... and, rumour has it, a host of ghostly folks who really know how to dance along to Thriller.  (A further rumour, depending on weather conditions and the wonderful impaired judgment of the mob mentality, has proposed a late-night naked costume bicycle ride.  One thing we don't have, folks, is boring gigs.)

...

Also, we had a great time at the Parade of Lost Souls Saturday then also at Montmartre Sunday night with Petunia (and then another great time in Strathcona with Alison and a hot bowl of her bors... I mean, blood soup.) We should be back there soon, and I don't just mean for our Thundering Word feature spot November 30th!

Next up -- Zawa's on Tuesday Nov 4th with Sister DJ's Radio Band, but more about that later!

Planks wrap up October: Parade of Lost Souls, Petunia at Montmartre

We had so much fun at Horace Phair VI that we couldn't keep still. (Especially Scruffy Bigbass, who had a claustrophobic call of the wild in the middle of past-midnight highway construction in the vicinity of Everett.)

This year, for HPVII, with under half as many Planks on board, things were a little more sedate for us...

though Nite Brite, The Pathogens and Oven Mitts were quite literally rocking the block while everyone else drank their head off with a pint of the homebrew Budd Dwyer ale on tap.

Then our timing belt broke in Olympia on the way back, but that's  a whole 'nuther story (and a happy departure to a Planks tradition of strewing dead automobiles across the West Coast.)  Do you have your copy of our HPVII mix yet?

...

A week later, we hunkered down with Whiskey Jar to wish our mutual friend Wyoming Johnny a very happy birthday, and tonight, Saturday October 25th, we are letting our online following (all other locals have already made up their minds about attending this regardless of our participation) know that, following a seasonal squash-mangling, we will be logging an appearance (an earful at least) at tonight's Parade of Lost Souls, from six to nine pm in the Black Zone (at the intersection of William and Maclean, for the living.)

Tomorrow night, Sunday Oct 26th, we take to Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main Street at E 28th Avenue) to join roots showman Petunia in a brief opening set around 8 pm... to be followed by a drunken pumpkin-carving contest.

And as for Hallowe'en?  Do keep posted... we have a special surprise in store.

HPVII Souvenir Mix

In honour of four years now of service and due diligence, an unlikely trio of Creaking Planks once again find themselves at the Horace Phair (: Know Your Ancient Grains, and Go Straight To The Foreskin) with music to share.  Though our Video In sessions of this Spring are tantalizingly not quite ready for prime time, we like the idea of leaving little bits of ourselves behind ("have you ever seen a leper / drinking Dr. Pepper?") as memorabilia even after we stop playing live and mosey along.  So, although there are no demo CDs this time around, we have compiled a virtual mix (originally conceived of, a bit too late, as a muxtape) to commemorate our times here in different configurations, consisting of live recordings of various Planks performances at various venues over our long and storied history.  They may not be our sharpest-ever takes on these tunes (only those within microphone range), but despite the occasional blue notes there are inspired passages here on some Planks rarities largely unheard on prior recordings and give an impression of breadth beyond the steamroller of our contemporary "power set" (also represented here), documenting our varying energies and confidence levels as we've matured as performers (and not, for instance, as humourists.) Here's the track listing:

• 1. Snazzy Portland (from the Solstice show in Victoria Feb 1st, 2008)
• 2. Sandwich Artist (from our Thundering Word Heard feature at Cafe Montmartre Oct 21st, 2007)
• 3. Re: Your Brains (from the Travis + Rowan PAVI session in the Spring of 2008)
• 4. Insane in the Membrane (from our Cafe Montmartre night Nov 7th, 2007)
• 5. Never Give A Puppy For Christmas (Solstice)
• 6. I Saw Polly In A Porny (from our set at the Penthouse Aug 10th, 2008)
• 7. Man Cougar / Lousy Lover (Penthouse... all run together)
• 8. Taking My Oyster For Walkies (Solstice)
• 9. Blown Away (A night of sad songs 2 at Blim April 23rd, 2005 -- our first show with Blackbox!)
• 10. Love Cats ... and the Song of the Count intro bonus! (Penthouse)
• 11. Osasa (Solstice)
• 12. Numbers and Names (Penthouse)
• 13. Closer / American Wedding (Penthouse)
• 14. Shakespeare's Got a Gun (Solstice)
• 15. O Superman (Montmartre)
• 16. Happy Birthday / Volga Boatmen medley (Solstice)

Here you go! As Douglas Adams might have said, share and enjoy.

