2018-09-13: "Echoes and Ripples" art opening at Creative Coworkers

Because being regular institutions interfered with the festival's (successful, as it turns out) attempts to apply for grants (as it telegraphs a certain nepotistic pipeline from taxpayers into the same private pockets year after year: the idea is that the government doesn't support festivals established solely to further their founders' personal enrichment), we were given an official send-off from the Accordion Noir Festival back in 2014. Nonetheless, our principals are so thoroughly intertwined with its affairs that it's proven impossible to extricate ourselves completely from their dealings even if we genuinely wanted to, and over the past four years we've kept finding ourselves returning in little off-brand festival support roles - leading an accordion parade, promoting the fest at farmer's markets and performing at the pre-fest launch party. And so forth.

Switching tacks for a moment -- ever since we finished our Imaginary Games business with Afterland back in 2015, we've been inviting its lead artist, Elin Jonsson, to mount an art exhibition of her work (long since overdue!) and have us back to perform at its opening. Our two flavours worked excellently together once, obviously they would be a great fit again (and again!) She's been wrapped up since then with professional transitions and a regular gig we matchmade, pairing her with the Accordion Noir Festival where she has produced three amazing on-brand posters three years in a row. Every year we ask her about her inevitable art show, and every year she agrees that it should happen ... eventually, sometime down the line. This year, we cracked the nut: yes, let's do the art show as part of the Accordion Noir Festival this year!

Finally, a legitimate pathway back into the Accordion Noir Festival! Now that it's backslid out of the complicated ties of grant support, there's nothing to stop us from dominating the fest forever, like the evil shadows of Geoff Berner! There's only one problem: while waiting to be let back in, the band had withered on the vine and died in the meantime!

(Here's a narrative high point, let's frustratingly interrupt it for a protracted parenthetical aside!) (I know, this rigorous historical approach (insider baseball is the only kind of baseball we have!) to telling the story of how this event came to happen -- "back when the Earth was young..." -- is as exhausting as it is exhaustive. But we like to believe that it is instructional for musicians to get a better idea of the long tail answer to Where Gigs Come From, and we like to believe that it is genuinely interesting to understand when gigs happen for a reason instead of simply emerging spontaneously and organically, if there is a story behind it.) (I know, everything that elapses happens in some sort of context -- all context is a story, and not all stories are interesting. But look at it this way -- if I get to vent it in the promotional blurb, it greatly lessens the chances that I'll stink up the performance sharing the blow-by-blow account as stage banter mid-set!)

OK, so the band's not completely dead ("I'm getting better!") -- we still Tweet a couple of times per month, and optimists still look us up periodically to offer us paying gigs which, in supreme frustration, we have to keep demurring after conferring with the membership and establishing that no, we can't make quorum. (13 years is a long time to build up a band to be in the position of declining paying gigs! However, if you say "no" enough times, they will eventually stop knocking at your door.) But what ails us is more than mere hibernation -- more a species of torpor. What we have before us is a pre-festival gig, eerily resonant with the last time we managed to successfully get together to play a complete set as a band -- at a pre-festival gig slightly over a year ago. If your band goes more than a year between successfully pulling off gigs, you can definitively consider it to be In Poor Health.

But we'd been pushing Elin to put on this show for years, and here at the threshold of its realization, it would be a betrayal of the dream to back out -- just because of a little thing like dying. Pish tosh! So "we" signed on for what might reasonably be expected to be the last time the Creaking Planks brand appears on a poster -- the only guarantee is an accordion rather than a band, but at an accordion festival at least that's the one context where that bait-and-switch wouldn't be a bit of a letdown. It's looking like we're going to be back to basics with our founding ukulele as well, and it may well be as though the past 12 years were nought but a species of very weird fever dream.

So here are the details:

On the eve of the 11th annual Accordion Noir Festival, “Echoes and Ripples” is a celebration of visual art concerned with and inspired by live music, ranging from concert and festival poster designs to more profound meditations on the internal experience of performing or listening to music. In addition to paintings by multi-Accordion-Noir-Festival poster artist Elin Jonsson, this show will be featuring visual artwork by Mister Fire-Man, Jenny Ritter, Pinguino Kolb and Darren Williams, among others. Because art imitates life, stay for live accordion music by The Creaking Planks, Teapot in the Tuba, and the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra. The opening begins at 6 pm and runs until midnight. This exhibition is taking place at Creative Coworkers (343 Railway Street, Vancouver) and will be up for two weeks; admission to the opening is by donation ($10 suggested donation includes a drink ticket) and pre-sale tickets are available online at Eventbrite.

After all that, what's the take-home? Consider this -- the three following nights at the Accordion Noir Festival's run at the WISE Hall cost $20 admission. This show gives you three accordion bands, PLUS lots of interesting art to look at, PLUS a free drink... for half that! But I jest -- you should be attending all of these concerts.

And who knows -- will this be the final missive in the Planks logbook? (Speaking of which, thanks again to the Wooden Boat Society for having the rumpest configuration of Planks there is filling in an emergency opening last weekend!) We look forward to undertaking some restructuring after the Accordion Noir Festival wraps, and hopefully 2019 may see us gigging again, hopefully with some new hands on board.