R.I.P. Cafe Deux Soleils (1994-2022)

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!

We can't find any imagery going back this far -- Facebook was yet to open its doors to people with non .edu e-mail addresses -- but our first appearance there in our own first couple of years was the inaugural installment of "RC Weslowski's Christmas Special" Dec 12th, 2006, featuring "Ivan Hrvatska, Santa and the Baby Jesus fighting to see who owns Christmas, Al Mader, Vitamin F, and much more. It'll be a fund raiser for the Union Gospel Mission's Christmas meals for the homeless program and a partial fund raiser for IWPS. So, whether you are pro or con or atheist or jew or muslim or scientologist, come on out an[d] have some fun."  Here's a clip from the one two years later, which was... let's be fair... more of the same:

 

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.

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.  

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! 

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.

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Speaking of Trike, here's a fitting exchange bottled from the venue's memorializing on Facebook:

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.
 

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.)

2020-10-31: What Comes After? Songs from Afterland

Half a decade ago, we made (some 90 seconds or so of) music for Afterland, a collectible card game for smartphones, which launched in October of 2015. Its support from its developers was scattered, and as often happens in this rapidly changing world of tech, it soon disappeared from the marketplace, leaving a wide community of thwarted fans disappointed that they could never again enjoy the game's wonderful sights and sounds.

Well, we can't do much about the sights, but since we never signed a contract with Imaginary Games, the music has remained ours all along - and the time has finally arrived, five years since the game first took flight, for us to fulfil the numerous requests we've received from Afterland's devotees to liberate its soundtrack. Go get your fill at https://creakingplanks.bandcamp.com/

(This Afterland-adjacent artwork of a squeezebox carnie was made by the creative dynamo at the heart of Afterland, Elin Jonsson, for the 2016 installment of the Accordion Noir Festival.) (Speaking of which, you ought to be made aware of that festival's virtual 2020 installment, taking place next weekend!)

2020-01-18: Creaking and Planking at the Stupid Accordion Tricks anarchy celebration

I know, I know -- it's the time of year to throw a Creaking Planks anniversary concert. And yet... as Blackbox Squeezebeard discovered at his 40th birthday party last year, the only sure way to ensure a worthwhile Creaking Planks turnout these days is to book a solo gig. So, as to best assure the involvement of many Creaking Planks -- he has invited nearly two dozen of them -- he has booked another solo gig.

This one celebrates the fulfillment of his 2019 New Year resolution to record and share an accordion cover song video every week, a throwback to the last huzzah of the most recent regular incarnation of the Creaking Planks as a band that skipped the late nights at bars and just played songs in their living room for the benefit of the internet. He dubbed the series "Stupid Accordion Tricks", and by gum, he played all the songs -- some of them old Planks standards, others Planks discards, others Planks "don't you dare suggest it!"s. So this Saturday, he descends upon Spartacus Books -- final home to his 57 Varieties open stage series, last-one-standing accessible venue for strangeness on an intimate scale, and, as always, a place where things can happen that simply cannot happen anywhere else... to make something happen that cannot happen anywhere else.

And while he's not making any specific promises, the idea is that there'll be a crew of musical friends on site -- some Planks, some mere 2x4s -- who will take turns joining him for a song or two. (Inadvertently, he's kind of reinvented the "jam" from first principles. Oh well! It should be fun!)

Saturday, January 18th
EARLY SHOW: 4-7 pm
at SPARTACUS BOOKS (3378 Findlay Street)
admission by donation, no one turned away due to lack of funds

2019-10-25: Good Bones at the Pace with Something About Reptiles

We first met D hosting the Creative Coworkers launch party for the eerie mobile game Afterland we wrote and performed music for, which left us casting the gauntlet to its primary artist Elin Jonsson, to have an art exhibition and engage us to perform at it... which we did, back in the same space, at last year's "Echoes and Ripples" kick-off to the 11th annual Accordion Noir Festival. (About which, look out, this year's is coming up in November! But I digress...)

Anyhow, the Creative Coworkers org has moved down the street to a new facility, the Pace (520 Alexander Street), and D invited us back to join a bill hosted by Bailey Creed including a reincarnation / memorial craft project facilitated by Emily Smith and culminating in a rousing set by Turkish tradpunks Something About Reptiles, who we haven't shared a bill with since Valentine's Day 2007, yow! Details on Facebook, tickets $15/20/25, and the party runs from 5:30 pm to half past midnight. If that's not enough seasonal festivity for you I just don't know what to say.