2008-10-09: Planks at Memewar Issue #7 launch at the Railway Club!

The Planks are buffing their splinters for a filthy, filthy return to the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street at Seymour, upstairs) for the third time in two month (and the second time this week! a big change of pace from the nearly two-years' gap prior!)  Hopefully things will be almost-but-not-quite as off-the-hook as last week's show, at which we took the stage of the sold-out Railway Club an hour late (Geoff Berner was well in his element -- some kind of formaldehyde, I think -- and on top of his game can halt a 10-piece band in its tracks with a well-timed anecdote!) well after 1 am.  An hour later they didn't want to let us leave the stage, though we'd exhausted the set.  Roar! Finally, the crowds were beaten back by urging them to become members of Co-op radio and to revisit us six mere days later... at this occasion!

This time we're all playing our hearts out to celebrate the launch of issue #7 of Memewar Magazine, with its focus on censorship (The Song Of The Count: censored!) and obscenity.  (And really, what could be more obscene than a nerd on a squeezebox plaintively crooning songs about explicit matters of sexuality?) Also in the upcoming issue you may find an advertisement for our upcoming album release! (No, this isn’t it.) Other performances will include the Girls on Top burlesque troop (there are two words that don't go together well!), an erotic poetry slam courtesy of R.C. Weslowski, C.J. Leon, Fernando Raguero and Jane "Break Your Freak" Panek with accompaniment from her companion (hm, or not!)  There will be guest readings from the issue, possibly recited by acclaimed pottymouths Elaine Miller and Nathaniel Wolfe, and more musical performances from Bells Clanging and the Barcelona Chair, who will be surrounding our 11:15-starting set like a splinter sandwich.The show starts at 8:30 pm (your $10 admission gets you a complementary copy of the magazine!) and further boasts "more Cereal Junkies" (?!) and naughty prizes!

(And then we're off to HPVII!)

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!)

...

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!)

2008-08-19: Planks at the Railway Club!

All aboard!  It's been a while since we played at this stately Vancouver venue (not since a strange set of Christmas tunes December 10th, 2006)... and it seems the recollection of our last visit has worn off, since we've been invited back by Jeff Younger to play a closing set (starting ~11:30 pm) following performances by Hilary Grist and a scaled-down version of his psychedelic country outfit the Family Stump.  Simply everyone who isn't at Radiohead will be there (local music historians note: Radiohead themselves played the Railway in 1995!)

(Poster ripped shamelesly from Rodney Matthews' 1985 poster "Heavy Metal Hero" beacuse, c'mon, if you're going to be part of a railway club, why not go for the gusto?)

Wyoming Johnny's Seattle pal KT took a photo of us and some YouTube footage!

2008-08-10: Planks play the Penthouse!

Much to everyone's surprise, the Planks were invited to one of our "blue sky" Vancouver venues hitherto unvisited.  No, not the Orpheum, no, not the Commodore, but one surely as storied and with as many legends: the Penthouse night club (1019 Seymour), once the nexus of Vancouver's sex trade... and now seeking to diversify its brand and meet the Vancouver need for more (and more diverse) live music performance venues!  The event, a nominal installment of the regular "Circle of Songwriters" series, is presented by the VanArtsCollective, and features a performance by Joseph Blood, the man who invited us, as well as renowned (war torn) wild man of the woods Rodney DeCroo.

Here is a nice little professional-looking handbill promoting the event:

... this one, less so. The show should start around 8 pm, with a cover of $6.  (If you want to stuff dollar bills down our shorts while we play, that's a different matter.)

Update: briefly caught on camera! Thanks, unkle!  A bootleg recording of our performance is also circulating.

Photo by Sarah Partridge.

2008-06-21: Planks play the grand re-opening of Spartacus Books!

Somehow we knew we'd end up back at the Gaff Gallery, and even though it's been some five months, the fates have us returning to 684 E. Hastings to perform at a new venue occupying its old site -- now Vancouver's premiere anarchist bookstore, Spartacus Books!  Squeezebeard having run so many installments of the 57 Varieties open stage and the Perpetual Motion Roadshow at the old Spartacus (to say nothing of Accordion Noir, and its subsequent monthly accordion circle, being merely a byproduct of a chance encounter on its floor), it was truly a no-brainer to get the Planks on board to perform at its grand re-opening.

