2011-11: Catchup

Well, on Sunday, November 6th -- the day after our fantastic visit from the Accordion Babes -- we had a rump Planks delegation visit the Roseblade house to help celebrate a bonafide 1st birthday party for a 40-year-old, busting out songs from the Planks' feature set at the Cobalt's "Ink" open mic five years ago or so.

Then, yesterday, Thurs Nov 24th, we were supposed to join David Roy Parsons (of "Beat Up Old Guitar" fame) for a set in Victoria at the Fort Cafe... but the hoary winter winds of a fierce seasonal storm put the kibosh on that ferry crossing after a very spirited afternoon spent sitting inside a wind-buffetted car. Well, what's something that CAN go right?

Here's something difficult to ruin (worse than it already is, at least) -- a visual gag a long time in the conceptualising:

Editing some outrageous Creaking Planks live audio in Audacity...

okay, let's clean this up a little bit...

and... voila. Wait -- what?!

Thank heavens for the "undo" function, that's all I can say. ("Accordion Insanity" photo by Jonathan Dy, and that "normal" band is Clyde Stacy and the Nightcaps. They probably sound all right!)

Update: more normal than normal, and more abnormal than, well, than pretty much anything!

PS: Creaking Planks 7th anniversary show coming up Wednesday, January 18th at the Railway Club with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan!

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!)

2011-10-10: HPX

One further omission: typically the Creaking Planks send a serious (well, as serious as we get) posse to Portland over Canadian Thanksgiving / American Columbus Day for the annual Horace Phair house party, to fill its basement with a raucous ruckus. This year, despite much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, all we could manage to field was our fiddler, Wyoming Johnny. Still, he came equipped with his axe and a copy of favorite Planks singalongs, so "we" could still represent on some level.

creakingplanks Rumour (and, well, @mwkelley) has it "7 drunks + 1 banjo + 1 trombone" could not replace us. But were they too drunk, or not enough?

mwkelley @UnwashedMass It occurs to me that our caterwauling of the Planks songbook last night may've amounted to actual character defamation.

Anyhow, naught to commemorate our absence with, but we can re-share our Planks live bootleg mix for @horacephair '08

At least he cut a sharp figure! The camera never lies: that set was one for the ages.

2011-10-30: A little supper music

The Organizing Centre for Social and Economic Justice (a mouthful, but you try saying "OCSEJ" -- actually, usually we call it just "the O.C.") is an eminently worthwhile local umbrella organization perhaps better known for its projects such as Food Security FACTS, Bitter Melons, People's Health Radio and the Vancouver chapter of the Bus Riders' Union. They aren't all for-profit ventures, and neither are we all of the time, so we're lending our strange musical taste to help fortify a fundraiser dinner they're throwing at the Heritage Hall Sunday, October 30th. We'll be sharing the stage with the female chorus The Larks, and everyone will be enjoying a North African dinner. Doors at 6, dinner at 7, music at 8:30. Individual tickets are $20 and costumes are encouraged! Further details over here on their site.

2011-10-29: Carnival of Shadows II w/ Jeff Andrew and Tarran the Tailor

Because Hallowe'en comes but once a year (but Hallowe'en weekend is three nights long) it's the profound pleasure of the jug band of the damned to present our spooky show for a second night in a row, next up Saturday, October 29th at Cafe Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive) from 8-11 pm with our ominous pals Tarran the Tailor and Jeff Andrew, who we did this same gig with this time last year. (This time, though, he'll actually get to play!) $10 for the funnest unofficial Parade of Lost Souls afterparty ever!

(Turn up early and you get to ring in Daisy Jones-Locher's birthday from 6:30 on!)

Bonus! It was a heck of a show, and here's a gallery of photos from it! Thanks to Graham Ballantyne for snapping the shutter again...

2011-10-28: Creaking Planks at Velowe'en

Another fantastic free Hallowe'en show for Critical Mass patrons ($10 for everyone else, still a steal at that price!) the Revelry Society reunites the Creaking Planks with the Balkan hurricane Mezamazing at the Grandview Legion (2205 Commercial Drive) from 9 pm 'til late for the 3rd annual Witches and Warlocks Masquerade Ball! Let's see if we can sell out the house's supply of drinks in the first 45 minutes again! The line-up also includes a set by the Funk Hunters and a DJ set from Nils Von Hahn of Beats Without Borders.

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!