2013-10-25: SpookEasy HallowSwing Cabaret

September has been a blast! The Accordion Noir fest was a winner (isn't it always, though?) -- in promotions it was nice hearing ourselves described as "festival favorites" on the CBC's North by Northwest, and if you like you can find a link to (and, ahem, extensive analysis of) the debut of our interactive choose-your-own-adventure song suite performed over here. (Note: performance recording is not interactive.) Then we played a special dance set for Planks alumnus Venus Soberanes at the local reception for her wedding with Jeremy at the Little Mountain Studio, rounding out a variety show spiked with Al Mader himself! Hopefully we will be manifesting at the Horace Phair party this Columbus Day, but we're getting a bit beyond the scope of this post -- which is about our next public local gig you can enjoy!

You are cordially invited to the Spookeasy HallowSwing Cabaret party on Friday Oct. 25th, a Prohibition era-themed Halloween Party!

It’s time to heed the bell's toll for ghastly, ghoulish and grim Halloween partying with Vancouver's Electro Swing Clubr.

Come in your best retro-horror garb: top hat & tails, flapper, Victorian asylum lunatics, boudoir, silent horror film characters, Carnivale freaks, steampunk, horror circus, Satanic burlesque, Voodoo, Day of the Dead, hospital horror, haunted forest animals, evil clowns, Halloween masks... etc.

In the Cabaret room:
* Every time the Tim Sars Band plays a show, they know it might be their last. While the band is swingin' hot, the lyrics always seem to go to the dark side. The very talented Brendan Krieg on drums and vocals, Roisin Adams on piano and vocals, and Russell Sholberg on bass are complicit in Tim's evil musical plot, and those on the dance floor shall be the victims. During their set we'll have a Hot Beat Swing Dance and Black Bottom Stomp performances.

* Burlesque retro ghost number by Riannaconda

* Sword-swallowing sideshow by Kata Sita, Human BlockHead, Bug eating and more... If this performance doesn't give you goosebumps nothing will!!!

* Haunted Go-Go Flapper Girls

* VooDoo DJs: From Montreal, Speakeasy Electro Swing gang Eliazar Hason. From the Island - AppleCat and local crew Rudy.

* In the Hideaway Room we'll have 3 bands: The Creaking Planks, Meg A Tron and Sound Architecture:

The jug band of the damned, the Creaking Planks, salvage festering songs from the mass grave of popular music, binding their festering choruses together with a thread spun from extinct instruments, making them move once again by perversely introducing the strange spark of life.

* In the Tiki room, we'll have the bad boys SideShow, Doe Ran and DJ Spaz. They're guaranteed to rattle your bones… and reanimate your zombie hearts It won’t mean a thing until the zombies start to swing!

Also expect the visuals to captivate and twist your mind with images from the past and future blended together in one cocktail.

Advance tickets are $15, $20 at the door. Here's the Facebook event announcement.

A moment of silence for two Vancouver venues

A moment of silence, please. You, you in the back... yes, with the alpenhorn. Just for a minute, please. Well, okay, but take it outside. Man, than thing is huge. Now, where was I? Ah yes, a chance to pay our respects to two local music venues who played key roles in the development of the Creaking Planks, both of which closed their doors to live music performance in October.

The narrow confines of Cafe Montmartre always seemed more like an alley between buildings where someone had hung sheet metal roofing and a few tricycles than a building of its own; unbearably hot in the summer, it played host to the long-running Thundering Word open mic series long after its founder passed on. We featured at the open mic twice, and played there on numerous occasions -- a room we had access to book when other venues didn't necessarily believe in our locally-unproven support acts such as the Accordion Babes from California, and of course, we'll never forget the riot (well, the police came and my mother was standing on a table) when Mezamazing played with us there at the Accordion Noir Festival.

Two blocks away, the Little Mountain Studios have completed their conversion into a theatre, after what must be nearly a decade of struggles with the city inching incrementally toward venue legitimacy since its early days as the Butchershop Floor Gallery, where a young Lord Eel, Lee Shoal, and Blackbox Squeezebeard managed to clear a full house shortly after meeting just by pulling their instruments out. Later, we managed to play a haunting set to an empty room while accidentally burning a hole in a banjo. After the changeover we took on an official status as the venue's "house band", playing many an opening, and for a time enjoyed a weekly residency there. There, also, we put on gigs that quite simply couldn't have happened anywhere else -- the Cabaret of Wonders! Err on the Side of Caution! (And of course, hosting Mezamazing after their Montmartre show.) And of course, we had many, many RAV line nights.

We don't strictly speaking need them now, but the bands who are, now, in the position we were in, then, do need rooms like these. (Venues that will pay you are also nice, to be sure, but even before your band is at that level, you need a place outside your living room to develop your skills to a point where you can go semi-pro.) Where will they be found? These rooms are survived in the neighbourhood by the Main and the Cottage Bistro; more widely, the Safe Amplification Society is keeping its finger on the pulse of accessible venues for eg. all-ages shows that can't always promise the massive paying patrons many venues demand (in lieu of rent; of course, if you have capital, anything is possible... but that's not a reason to make everything impossible to those without capital if all they have to trade on is talent!)