Live performances are going on from 7-10 pm, including sets from The Holdouts, Joey Only, and DJ Like the Wolf; in addition, there will be the unveiling of a new hipster art exhibition by Miranda Nelson, "Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Robots" (where are the Zombies?), as well as spirited readings of radical children's books earlier in the day. To top it all off, they're celebrating their new location by holding a massive sale on all their used books!   At prices like this, it just doesn't make sense to prop up authoritarian systems!

Update: Erin Bee took photos!  Only two of us made it, but we gave everything we had!

2008-06-20: Planks feature at the Beats on Broadway open mic

Earle Peach invited us to feature at his "Beats on Broadway" open mic at the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House (800 E. Broadway, a block or so east of Fraser), and we were thrilled to accept.  We joked that, following our feature set at Rick Keating's open mic at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House, we would be embarking on the lucrative local Neighborhood House tour circuit.  Oh, wait... that might not be so ridiculous after all.  Unfortunately, not all of these community service locuses enjoy the prestige of the venues offered at Mount Pleasant and Little Mountain, but we'll see how things develop.

Then, Earle invited us again.   We didn't know how to fit it in, but we accepted nonetheless -- after all, we already had an engagement there that night, but maybe we could sneak out and rush back to take the second gig.  That, or we could split in half and play two sets simultaneously -- or one set in stereo!  In any case, this will be among our final summer performances for some time, after an impressive run of serious performances to pumped crowds, so consider joining us at 7:30 pm before we tip the solstice over!  (more information on Facebook)

2008-06: Catchup

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 some more!) 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!)

2008-06-07: 6⋅7⋅8 ⋅ a night of musical numbers

We played tag for a year and a half trying to get Eryn Holbrook (occasionally aka Daisy Jones-Locher) a gig at the Butchershop Floor, and then when we finally had it clinched, the space closed down.  But because it is the only way for us to get a chance to hear her compositions on voice and keyboard, we put together another show for her (and us) at the Annex for last year's Music Waste festival -- also the first Plankian appearance of (ir)regular Peg-Leg Right-Eye Ryan!  A year later we had a hankering to hear her stuff again, and so we bring it full circle back to the Little Mountain Studios, on the site of the old Butchershop, at 195 E. 26th (at Main), for a night of musical numbers. Hosting the proceedings is LMS proprietor Ehren "Monsterdinosaur" Salazar, doubtlessly regaling us with tales and tunes of ages so bygone they haven't happened yet.  Also on deck is a magic show from our own Dr. Steelhand of the slide guitar!  Doors at 8, $3 cover.  Sure to be one of our most charming summer evenings yet!

2008-06-05: Music Waste trad showcase with Dyad, Ora Cogan, and Hank & Lily

The Music Waste festival is a longstanding hipster tradition in Vancouver, an indie Salon des Refusés in response to the apparently corporatized Music West (and now New Music West); in keeping with its bohemian name, often the acts it hosts are more Metal Machine Music than Top-40, not necessarily the friendliest or most accessible performances but (rest assured) more than cool enough to make up for any unpolished auditory abrasiveness: it's raw and fresh, like sushi, and like sushi only carries with it a slight chance of making you ill.

Last year, never considering ourselves quite cool enough for main festival inclusion, the Planks put on a musical sideshow in association with it as part of their "Go Your Own Waste" (essentially Bring Your Own Venue) initiative; we descended upon the little underutilized Gastown stage at the back of the Annex (no longer with us) and presented recent musics from Adri Lake and Eryn Holbrook (aka sometimes-Plank Daisy Jones-Locher) at a charming sold-out venue. But you'll be hearing more about that one soon.

Keen on revisiting a smashing June show, we applied to the festival again in the hopes of mounting a similar show and much to our delighted surprise found ourselves curated right into the main festival program with a stellar program of similar acts we might never have otherwise appeared with: the resolute traditionalists of Dyad, Victorian comic-vaudevillains Hank & Lilly, and Ora Cogan, recently returned from Northwest Folklife! Icing the cake (let us leave that sushi metaphor behind us), we get to all take the stage in the charming heritage room of Radha Yoga & Eatery, above the Brickhouse at 728 Main Street. A far cry from the excesses suggested by the festival name: folk music in a yoga studio? Don't get too settled, though, as we will find a way to move you.  Planks are slated to start playing at 8:30 pm!

