2008-10-03: the Creaking Planks close the 1st annual Accordion Noir festival of Squeeze!

With all September's transitions, we've been a bit out of sorts recently, as a result of which some of our recent performances have slipped past without being commemorated here, including a three day spree -- this year's community circus at the Four Sisters Co-Op (Sat Sept 13th), the start of a new GoGo season at Hoko's with Francis Mantis and the Sun Aristocrats  (Sun Sept 14th), and a monthly cultural night at the Cedar Cottage Community Garden (Mon Sept 15th)... plus another great evening at Trees Fri Sept 5th at which some of our number sat in with Erin Graves! ( -- an impromptu backup stint that can be witnessed through Youtube videos.)

But that's not what this post is about!  Not catching up, but boldly bounding forward, like a hell-bent golden retriever hurtling lemming-like off a cliff in pursuit of a glowing tennis ball.  (But not quite as, y'know, ominous.)  Squeezebeard Blackbox's weekly side project Accordion Noir, the world's only all-accordion radio show / podcast, is putting on the first annual Accordion Noir Festival of Squeeze... mainstage performances from 9 pm on at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir at Seymour, upstairs) Friday, October 3rd! Admission should be in the vicinity of $10, a bit less for Railway Club members.  The Planks will be giddily closing the night sometime after midnight!  (And please, dismiss those nepotistic thoughts from your head -- we were hand-picked by festival headliner Geoff Berner, the man who first inspired Squeezebeard to pick up his blackbox, along with Amy Denio from Seattle and Natasha Enquist from Victoria, making this a Pacific Northwest summit of sorts.)

For your entertainment, education, edification, and for interior decorating purposes, here is its poster:

... and here is an audio promo for the festival!  For further synergy, the Planks will be sitting in on the episode to be broadcast Friday, September 26th, in order to promote the festival to local listeners with (as before) some live performance on the air.  We should be audible during the show's typical runtime, from 9:30-10:30 pm Friday night on CFRO 102.7 fm CO-OP Community Radio... or, for those of you who plan to be huddling in concrete bunkers deep underground, on their audio stream. (For those who enjoy deciphering cryptic filenames, it should also turn up for a couple of days after broadcast in their mp3 archives... and several weeks later on the AN site 8) (Edit: and here it is!  A short set, a small Plankian turn-out... but still a good time!)

...

Squeezebeard feels it would be remiss were we not to mention, as does the poster, that the Railway show is actually only the second day of the festival, which opens 7 pm the previous night Thursday Sept 2nd at Spartacus Books' new location (684 E. Hastings at Heatley and no, it doesn't just sound familiar -- I knew we'd find a way to play at that site again!  It's Gabe's old Gaff Gallery!) and will include not only hot live performances by real squeezeboxers (and not just him! as is so often the case at the monthly squeezebox circle regularly held at that place and time) but Bruce's pet project the accordion fashion show and a 9 pm screening of the Accordion Tribe movie. (5-minute teaser trailer!)


(For posterity's sake, though it's long since been forgotten in the post's narrative, here is the poster from our Trees show.  Since we always have such a nice time there, we should be back like clockwork in six months' time, March 6th 2009!)

2008-08-19: Planks at the Railway Club!

All aboard!  It's been a while since we played at this stately Vancouver venue (not since a strange set of Christmas tunes December 10th, 2006)... and it seems the recollection of our last visit has worn off, since we've been invited back by Jeff Younger to play a closing set (starting ~11:30 pm) following performances by Hilary Grist and a scaled-down version of his psychedelic country outfit the Family Stump.  Simply everyone who isn't at Radiohead will be there (local music historians note: Radiohead themselves played the Railway in 1995!)

(Poster ripped shamelesly from Rodney Matthews' 1985 poster "Heavy Metal Hero" beacuse, c'mon, if you're going to be part of a railway club, why not go for the gusto?)

Wyoming Johnny's Seattle pal KT took a photo of us and some YouTube footage!

2008-08-10: Planks play the Penthouse!

Much to everyone's surprise, the Planks were invited to one of our "blue sky" Vancouver venues hitherto unvisited.  No, not the Orpheum, no, not the Commodore, but one surely as storied and with as many legends: the Penthouse night club (1019 Seymour), once the nexus of Vancouver's sex trade... and now seeking to diversify its brand and meet the Vancouver need for more (and more diverse) live music performance venues!  The event, a nominal installment of the regular "Circle of Songwriters" series, is presented by the VanArtsCollective, and features a performance by Joseph Blood, the man who invited us, as well as renowned (war torn) wild man of the woods Rodney DeCroo.

