Well, hats off to Cafe Deux Soleils. It managed to hang in there for six years beyond the Railway Club, but three of those were Covid years, which ... were not good years for a live music venue and community hub. As a band we ourselves are ... pretty dead, so it's not for us to go pointing fingers and making accusations. The last time we played there was a decade ago and ... I'm not going to lie, it certanily seemed pretty vibrant at the time. But a lot can change in ten years in Vancouver, especially where real estate is involved.
The natural home for Vancouver's Poetry Slam community after a harrowing series of marginal events in unsuitable venues, occasional Accordion Noir Festival venue (and host to the very brief run of the Vancouver Song Slam) Cafe Deux Soleils also will be remembered for a spell hosting the hottest open mic series in town Thursday nights, where you could roll in at 7 pm for pre-signup and take your chances whether anyone might or might not be hearing you before midnight (or indeed, even that week at all!)
Unlike our friends in High Society, who basically turned it into their living room (in fact, the news of its closure left their next engagement there, already booked!, high and dry... moved to the WISE Hall on short notice!), we never spent all that much time at Cafe Deux as a band, though our hours there include some of our most iconic and formative moments. (And it was sure a lot easier to walk home from after hours than the Railway!) Quick, Robin -- to the nostalgia gallery!
I vaguely recall our set -- still on the performance art end of things in our vague and formless nascence -- included a take on James Brown's "Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto", a recitation of a brutal Charlie Brown Christmas fan comic printed in The Stranger ("Did Amadou Diallo have naturally curly hair?") and inappropriately seasonally-cheerful "Fa la la la" refrains accompanying Al Mader's dark, dark poem "Love Isn't Blue".
Time passed and we kind of figured out how to be a little entertaining as a band, and three years later RC had us back (our roots run deep with him, not just infecting the Creaking Planks with accordion while promoting the performance poetry revue That's My Brain... And You're Killing It! back in 2005, but even earlier, to the turn of the century at the Sugar Refinery's Scrambled Angst series) to support his conceptual gong show "AwesomeFace: The Children's Show For Grownups!", on which occasion -- January 23rd, 2009 -- we filked the lyrics to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" (already played straight as part of our repertoire) to be family-friendly... and the world was never the same again!
And of course our homemade gig posters never went so hard ever again! Daisy Jones-Locher's poster template for our 2009 gig there with Raghu and the Outlaw Band was quite a bit more pro however:
Why go to all the trouble of cooking up your own poster and then minimising your own presence on it? Well, you always know what Raghu and Joey will be looking like, but in three Creaking Planks gigs you might be served up three nearly mutually exclusive sets of musicians! Better play it safe and handwave your way through.
gRaPhIc DeSiGn iS mY PaSsIoN! Gig poster design so often is a struggle to make sense of that which is fundamentally nonsensical (and even when not: it is always a challenge to represent an audio phenomenon visually), but we were nonetheless jazzed to be scheduled to take the stage along with the Bay Area's singular punk rock accordion phenomenon Duckmandu for the Accordion Noir Festival and channeled that weird buzz into a textbook example of probably what not to do on your gig poster. Poor Duckmandu never made it past Canadian Customs (I believe there was something about a flamethrower-accordion) and after ducking this poster all the way up to 11 we had to play the gig without him, filling the gaps with festival friends like Barbara Adler and Geoff Berner.
Jeff, we continued respecting your sacrifice on our behalf and continued cooking up more strange gig posters for gigs with you, as evidenced by this engagement, The Carnival of Shadows II, October 29th 2011... a second crack at our East Van Hallowe'en at Cafe Deux. All the particulars were lifted from Google Image Search, but the decision to collide these specific elements of shadow puppetry were entirely the product of our demented, feverish imagination.
Our friends Strangled Darlings, then of Portland, OR, provided this poster, which manages to both be a lot more specific yet less busy. We played there with them July 6, 2012 -- our second gig of the day, after performing at an art opening at the Gallery Gachet! Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, for tomorrow Cafe Deux Soleils may close!