Festival passes (a saving if you want to see more than three shows, and there are plenty of hum-dinger line-ups to pick from) can be purchased for $15 at Zulu Records (1972 W 4th Ave), Scratch Records (726 Richards Street), Limelight Video (2505 Alma Street), Redcat Records (4307 Main Street), and Audiophile Records (2016 Commercial Drive).

2008-05-30: Velofusion party at the ANZA Club!

In the run-up to Bike Month, aka "June" to the uninitiated, the month of May in these parts always features a pirate-themed Critical Mass ("Critical Mast") group bicycle ride (-- they're not blocking traffic, they ARRRR traffic!) ... And who better to play its monthly "Velofusion" afterparty than Vancouver's pre-eminent pirate band?

Further contributing to our "good fit" for this long-considered show, proceeds raised through tonight's celebrations will go to benefit Free Geek Vancouver, the Portland-emigrated free software e-waste solution who we're considered the "house band" of (experts, after all, in the field of salvaging further use from old trash.) Though the particulars are still technically up in the air, if this month's installment is anything like its predecessors, there is likely a $10 admission ($5 for Critical Mass participants) and the bill is very likely to contain some DJ-fueled dancing madness (oho, Timothy Wisdom!) spilling out on to the ANZA Club floor... so get ready to strap on your pegs and patches and prepare to shiver timbers and discover booty as we make you walk the Plank!

(As a special bonus, click on the thumbnail for the general Critical Mass poster. It's really quite charmingly whimsical!  Also on tap now: FreeGeek's own poster for the event!  A bit more explicit and inclusive than ours -- but they knew more than we did 8)

Also a special greeting and thanks to our friends in Portland for a thrilling moustache party weekend! Cheers also to the folks at Bex's crashed BBQ -- two kegs of homebrew and a Balkan band make up for any license taken with the +1s.

2008-05-09: Katie GoGo, Clare Love and the Creaking Planks

Without a doubt, Hoko's booker and impresario par excellence Katie GoGo has led us into good times. But we have good times all over the place. Back last fall we had good times at Café Montmartre alone three times over a three week period! But now, finally, the time has come for these two great tastes to be enjoyed together: flexing her production muscles, Katie is trying out a new night at Café Montmartre (4362 Main at 28th Ave.) And who is she inviting to help her show her best face at her inaugural show there? That's right -- itinerant songwriter Clare Love. Who is awesome. And also us. Who are also awesome. (At least, our webmaster thinks so.)

Performances should be underway by 8 pm; entrance is by donation (please direct your tips to the hat!) and do make sure to enjoy the kitchen specialty of hot crepes on these cool evenings.

A surprise addition to the splendid bill was a brave individual who took to the stage after the rest of the performances and played a haunting rendition mashing up the chord transition from Portishead's "Glory Box" with the lyrics to Will Smith's theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -- truly a performance to remember.

2008-05-07: J.R. Hill and the Creaking Planks

Fame and/or notoriety is a funny thing; venture out into the public and do your thing and one way or another word will spread, the curious fruit tumbling well past beyond where the seeds were sown. One afternoon we were culling the spammers and number-collectors from our MySpace page when we found a friend invite from some stranger in Winnipeg. Did any of us know anyone in Winnipeg? Had any of us ever been to Winnipeg? Could this be anything other than crackling static background noise emitting from the black hole at the heart of the online universe? Naturally, in the bitbucket it went. Not long after, we received a curious message inquiring as to whether we were interested in playing on a bill with them at the Little Mountain Studios. The asker looked familiar... oh! it was that person we'd denied and rejected! How embarrassing. I can proudly say that we now have one friend in Winnipeg.

Come out Wednesday and maybe you could, too! J.R. Hill is touring the great Canadian West and we are proudly presenting him to you at, oh, let's say 8 pm this Wednesday evening (May 7th); the LMS remains at 195 E. 26th Avenue (at Main) and after our most recent engagement there last month we are pleased to report that following renovations its acoustical properties are still quite simply beautiful. We'll really be putting it through its paces a month later, on a night of musical numbers... but one thing at a time!