2019-09-11: Pirates Never Played the Accordion

Just when you thought you'd seen your final Creaking Planks video...
Circa 2009, "Accordion" Bruce Triggs was finally getting into the thick of his research, and understanding that the form it would ultimately need to take would be in the book medium. Hosting the Accordion Noir radio program every week had opened the door, but poking his head in he could tell that what lay within was both vast and almost entirely unexplored. If he didn't write this book, no one else would. But first, he had to exorcise some stories he came across, accounts of anecdotes and incidents that were both highly memorable and not entirely bookworthy. And he would exorcise them in song form. There was the Curse of the Andrea Doria, the ship that sank with a hold full of accordions; there was the song about the windjammer musician at the Mississippi crossroads, burning his instrument because it would not accommodate the scales required to perform blues music. (... and also there was "Never Play Your Accordion Naked".)
They were inspired fragments in search of a band! If only Bruce was acquainted with a crack band in search of some original tunes! Waitasec...
Anyhow, ten years later, two full incarnations of the band had risen and fallen, and Bruce had completed his book, "Accordion Revolution". The situation called for a book launch, which called for a small side show of supporting activities. A little musical entertainment! Does anyone have any songs about accordion history? Hang on... I just remembered something!

Here's the page of his book pertaining to this false history. While there was a natural connection between sailors and accordions, it is a simple matter of chronology that could not, despite influential early film adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, have put the instruments in pirates' hands -- unless, as Bruce put it, they were time-traveling pirates. (Time Bandits?) Most likely pirates would have played tunes on fiddles, he reckons, and so we caught Wyoming Johnny during a chance visit into town to lay down the law (of the sea!) on his instrument. (And of course there is the caveat that today Somali piracy has resumed around the Horn of Africa, and there is a Somali accordion tradition, so while it's not impossible that there is such a thing as legitimate pirate accordion music, it is guaranteed that it sounds nothing remotely like anything you might expect.) Our sole constant Blackbox Squeezebeard is taking it all in stride. The first original arrangement in the Creaking Planks songbook was around the lyrics to Derelict, aka the "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" song. He was recruited into the Planks initially explicitly to facilitate their deliberately heading in a more piratical direction. Have all these years amounted to living a lie? (If so, it was a fun lie!)

As an accordionist in a pirate metal band, this is my new favourite song. https://t.co/10tiH9irWm

— Owen Evans (@owen_seawolf) September 11, 2019

Anyhow, after exhuming this incomplete song and polishing it off (this is great, it writes itself! Why didn't we play this years ago? Oh wait, the next verse has a different rhyme scheme and a totally changed meter! Wait, I think I remember now!), we debuted it at Bruce's book launch, and fittingly opened our Wooden Boat Festival sets with it. Where will we be dropping this science next? It's really anyone's guess. Many thanks to Lee Shoal for baking so many tasty little jokes into the lyrics video!

2019-08-24/25: getting salty at the Vancouver Wooden Boat Festival on Granville Island

Our band was established, as our name suggests, under the premise that we would be performing shanties to nautical audiences. Then we left it all behind (except for the name, strangely somehow we kept that bit) and skyrocketed to strange heights before splashing down in pieces. Now here we sit, a broken man on a Halifax pier, once again performing songs of the sea to salty crowds.

That's right, folks, the Vancouver Wooden Boat Festival at Granville Island is having us back for the third year in a row; we're playing two of its three days in such company as the Squeezebox Circle Orchestra, the Carnival Band and Salt Thief (and also many wooden boats), and you can find us -- in a radically revised yet somehow totally classic configuration of a totally different band -- headlining this Saturday from 4:15-5 pm and also performing from 12:15-1 pm Sunday the 25th with an oddly familiar set. You can find full details about the free performances out behind the Granville Island Public Market over here, and also further information about how the long-running festival is being run this year. Don't forget your eye patch!

2019-06-28: Creaking Planks at "Accordion Revolution" book launch

Due to a great conceptual fit, as well as nepotism at the highest levels, the Creaking Planks have been keen fellow travelers with the Accordion Noir crew from just about the very beginning. We have guested on their radio program, playing up its angle to promote and expose the unexpected side of the instrument. (Indeed, we have performed its theme song!) We have played at their festival until they told us we couldn't play there any longer... and then we continued to do so! The radio program's host Bruce Triggs even sat in with us (on, if memory serves correct, Barbadian rhythmic saw) at our weird May Day gig (but I'm being redundant, all our gigs are weird by virtue of including us!) in Grandview Park four years ago.

So it makes a certain kind of sense for us to be performing a couple of songs at the launch for his long-fermenting accordion history book, Accordion Revolution, dropping this Friday night at Accordion Noir ground zero -- the lobby of CFRO Co-Op Community Radio itself, located at Columbia and Hastings. (Sometimes it seemed as though it wasn't clear which of us would publish a book first, Bruce's accordion history or our chronicles of our wasted summers on the road, but it looks like Bruce came out ahead! Guess this means we're next -- maybe we can book him to perform at our launch 8) The launch runs from 7 to 9 pm, the second half of which will be broadcast live over the airwaves! And for those who can't make it out in person, tune in at 100.5 fm (or stream from coopradio.org): the event will be bookended with some Celtic squeezing on the air prior to the launch and some experimental electronic accordion (courtesy of Ross Birdwise) immediately following our broadcast.

Admission is free but seating is limited, so don't delay and reserve your spot on Eventbrite today!