We weren't able to make good on our invitation to attend this festival last year due to conflicting plans in California (say what!? Stay posted for that year-late update!), but prior incarnations of the Creaking Planks had attended two earlier installments of Pandora's Collective's Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival (was this really the 8th annual?), and Airbeard's "57 Varieties" open stage series fielded performers to several others. The host organization does good work with a number of reading series, workshops, and even scholarships for high-schoolers, so needless to say, we jumped on an opportunity to participate this time around. They even featured a shot of us on their bus shelter advertisements! Can't see it? Look a little closer...
The still is from Graham Ballantyne's great work photographing us at the Prophouse back in May. This rendition wasn't blown up quite as big as our surprise pictorial at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but it's still a bold stamping of us out there in the world when we're being so relatively quiet here on the web.
(It's also one of a growing collection of photos of Airbeard pausing mid-chomp before he bites off more than he can chew. Can't he sing with his mouth closed? Well, I suppose that wouldn't be entirely unreasonable... still, the awkwardness of this increasingly frequent photo-op moment demands a gallery in the works sometime.)
Our Summer Dreams set lived up to the recent media hype: we were a folk duo, somewhat bewildered by the unanticipated shift of scale and schedule (and distracted by Lumberman's Arch and the natural splendor surrounding us all) but with a tight set of beautiful music nonetheless. Finally, an audience that really appreciates Margaret Atwood's Frankenstein song!
Here's to more of us entertaining more of you at future years' installments of Summer Dreams! (And, for that matter, more upcoming shows at the Prophouse! We had to back out of a stellar squeezebox bill there this coming Thursday night, Aug 18th, with our friends from the Gram Partisans along with Winnipeg's Ingrid Gatin, but you can still enjoy it in our absence!)