Squeezebeard is pleased as punch to have moved on from using a word processor as a poster design tool; if you're on a Windows XP box with the .NET framework installed, can't afford Photoshop (an' what kind 'o pirate be ye precisely ta be's worried by such a problem?) and can't grok The Gimp, he endorses Paint.NET, used here to synthesize a lively doodle straight out of Mr. Hill's sketchbook with a flipped panel from Gustave Dore's illustrations for Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (really it's a marvel the two hadn't collaborated earlier!):

Due to a lack of confirmation, Lise Monique of Wintermitts was not ultimately billed as appearing on tonight's bill, but appear she did -- and thank goodness, as despite the split in our promotions, I think most of the crowd turned up just to see her (and her skilled French glockenspiel player). We had a blast and now have one friend in Winnipeg... and if we're lucky we may someday get to play the George the Cat song with him again!

2008-04-28: Creaking Planks in North Van, at Beans!

Due to the vagaries of city planners and zoning bylaws, there are some neighborhoods in which live music is performed publicly on a regular basis and others in which it rarely is. (See: the whole south-east quarter of Vancouver, in which we haven't had a single engagement in our three years. We invite you to help us overturn that awful record!) Compound this with a tendency to stick to the tried and true on top of a certain gravitating toward familiar venues near the abodes of band members. If you live just off of Commercial Drive, as many Planks do, this is a tendency that works in your favor. If, conversely, you live in North Vancouver, this means a godawful haul just to get to practice!

This has been the case for stalwart Planks percussionist Felonious P, who has tirelessly crossed bridges and bodies of water time and again, hauling his ironing board and rhythmic rummage sale on countless occasions for what are often only minor gigs and never complaining even once. While technically we performed in North Vancouver back in February while waiting for pirates to return on the SeaBus, we have never enjoyed the extravagant cachet of a show there in, say, an indoor venue. This time, he turns the tables, having arranged for us to come play a show on his home turf: this Monday night, Creaking Planks descend upon North Van to tirelessly bombard the denizens of Beans on Lonsdale (1804 Lonsdale Ave., to be precise!) with our unique brand of, well, damnable jug band musicmaking from eight through ten pm.

And presenting: our first use as intended of Daisy Jones-Locher's outstanding Planks poster template, reworked by her to include the vital details!

2008-04-24: open mic feature at the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House

April's been a busy month of catch-up for us! In the aftermath of A Dybbuk, we enjoyed a fragmentary turnout at two after-parties (Squeezebeard keeps losing the addresses; he says, just gimme a treasure map an' I'se kin find X well enough!), played two great shows back in our goofy element, the first (Apr 11th) back at Trees (to which we will be returning again in early September) and the next (April 14th) a homecoming show of sorts, acoustic with friends sitting on the floor in the gallery of the Little Mountain Studios, where we're the house band, site of so many practices, rehearsals and residencies... as well as a big noisy party celebrating Squeezebeard's birthday. On top of the shows, a swell arrangement with some charming PAVI students had a couple of us recording some backbone tracks at Blue Wave Studios, drawing on the next-door-recorders Company B to provide some zombie gang groans with improbably professional equipment. We'll let you know how those turn out as we put down some overdubs on top. All that plus Lee Shoal and Planks pal Allan Macinnis got us a mention in the current issue (edit: huh! and an earful on the website) of the UK music magazine The Wire. Not bad for a couple of weeks getting back into the swing of things!

There are of course more shows coming up. Some of them are quite imminent, in fact. Tonight, Planks will be taking to the stage as features at the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House's (3981 Main Street at 24th Ave.) weekly Thursday night open mic, hosted by the man who put the cur in curmudgeon, Rick Keating! Our fiddler Johnny Wyoming, a regular at the series, recounts that the evening tends to unfold with socialising around 7:30 pm, the open mic rolling on at 8 through 8:45 for a brief intermission before an hour of feature performance starting around 9 pm.

More is coming up quick -- Planks should be playing at Beans (1804 Lonsdale Ave.) in North Vancouver next Monday (April 28th) 8-10 pm, then we have a special Tuesday morning engagement with FreeGeek, our other "house band" engagement, and new shows cropping up in May and beyond... but one thing at a time. First let's get through tonight and see what remains when Rick's done with us!