Here is a nice little professional-looking handbill promoting the event:

... this one, less so. The show should start around 8 pm, with a cover of $6.  (If you want to stuff dollar bills down our shorts while we play, that's a different matter.)

Update: briefly caught on camera! Thanks, unkle!  A bootleg recording of our performance is also circulating.

Photo by Sarah Partridge.

2008-06-21: Planks play the grand re-opening of Spartacus Books!

Somehow we knew we'd end up back at the Gaff Gallery, and even though it's been some five months, the fates have us returning to 684 E. Hastings to perform at a new venue occupying its old site -- now Vancouver's premiere anarchist bookstore, Spartacus Books!  Squeezebeard having run so many installments of the 57 Varieties open stage and the Perpetual Motion Roadshow at the old Spartacus (to say nothing of Accordion Noir, and its subsequent monthly accordion circle, being merely a byproduct of a chance encounter on its floor), it was truly a no-brainer to get the Planks on board to perform at its grand re-opening.

Live performances are going on from 7-10 pm, including sets from The Holdouts, Joey Only, and DJ Like the Wolf; in addition, there will be the unveiling of a new hipster art exhibition by Miranda Nelson, "Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Robots" (where are the Zombies?), as well as spirited readings of radical children's books earlier in the day. To top it all off, they're celebrating their new location by holding a massive sale on all their used books!   At prices like this, it just doesn't make sense to prop up authoritarian systems!

Update: Erin Bee took photos!  Only two of us made it, but we gave everything we had!

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)

2008-06: Catchup

Not all of our functions have turned up here, sometimes due to certain last-minute qualities of their booking and promotion, other times because they were essentially private parties and we had no business inviting strangers into our friends' homes.  All the same, we had a blast nonetheless and would like to commemorate those gigs here among the rest of our performances.

* June 6th we were invited to perform at Tally's fundraiser, the "Pan-Van Variety Hour" at the Rio Theatre, hoping to generate proceeds to help send her to Tanzania to do work with Youth Challenge International! We were invited to play in the middle of the night, which amounted to Squeezebeard taking the stage solo at the conclusion of the proceedings, performing a set to the other performers (including Jill Binder and the Baby Jessicas) before they went home.  Somehow, Tally ended the night up $400 and we ended up with a bottle of red wine, so all's well that ends well.  A good debut at the Rio, and I can't wait to return!

* June 13th was back to the Foxy House for the second party in three days, this time a joint celebration of Jhayne and Venus' birthdays.  Shortly following a visit from Vancouver's finest boys in blue, Dr. Steelhand wrapped up another incredible display of magic and legerdemain and a gaggle of unruly Planks crammed into a window vestibule to make a room sweat and tremble.  We have foxy resident Chelsea Johnson to thank for getting the dance groove started, one so unshakeable it would not be stymied even by the end of the planned set.  Greetings also to the Slavic lads of Mezamazing who came by to say (bellow is more like it) hello following their surprise appearance on that night's episode of Accordion Noir!  (Here's a photo by Andrew Bankley demonstrating our cramped dance floor.  (And some more!) We demolished that living room!) (Only figuratively speaking, however.)

* June 15th we streamlined down some grand plans to take to the Car-Free Festival, meeting up at the great granddaddy of them all on Commercial Drive for some of us to play a set directly opposite a drum circle.  If ukuleles could cry, they would.  Instead, we shuffled over a block south of Kitchener and stopped traffic for a glorious quarter-hour or so. Later, some of us reconvened on Main Street to catch Wyoming Johnny sitting in with Whiskey Jar.

* The next day, June 16th, traditional Monday evening Planks practice was derailed by hopes to crash a poetry party at the site of the emerging Cedar Cottage Community Gardens beneath the SkyTrain tracks, at the old Austrian-Canadian Friendship Park between Broadway and Nanaimo Station.  (Fortunately for us, the plans are all that were derailed.)  One by one all the Planks conked out until Squeezebeard was once again left by his lonesome with enough baked goods to feed the band that wasn't there.  Fortunately, the poets and gardeners were quite receptive (one might even say... hungry) for what he had to offer up for their mouths and ears.  Perhaps someday the full ensemble will revisit the stage there and perform a work especially commissioned to work around the indeterminicies inherent in the noisy movements of the trains rumbling overhead.  (Hey, a guy can dream!)

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!