Commercial Drive is done. It's been staggering on since Bukowski's and La Quena closed, but this nails its coffin shut. Maybe all of Vancouver is now down for the count, as it keeps losing more Sugar Refineries and Press Clubs and Black Sheep Books than it gains. (We'll just say that Lana Lou's has a lot of weight resting on its shoulders at the moment.) Or perhaps the era of live performance is simply behind us... or maybe we have just gotten old and fallen out of touch regarding where the youth are congregating! But I prefer to believe that people are still partying hard and having a hell of a time and getting in touch with the true selves they were meant to be, on stage, having a blast... somewhere that rent is cheaper and real estate is less the tail wagging the dog. (Somewhere in an unfashionable slum in eastern Europe, perhaps. Tell us where the party is and we will bring the sausages!) Vancouver, please keep this theory in mind as you cast your votes in the municipal election.
Time passed and we kind of figured out how to be a little entertaining as a band, and three years later RC had us back (our roots run deep with him, not just infecting the Creaking Planks with accordion while promoting the performance poetry revue That's My Brain... And You're Killing It! back in 2005, but even earlier, to the turn of the century at the Sugar Refinery's Scrambled Angst series) to support his conceptual gong show "AwesomeFace: The Children's Show For Grownups!", on which occasion -- January 23rd, 2009 -- we filked the lyrics to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" (already played straight as part of our repertoire) to be family-friendly... and the world was never the same again!
Why go to all the trouble of cooking up your own poster and then minimising your own presence on it? Well, you always know what Raghu and Joey will be looking like, but in three Creaking Planks gigs you might be served up three nearly mutually exclusive sets of musicians! Better play it safe and handwave your way through.
Here's one that was quite a bit more flowery: we were all jazzed up for Hallowe'en on Devil's Night -- October 30th, 2010 -- looking forward to supporting Maria in the Shower at their prime! Memories are vague, but our notes suggest that this gig somehow got double-booked ... I recall we all tightened our belts for short sets: two of their bands played, two of our bands, and Jeff who put the show together gentlemanly withdrew from the bill, a noble gesture that paid off in our gladly playing more gigs with him down the line.
See what I mean? There you go, the very next time we overloaded Cafe Deux's limited stage, it was with Jeff Andrew back in tow, along with Portland's Underscore Orkestra on March 4th, 2011.
For a time, we were drawn into the whirling vortex of Blackberry Wood's gravitational well. We invested so much of our band identity in our accordionic side, holding down Accordion Noir Festival gigs for so many years, this was possibly the first time we were tapped due to our many years diligent representation of Team Ukulele -- often we would feature two ukes on stage simultaneously, though good luck if you were hoping to hear either of them! This poster is possibly on par with our Duck Apocalypse poster above, but if it is madness, they are clearly committed to it. (Doubly so, as it is bespoke rather than just being composited from convenient relevant elements.)
And there it was: the final time we performed at Cafe Deux Soleils, November 2nd, 2012. If things were different, we might conceivably have been able to mount a triumphant return to their stage exactly ten years later, but sadly it closed one month too soon for that to be possible. (Also: we are nowhere remotely near in comeback shape, still way far-gone. But the point stands: when we do revive, it won't be Cafe Deux which will be hosting our grand return by public demand!)
Even after we stopped playing gigs there, attending gigs there, and even residing in Vancouver, its stage still doubled as a nice play area for little kids during weekend brunches. And there, at the back of the stage, a large black piece of fabric draped across the side wall bore testament to its alter ego, as a place where things happen that can't happen elsewhere -- spotted with dots of paint, hearkening back to the moment circa 2007 when our colleagues in Trike spontaneously demonstrated a new, performance-painting element to their stage show. In exchange for their troubles, they were banned forever from playing there again. But in its heart Cafe Deux always remembered the room it was meant to be, and kept those memories close... by refusing to ever wash the paint spots off the backdrop fabric.
Speaking of Trike, here's a fitting exchange bottled from the venue's memorializing on Facebook:
But don't let me get you all gloomy. AwesomeFace aimed to combat SADS by encouraging everyone to attend in beachware, and it is thus bedecked that we will remember our time at Cafe Deux. As notable partyman Leonard Cohen (seriously, for a time he was called Captain Quaalude!) put it in "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.
(Possibly most disappointing of all, we must resign ourselves to never finding out the specific relation between Cafe Deux Soleils and Cafe Du Soleil just down the street. It's a boring mystery.)
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