2008-03-27 through 2008-04-05: A Dybbuk

During a 2005 Planks practice in Grandview park, a passer-by observed Squeezebeard's accordion and stopped by to inquire as to whether we were a klezmer band. Blackbox began clarifying that we had in fact been playing Turkish music when Lord Eel, a founding Plank, cut across and established that yessir, ma'am, we here are the Creaking Planks, Vancouver's best pirate klezmer zombie shanty band, and that we play weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs and brises. He must have more of a killer business instinct to close the deal, for that exchange ended up getting us engaged for a week-long run as a klezmer back-up band in Melinda Gidaly Mayor's Fringe Festival production of "Jew! A Musical". We weren't, at that time, actually a klezmer band, but we had an appetite for learning and an instinct for show business, and eventually got up to speed though sweat and tears. When the run concluded, Lord Eel suggested that for our next engagement we re-invent ourselves as a flamenco band for the hat-shop proprietor's costume party! After all our hard work jumping into a new musical idiom for which we were largely unprepared, at the prospect of taking on another... well, suffice it to say that if our tall ship hadn't been in drydock, there might well have been a mutiny.

Fast-forward a few years. Coming out of musical semiretirement, Lord Eel again calls us together with a strangely familiar pitch: to become a klezmer band in a play about a Jewish wedding! Where have I heard this before? With oodles more experience gigging under our collective belts atop our earlier immersive experience into the klezmer idiom, a crack squad of Planks decided to take on the UBC Theatre production -- Squeezebeard on accordion, Dr. Steelhand on the very traditional klezmer ukulele and steel guitar, percussionist Pawel Piechocki (on Daisy Jones-Locher's lent santur!) and introducing Kat-'o-Nine-Tails on the clarinet. (Really having us play is a natural fit, since as was noted -- Squeezebeard is already the subject of the poster!)

The Fringe Festival gig was a zany, upbeat madcap comedy about wedding planning and reconciling matters of faith with life in the modern world. This play, Pulitzer-winner Tony Kushner's adaptation of A Dybbuk, is considerably more somber and austere in tone, dealing with a harrowing ghost story of love from beyond the grave among an extinguished people. All the same, there is a wedding, and we are a klezmer wedding band; we do get to stretch our roles a bit (not just for the actors anymore!) and also produce all manner of eerie soundscapes one might expect at free jazz night at the Western Front to underscore the workings of supernatural forces man was not meant to know. The intersection of avant-garde and traditional Jewish music: it's not just John Zorn's turf anymore!

Opening night is tonight; the curtains raise at the Freddie Wood at 7:30 pm every night through April 5th, barring Sunday March 30th (giving us a chance to rest up from our two-gig night with the County Fair Saturday night following our Dybbuk performance!) Typically the Creaking Planks will be trying to make audiences laugh or dance, but here you have a chance to catch us in an unprecedented third motivation.

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Called out in a Courier review (Apr 2, '08)!

Composer Patrick Pennefather's music--drawn, as he writes in his notes, "from existing Yiddish, Klezmer and Hebrew music, prayers and chants"--is beautifully integrated into the story and performed live on a shadowed balcony by The Creaking Planks, a four-piece band featuring accordion, santur, steel guitar, ukulele and clarinet.

In a look back at the project the director David Savoy seemed quite pleased with our work:

November 12, 2007: May have a lead on a band – The Creaking Planks. My posting at Hillel House may have paid off!


Saturday, March 29, 2008: The Creaking Planks are great. I am so glad I stuck to my guns and pushed for live music. The fact that they stay in place is actually working out to be a visual blessing. They are like silent watchers of all the action. If only some of the cast could mirror their discipline!


Chapter 4 – Reflection. I am glad I stuck to my guns and pushed for a live band. The Creaking Planks were amazing, sitting like a ghostly presence above the action, and more than willing to jump in and provide various effects and noises as required.

2008-03-29: 2nd Annual Panty Parade presents a County Fair!

The Creaking Planks are proud to once again return to what is by now almost an unofficial home for them, the Secret Location, to contribute a performance at a Seamrippers fundraiser benefiting the Purple Thistle. Also on the bill are Coral & Emily Rose, AmberDawn, Tricksy and her Next Top Stud Contest, DJs Hi Def, Spook Silo, Pork 'n' Beans, plus our own Lee Shoal... as well as the long-rumoured square dancing, a pie-eating contest, a petting zoo and more! The Planks plan to go on no earlier than 11:30 pm, as a pack of 'em are hustling on over from UBC to play immediately following that evening's production of A Dybbuk! (... and a schizoid change of pace these easy-sleazy country-folk tunes will be, that's fer darn tootin'!)

