2019-02-15: Creaking Planks feature at Beats on Broadway!

At our peak, we were sometimes playing two gigs in a single day.  In our deepest slump, it felt like the pace was closer to two gigs in the same year.  Having just poked our heads out of hibernation (never give a woodchuck on Groundhog Day!), we never expected to have a second gig lined up just a week later, and yet here we are!  A big part of show business success is simply being in the right place at the right time, and as it turned out we were exactly the right shape to fill in for an unexpected cancellation looming on a venue's calendar. The plan always was for 2019 to see a renewal of the Creaking Planks, but I was expecting we'd need to reform the band first!  I'm a little concerned that this pace isn't sustainable, but probably we will have a long break after this to strategize our next move.

But I'm burying the lede. Yes! You can find us -- well, two of us, the primordial, essential skeleture of the ensemble -- featuring this Friday night back at the monthly third-Friday Beats on Broadway acoustic open mic at the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House (800 E Broadway) for the first time since our last appearance there eleven years ago! It's an open mic, so if you'd like to share a bit of tunage or your latest poem also, don't hold back! Signup from 7-7:30 pm. See you there!

2012-04-10: Two great shows in one evening

North, south, east, west, we're the jug band that's the best... at tightly scheduling in the most performances into one evening.

Southwest, we start off playing to your corner at the Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery of the Jewish Community Centre (950 W. 41st), sounding off like a shofar for a half-hour at 7 pm to ring in the latest instalment of the Pandora's Collective's Word Whips, wherein local poets share works written in response to the photos of Judi Angel's Cambodian journey in the exhibition up there TIKUN OLOM: HEALING THE WORLD.

AN EVENING OF MUSIC, ART & POETRY IN THE GALLERY
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012, 7-9 pm
Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery,  JCC of Greater Vancouver, 950 West 41st Avenue
Free Admission, Everyone is welcome.

This event features THE CREAKING PLANKS as well as Pandora’s Collective poets inspired by the photographs in TIKUN OLOM: HEALING THE WORLD, a photography exhibit of ‘people and places’ in S. E. Asia. The photos were taken by JUDI ANGEL, while on a three month AJWS volunteer placement in Cambodia.

Co-hosts, BONNIE NISH and PAMELA BENTLEY, ROWAN LIPKOVITS and THE CREAKING PLANKS along with poets, FRAN BOURASSA, MAUREEN EGAN, TIMOTHY SHAY, CHRISTY HILL and DIANE TUCKER will dish up an inspiring & entertaining potpourri of sounds, rhythms, poetry and prose.

There will be time for the audience to participate by writing to the exhibit and reciting their poems during the ‘open mic’ portion of the evening. This event is presented by the Sidney & Gertrude Zack Gallery with Pandora’s Collective and the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library and made possible by the Yosef Wosk Poetry Initiative Grant. For more information, contact Reisa Schneider reisa@jccgv.bc.ca or 604 638 7277

Then we're off to the northeast -- into the Prophouse (1636 Venables at Commercial Drive) to take our belated spin as the features of this month's occurrence of the Vancouver DIstrict Labour Council cabaret. Rumour has it we'll be teaching attendees a folk song after our set there starts at 8 pm!

Don't feel that you have to slavishly adhere to your neighbourhood -- maybe the crosstown trip would be good for you! And maybe you'll enjoy one set by us so much, you'll wish you could have had twice as much! Well, on this one night, you can.

2011-10-20, 21, 22 ... we lost track of them!

Like the leaves falling from a tree, so are the opportunities to share music in that brief window between Labour Day in Vancouver and the onset of the cold, wet season. We didn't even have a chance to give you a heads-up about all of them... but here we can quickly note our rump (duo!) performances featuring at the Music on Main open mic at the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House Thurs, Oct 20th and at Trees Organic Coffee Fri, Oct 21st as well as a livelier Planks Trio performance the third night in a row, back at the Jericho Garrison Combined Mess Sat Oct 22nd for a private tasting of numerous craft beers.

But enough dwelling on that three-gig weekend -- we have another, very spooky, one coming up -- and if we tell you about it, you just might come out to some of the shows!

