Every year is very different. This sounds obvious on the surface but when you consider the possibility of your returning to a well-known location to do a familiar activity -- sometimes even performing the exact same songs as the previous time you were there -- things can blur into a muddy kind of sameness; even if you colour with all the different crayons, use them all on the same spot and you still end up with brown.
So in considering the Creaking Planks' Best-of-2015 top-10 list of highlights, we assigned a high rating to several experiences which were, even after 10 years in show business, unique "first time"s. (Then again, returning to a ritual thought forever extinguished can lend it further resonance, like an eerie echo through time.) So the list isn't one of "business as usual" items, but rather of "new business", with a touch of "revisiting old business".
#10. December 6th -- opening for Portland's Professor Gall & Victoria's Carolyn Mark at the WISE Hall.
Here it is, our most recent gig! It was a gas! The supporting acts were hot stuff, we FINALLY got to share a stage with Professor Gall, the evening built and built, and we sounded great (the secret is: give everyone a vocal mic) ... which means as a warm-up for
our 11th anniversary show coming up on Jan 29th, it passed with flying colours!
#9. July 23rd -- Bike Smut at the Rio Theatre
Something as unlikely as we are and as old had somehow continued to strangely thrive in the shadows of what has in the meantime become relatively mainstreamed: bicycle culture. It's just an everyday activity now, not a radical movement nor a cult anymore, so the outrageous excesses on its fringes have disappeared... or so it seemed. Turns out, they were just on the road the whole time! No, we never got to strut across the stage at a second instalment of the B:C:Clettes Rouge et Noir Cabaret, but this was the next best thing: a packed house at the Rio Theatre featuring Portland's own RevPhil presenting a program of bicycle pornography. What were we doing on that bill? We had no real business being there... but because we
had been there,
then, our presence gave our old cronies the right feel. (Also that night: old cronies giving each other
other kinds of feels.)
#8. September 13 -- Guerrilla Accordion Noir Parade in Grandview Park with Kate & Rich
The Accordion Noir Festival has an uneasy history with accordion parades. They look good on paper, but are a huge hassle to organize and coordinate in real life. (Get everyone playing the same song at the same time? That's for
Kimberley, and
look what good it did them! We'd just try to get everyone playing in the same
key and stand back!) The first few years of festivals featured gloriously messy chaotic processions (culminating in year 4's line of garbage-bag-clad accordionists performing moistly in single file on Commercial Drive during a nighttime downpour). Since then, the festival has seen a three-person parade, and a one-person parade, and then gave up the ghost.
But in 2015 an accordion parade was on the bill -- listed on the poster, pledged and promised to the accordion nation. The festival was obligated to deliver an accordion parade! So we, uh, threw a flashmob together at the last minute, violating the previous year's proclamation that 2014 would be our FINAL year at that festival, and improvised our way through a circuit of Trout Lake with Kate & Rich from Halifax, delighting the Goth clothing swap in progress at the scene.
#7. March 25 -- an intimate evening of Planking at Skinny Fat Jack's
A small show in a big room is a problem. A big show in a small room is a problem (hello, Mezamazing.) A big show in a big room is... well, a lot of work. And a small show in a small room is just... a good fit. Casual, intimate, the acoustics are great and the food is, too.
#6, February 6th -- Burning 'er down at Bernerland
Really with a roster of East Van All-Star talent such as this event garnered, it was an honour simply to be included. Geoff has been a guiding inspiration for us (hello, reason I picked up the accordion in the first place), a pillar of the Accordion Noir Festival (opening for us in its first year!) and an enduring force, so it was a pleasure and an honour to celebrate him in this fashion... even if the rest of the band vetoed my proposal of a Richard Cheese-style lounge-singer rendition of
Ich A Mazeldicker Yid. (To be fair, it probably would have gotten us uninvited from Ashkenaz.)
#5. January 29th -- Improvising loops beneath the blue whale skeleton at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum
Location, location, location! A pity we couldn't have played a public event there at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum, but if you find yourself needing to improvise whale-song cello loops for ambient conference sonic wallpaper, you couldn't pick a more magnificent site!
#4. November 5th -- Our video series launched!
Because what we do is remarkable and extraordinary, and because occasionally people are left grasping for words to describe our ineffable "us"ness (it took us a long time to arrive at "jug band of the damned" and even that is only slightly clearer than mud), from just about our first performance people in the audience have been holding up their cameras (smartphones, today) and taking shaky, poorly-lit, terrible-sounding video clips of portions of our songs -- and then using them to represent us to the world. All bands are familiar with the situation: somehow, Joe Smartphone never catches your best performance of your best song with good sound... immortalizing your "doing your best under adverse circumstances" as just "... your best ..." and that one night with the hangover or the allergies or the broken amp will invariably be the representative of your work to encounter your idols in the wild. It turns out that you can't leave your social media presence up to chance!
In 2015 we resolved to take these matters into our own hands. as well as giving the band a fun and convenient excuse to get together for regular practices, workshops and arranging sessions independent of sporadic gigs and make videos of winning tunes from our rehearsals for the benefit of people who don't, won't or can't make it out to our live performances. (And heck, maybe these demonstrations will sway some minds and stir up some interest in our gigs: if you're at work, quit; if you're in prison, BREAK OUT!)
The cocktail calculations on our fresh digital video campaign have us reaching nearly 800 people over a two month period, a long tail that will only continue to grow (-- especially if you subscribe for automatic notification of future video postings!) And when's the last time we performed in a room with a capacity of 800 audience members? Also, this way we don't have to stay up until 2 am waiting for the bar to finish counting the tills... we just finish our tea, thank our hosts and nip off to our beds at a wholly reasonable hour. Getting old, or working smarter instead of harder? (The truth is: it's a combination of both.)
#3. October 1st -- Afterland launched with our soundtrack on board!
"When's the last time we performed in a room with a capacity of 800 audience members?" We composed and recorded some music in 2015 for Afterland, a collectable card game for mobile devices, and through it, our tunes have already been heard by over one hundred thousand
Android players around the world... and that's not even including
the iOS version! Fine-tuning the bespoke melodies for app use was an exciting new challenge, boiling hours of work into minutes of music, and the end product is a lush and truly extraordinary experience. Did I mention that you can play it for free?
#2. January 16th -- Creaking Planks T-shirts for sale!
Having fans at your concert is great; they're there, enjoying what you're doing while you're doing it. Getting them to take your album home is also pretty swell -- they can enjoy what you do even when you're not there. But wearing a band's T-shirt transforms you into a walking, talking endorsement for that band from the moment you wake up until you hit the sack hours later, long after you'd have taken the album off of "repeat". So now our fans have the option of relishing in the glory that is us all the live-long day. (Our old website is feeling a bit prickly these days, but the online shirt-ordering functionality should still be solid. Why not
give it a try?)
#1. January 16th -- Creaking Planks 10th anniversary show with Ehren Salazar, Al Mader and Travis Bernhardt
The thing about our anniversary concerts is that we don't just cope with what we're dealt like at any other show -- here we get the chance to cherry-pick what the night will look like, playing to no one's tastes beyond our own (... and those who share our good taste, that is 8) The idea is that even if the turnout is a bust, the line-up will be highly entertaining for us... but strangely, when we program acts we love, the audiences have a way of coming out of the woodwork and enjoying them along with us. In this case the three acts were all old friends we've had a long association with, so our annual anniversary concert isn't just a gig, it's more of a
homecoming.
And, not to belabour the point, but don't forget that we do have one coming up!
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