So hats off to the rooms for keeping on keeping on; it's always a surprise when the totally anarchic band perseveres and manages to hang on for longer than legitimate businesses (well, and the LMS, which just seemed unkillable, despite its years of seemingly perpetually teetering on the brink.) We would have liked to give you one last set, but timing isn't only the secret to great comedy, but also sometimes its inverse. Many regards to Ali and Ehren; letting your art lead you through life is one folly, but then running a business predicated on daily dealings with those fools is a whole other flavour of foolishness. We wish you great success in your next adventures and look forward to our paths crossing then!

We sure are an animated bunch!

In celebration of our Jaan Pehechaan Ho video breaking 15 thousand views (and the Heineken campaign fuelling its accidental virality showing no sign of slowing), here's a low-fi video -- an animated .GIF made out of snapshots virtuous band photographer Jonathan Dy took of us the same night as that viral video was made, three-quarters of a year ago. We have listened to the masses, tightened up our arrangement, and even learned the words to the second verse! There's a round of recording coming up and this tune is definitely on our hit list.

(Haven't you always wanted to have a little band in your desk, to take out and put on the shelf to caper and cavort for your amusement at the drop of a hat? I'm of half a mind to violate every design tenet on the book (where's my blink tag?) and put this little animation on the top of our website, for viewers to enjoy on every page.)

Two items of further note: we missed telling you about a gig we played Tues, Jan 31st, fundraising for the Federation for the Organization of Open Desire at the Little Mountain Gallery (where we'll be back Thurs March 1st presenting you a re-match with Portland's Underscore Orkestra -- but I get ahead of myself) and this Saturday night, Feb 18th, we'll be joining Blackberry Wood at the Big Blue House again for another jam-packed album fundraiser show there, shuffled among such luminaries as Geoff Berner, Carolyn Mark, and the Orkestar Slivovica. Just keep your ears open as you walk along Salisbury Street, there's no way you'll miss it.

2011-11-05: Creaking Planks with California's Accordion Babes

We first crossed paths with them during the Great Website Outage of early 2010 and we were all so blown away we nearly neglected to leave ourselves time to play a set! Then they did us a good turn, bringing three of us into their home turf later that summer (a tale still to be told). Renee de la Prade of Culann's Hounds and Amber Lee Baker are the two roving ambassadors of the Bay Area's thriving accordion community, championing the underdog instrument with their annual pin-up cheesecake calendar / album, presenting sights and sounds of a bakers' dozen of awesome lady accordionists, and thanks to our ties with them through the weekly Accordion Noir radio show / podcast, they will be playing two shows in Vancouver this weekend.

Ours is the latter of the two: Saturday, November 5th, from 8 to 10 pm, the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th Avenue at Main) will be huffing and puffing with an intense and intimate acoustic squeezebox session, when the Accordion Babes Renee and Amber Lee are joined by the jug band of the damned (that's us!) and, for a $10 admission fee, you as well. This could well be your only opportunity to get your hands on the 2012 calendar without having to resort to the hassle of mail order, and they can autograph and dedicate the calendar in person to whichever fan of kick-ass female-fronted bands is on your holiday gift list!

(If you can't make it out Saturday night, the Accordion Babes are also performing in town the night before, Friday, Nov 4th, at Spartacus Books (684 E. Hastings), also from 8-10 pm, with a babelier line-up of our friend Natasha Enquist from Victoria and Katheryn Petersen (with Trumpet Babe Melissa Hammer in tow). And, of course, there is nothing keeping you from attending both performances!)

2010-12-10: Planks play at Little Mountain Gallery FUN-raiser at theRickshaw

It's time to throw our weight behind a cause that's directly benefited us, the little Little Mountain Gallery where we've brought so many good times to so many. When the house falls, you can no longer call yourself a house band!

Denied its bread-and-butter, indie live music performance, by ossified regulations from No Fun City's Big Book of No Fun, the LMG is compelled to mount another fundraiser, charitably hosted by David Duprey at the Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings.)

Acts on the bill will include Zachary Gray (of the Zolas), Pineapple, Resorts, Dandi Wind and the SSRIs... along with the jug band of the damned, of course!

"THIS NIGHT WILL BE LIKE WASHING DOWN CAKE WITH MILK SHAKE..."

Your all-ages admission is a suggested $10 - $20 sliding scale fee but they want everyone to know that no one will be turned away!

2010-08-12: Planks play Alex Cieslik's "Outside Access" art opening at the Little Mountain Gallery

Alex "Scruffy Bigbass" Cieslik, who once had a painting stolen while playing guitarrón with Planks at that fateful Rouge et Noir cabaret, hasn't been seen much in a Plankian context since our Gibsons visit of June '09... but does have a new body of visual work ready to present to the public's scrutiny at the old Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th Ave.) we've all logged so many hours into propping up. It's been Quite Some Time (two and a half years?!) since the last time we played an art opening there, but these strange little gigs were positively fundamental in the development of the Creaking Planks. I highly recommend playing art openings on a regular basis to all new bands!