2009-10-15: Creaking Planks feature at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House open mic

Even with no Oven Mitts, we managed to not only survive but thrive at HPVIII (for this to make any sense, you might well have to have been there), playing a set after being sweetly set up by rising uke superstar Rian O'Hara, hobnobbing with Dennis from the Ging Gang and Anton from Chervona for the benefit of the Accordion Noir radio show.

But having settled all those extraordinary transportation and sleeping arrangements, we're back here in time and blasting the word out to you lucky folks that in a few scant hours (doors at 7:30), a rump Creaking Planks will be featuring again at Rick Keating's open mic at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House (3981 Main Street at 24th Ave.)  Stay posted for further details about our k-razy slate of Hallowe'en shows!

2008-06-20: Planks feature at the Beats on Broadway open mic

Earle Peach invited us to feature at his "Beats on Broadway" open mic at the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House (800 E. Broadway, a block or so east of Fraser), and we were thrilled to accept.  We joked that, following our feature set at Rick Keating's open mic at the Little Mountain Neighborhood House, we would be embarking on the lucrative local Neighborhood House tour circuit.  Oh, wait... that might not be so ridiculous after all.  Unfortunately, not all of these community service locuses enjoy the prestige of the venues offered at Mount Pleasant and Little Mountain, but we'll see how things develop.

Then, Earle invited us again.   We didn't know how to fit it in, but we accepted nonetheless -- after all, we already had an engagement there that night, but maybe we could sneak out and rush back to take the second gig.  That, or we could split in half and play two sets simultaneously -- or one set in stereo!  In any case, this will be among our final summer performances for some time, after an impressive run of serious performances to pumped crowds, so consider joining us at 7:30 pm before we tip the solstice over!  (more information on Facebook)

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!

2008-01-25: Creaking Planks third birthday at the Dark Blue Horse Cabaret and two promos for it

Sarah MacDougall presided over the "raw & cooked" series of new work at the Western Front that was the Creaking Planks' first public performance back on January 20th, 2005, so when accordionist Blackbox Squeezebeard (who first met Lee Shoal + Lord Eel that night while promoting the performance poetry cabaret "That's My Brain... And You're Killing It!") somehow got invited to host an alt-country concert she was running in that same space (with her band, the Heroes -- a truly heroic Shawn Killaly, Tim Tweedale, Russell Sholberg, Joanna Chapman-Smith, and "Sexy Pierre") and at that magical time of year, he immediately got on board and brought along as many Plankian stowaways as he could hide under his coat. Also on the bill is AC Fields (once stopped in her tracks dropping off flyers at a CP practice session in the LMS gallery and compelled to sing along) and her Dark Blue Horse (Pierre Lumoncel, Larissa Ardis, Elise Boeur, and Christine Allen), giving the fabulous multimedia (courtesy, presumably, of Aleah Dunfield) cabaret its name. Rounding things off are Roger Dean Young and the Tin Cup, who none of us have ever heard but who we all agree have a most intriguing name.

This show runs the night of Friday, January 25th from 8 pm through midnight at the Western Front (303 E. 8th Ave at Scotia), with Planks shaking things up before, after and between sets, but if you're not yet convinced ($15? But you get four bands!) you can get a sampling for what the evening has to offer Friday, January 18th at Trees Organic Coffee (450 Granville Street) from 8 pm on (possibly to be broadcast the morning of Monday, January 21st on CJSF 90.1) courtesy of John Pippus as well as by tuning back in to CJSF at 8 pm on Tuesday, January 22nd where the frontmen of the respective ensembles will be playing in a song circle on the Melodies in Mind show.

Originally posted Jan 17th, 2008 @ 17:42

How'd it turn out? Well, we made enough of a splash at Trees to be invited back for a longer set, likely April 11th... but you'll hear more about that closer to the date. Melodies in Mind was a fun regular hootnanny, with members of all three ensembles jamming together to croon out soulful renditions of... public service announcements. That's right. As for the main attraction... well, due to delays (ah, cabarets!) there wasn't quite as much Plank performance as we'd anticipated (apologies to anyone who came out hoping for a big, fat slice of us!) but between the three headliners a full, satisfying concert was nonetheless delivered. Happy third birthday us, and as bonus content here you get the joke I'm contractually obligated to open every Western Front engagement with -- Q: What do you get when you cross a mafioso with a performance artist? A: (ahem) Yuz gets sumwun whos makes yuz an offa ya can't unnastand!