2008-03-07: Planks at Little Mountain Studios

Courtesy of the illustrious history of the Butchershop Floor gallery that formerly occupied the space, the Creaking Planks have maintained fairly chummy relations with the Little Mountain Studios that assumed its lease... not least due to sporadically guitarrón-slinging Scruffy Bigbass' participation in both organizations. Though it's a tradition that, as recently remarked upon, has been disrupted for a while, we've long been considered the "house band" for exhibition openings, and have enjoyed on-again-off-again "residency" (which is fancy musician jargon for free practice space that the public can drop in on.) In addition to the openings in the front-of-house, with the back vacated by the improv pioneers the staff have been occasionally curating small music shows in the back studio.

This Friday, you get both: "The Danger of Disappearing" opens, featuring new drawings by “This is the story about how everything got ruined” auteur Erik Lyon, plus a concert around back featuring the SSRIs, Russian Words and Emmett Hall. Hymn For Her fell off the bill, and proprietor Ehren Salazar was invited to occupy the vacuum; he in turn invited us to join him in helping to fill that space with glorious sound. We may be playing the opening up front; we may be playing the concert around back; we may be playing both! (but likely not at the same time... unless we straddle the middle and broadcast in both directions simultaneously.) However it goes down, we'll be on relatively early -- think 8 pm -- to give Blackbox Squeezebeard time to hustle down to Natasha Enquist's star turn on the International Women's Day episode of Accordion Noir at 9:30 pm.

Find attached two pictures, one of Erik's new work, and one of the original concert poster before we sinisterly replaced Hymn For Her:

2008-02-22: Pirates of the SeaBus!

Dans le port d'Amsterdam / il y des marins que chantent

(Please note that this post be processed through an automatic English-t'-Buccaneer translator.) Tho th' Creakin' Planks be t' some extent first conceived o' as a sea dog band, as suggested by our very name, an' Squeezebeard definitely brought on board t' further our collective shanty options, since th' anomalous appearances logged at Lowbrow on th' High Seas 3 an' Talk Like A Pirate Day 2006 be goin' largely unrealised. That be, until tonight, when th' Vancou'er Public Space Network presented an extraordinary flashmob-style event (as ZombieWalk fans all somethin' we`re nay strangers t'), riffin' off o' th' success o' the'r Hallowe'en SkyTrain party: a sea dog-themed party on th' SeaBus, Vancouver`s commuter ferry between downtown Vancou'er an' North Vancou'er across th' Burrard Inlet.

How could we pass this up? Ye be correct: we couldna possibly. An' so a rowdy complement o' Planks turned ou', includin' an extraordinary (if unheard) appearance from Rusty Sawbones, along wi' hundreds. An' hundreds. O' would-be piratical scallywags. (An' also a handful o' very confused ninja, jus' t' li'en things up. Me, I always thought th' whole point o' bein' a ninja be nay bein' seen.) Also along fer th' ride be Toot-a-Lute, whose costumes put sea dogs an' land lubbers alike t' shame, an' Empire Alley lurked (as "Empirate Alley") beneath th' PriceWaterhouseCooper dome (an' 'ere pray tell be th' Dreadnoughts?) fer afterparty entertainment followin' a booty hunt in North Vancouver. Some early photos (c/o JMV, Leslie Stripey Hart an' Seitanguy, thanks!) o' Planks in action be havin' turned up on Flickr an' Facebook; keep yer one good eye peeled t' th' relevant tags an' groups fer more pictures (an', nay doubt, youtube movies) t' turn ou'. Ye really did be havin' t' be seein' 't t' b'lieve 't.

(As per usual we over-prepared, but perhaps this will serve as early groundwork fer a sea dog weddin' we`ve been invited t' play in th' Fall! Th' arrays o' shanties we unearthed be deemed insufficiently rude by Orange-eye Sabertooth Skipper, fer whom I recommend Salty Dick's Uncensored Sailor Songs, a great nautical find unearthed c/o thar hard-workin' fools o'er at Accordion Noir. An' now here's a comic from Sticks and Stones!)

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Name-checked in the Ubyssey's SeaBus piracy coverage (March 4, '08)!