The exhibition runs from Thurs Aug 12th through Thurs Aug 26th; we will however only be performing there opening night.

2010-05-27: Planks close Cabaret of Wonders

Back to the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th) for the second time this month, this time for a considerably more substantial bill -- hark, hark, the Cabaret of Wonders has come to town! This concerted return to vaudeville was spearheaded by our magical slide guitar player Dr. Steelhand and will feature the many improbable talents of, we are told...

• The incredible juggling and clown of Flying Not Falling!
• Scorching hot burlesque from 2009 Burlesque Hall of Fame Best Debut winner Melody Mangler!
• Musical hilarity from the legendary Ehren Salazar!
• Sideshow stunt brilliance from Sean Covernton!
• Mind reading by the unbelievable Dave Moses!
• Magic from Master of Ceremonies, Travis Bernhardt!

as well as a solo set from our own Blackbox Squeezebeard and a closing set from the jug band of the damned, the Creaking Planks!

Tickets at the door are a bafflingly low $15, $12 if reserved in advance!

2010-05-08: Planks join Story and Cud Eastbound from PEI

Trying to get back into the swing of things, one typically strange Planks engagement has already slipped through our nets -- but here's our next show!  An early one, 6-8 pm this Saturday, at the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th at Main, where we've had so many good times.)  You pays your cover, you gets to enjoy not only the jug band of the damned but also (border delays willing) headliner of the 2009 Accordion Noir Festival, squeezepunk Sam "Story" Wright from PEI, as well as her traveling partner on the "Lost Tour", Cud Eastbound.

2009-10-04: Creaking Planks play the LMG during the Drift

The annual Drift Main Street artwalk has come upon us and with it, a good excuse for visiting our old haunt the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th, formerly Little Mountain Studios) to play an afterparty of sorts. And who better to play with than our cronies in Mezamazing, last seen provoking a police visit at the Accordion Noir Festival launch party? Where everything is forbidden, everything must be permitted. Joining us, when he is not up the street at Cafe Montmartre, will be LMG honcho Ehren Salazar.  The show is likely to run from 8-11 pm ish.

2009-07-25: Creaking Planks close the Hidden Agenda #25 Variety Show Spectacular

We've been scattered in recovery from our trip to Vancouver Island at the end of June (expect a recap post soon!), but in honour of another visit from Becky Johnson of Sweetie Pie Press, EC Salazar and the goons of the Little Mountain Studios (195 E. 26th Avenue at Main) have gotten together with us to put on another program of mixed nuts including:

* Dave Shumka
* Ryan Beil
* Officer Mazaltoff, The Beat Cop Poet
* the charming crafty wares of Sweetie Pie Press
* and Unflattering Portraits by Reverend Aitor (by donation)

All that plus a closing set from the jug band of the damned, in what has practically been our only show together since the month began! Suggested donation $5.

2009-04-26: Planks back at LMS

The facts are well-established: We do good work at the Little Mountain Studios (195 E. 26th Avenue at Main), and we do good work with Erin Graves.  Why not put one in the other?  (A: because the LMS will not fit inside Miss Graves.)

A command performance for some distinguished visiting dignitaries from Phalonious J. Knucklebones' storied past, this show sees us flexing our creative muscles (there, to the left of the goof glands) in a space that's practically our home away from home. Joining us again is Erin Graves contributing a set on the keys, likely again commandeering a chunk of the Planks to be her back-up ensemble (Gravesdiggers?) Doors at 8; music should certainly be well underway by 9 pm. By donation.

2009-03-17: Planks help restore Hidden Agenda to its native habitat

Licking its hard-earned wounds from the recent critical success at the Waterfront Theatre, the series resumes at the Little Mountain Studios (195 E. 26th at Main) presenting its varied music and comedy variety show, now on a monthly basis.

Acts this time around include the Planks, Stick Twigs, the unique improvised musical stylings of host EC Salazar, & more acts to be announced...

Salazar intones fatefully: "there may very well be multi colored balloons."

2009-01-16: Creaking Planks at Cafe Montmartre with Rick Keating

Last night, however well-received, was just a warm-up.  Friday night we plan to pull out everything we proudly displayed and more, with two full courses of Plankification sandwiching a very rare set by the host of the Thursday night open mic at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House, Rick Keating.  The man strums, he stomps, he puts up a godawful fuss.  And we love the bastard for it.  It's like a primer in Folk 101, skipping right past the student exercises and landing directly in a master class where they have learned to tune their instruments and stop whining.  Doors at 8, and we should be cooking by 9... by pass-the-hat donation, at Café Montmartre (4362 Main Street at 28th).

(Thanks to Leah Nilson for taking the photo at the bottom so long ago that has now ended up on two posters!)

Update: a Plank rump (sax, fiddle + squeezebox) drummed up business a bit the night before with appearances at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House open mic and a surprise revival of the Hidden Agenda series at the Little Mountain Studios, a benefit for Sweetie Pie Press.  Aren't their wares swell?

...

We were caught at that engagement also!

Photo by Mike David Hawley

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!

2008-06-07: 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!

2008-05-07: 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!

2008-04-24: 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!

2008-03-07: 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: