2011-03-02: Planks appear on Paul Anthony's Talent Time!

Impressed by our turn at the LMG benefit a couple of months ago, Paul Anthony has invited us to play a couple songs at tonight's live taping of his variety show Talent Time. Tonight's show is themed as an anti-SAD beach party, and though the last time we played an event with that theme we were gonged off the Lamplighter stage, tonight we're planning a much sunnier set -- bingo bango, in and out before we have a chance to get philosophical.

Visit his website for details about the recording's airtime!

2011-03-03: Planks open for Oh My Darling

Please pardon the small bout of time travel -- this gig pre-dates (by one day) the most recent one we've posted, and there should be another, still earlier one yet coming! A busy week ahead for our intrepid Planks!

In the best Christmas present ever, Blackbox Squeezebeard awoke to a phone call for... "Blackbox Squeezebeard?", an extraordinary wake-up call informed by the contact info on our press kit page. We have friends in Winnipeg, a good place to have friends, but it wasn't them who put in a good word for us to our NEW friends in Winnipeg's country-folk bluegrassy quartet Oh My Darling. (The bird in their ear was someone at the Biltmore -- also a good place to have friends -- but ah, I digress!)

To make a long story short(er), Thurs March 3rd we'll continue our spree of appearing at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) at more-or-less monthly-by-chance intervals opening for these wonderful winter birds, touring in promotion of their album "Love Shack" -- a good place to keep warm and cozy when the drifts get too high on those long, cold prairie winters. Show at 9, $10 at the door! (and save a couple of coins for some of the new Creaking Planks buttons, this season's outrageous new fashion accessory!

(Now also with Lindsay May!)

The Creaking Planks are open for business!

Please note: accordion and banjo ukulele not for sale.

Hot off the Creaking Assembly Line (tm), one more small batch of approximately 60 copies of that critically lauded album Flogged Round the Fleet, still with its swank original Peter Guindon-designed packaging for the last time -- the etched tin case with so many uses (storing a slice of American processed cheese, ten cigarillos, or another band's CD...) AND a free Planks sticker, to help share your love of our band with whatever bathroom stalls you may happen to encounter in your journeys.

But that's not all! Just slightly over a year following Daisy Jones-Locher's excellent lead in this department, the Creaking Planks have an exciting array of pin-backed one-and-a-quarter-inch buttons available for sale at shows (or, hey, talk to us about orders at thecreakingplanks at gmail dot com). I don't know what the well-dressed hipster is wearing this season, but these are the right cut and style to fit neatly on a hat, instrument case, or courier bag strap!

And if you have any better ideas for button designs, we're listening! Submit your own images and you could help dress and accessorize an entire cohort of stylish Creaking Planks fans!

Maybe you're in a band or part of an organization that would also like to be represented in button form? We invested in the equipment (some elements among the Planks have a traditional affinity for buttons and button presses, the start of so many good things -- like the Work Less party!) so we might well be able to help you button up. (Magnets also!) If not, we can at least tell you where to stick it.

2011-03-04: Creaking Planks with Jeff Andrew and Portland's Underscore Orkestra

We missed out on a chance to play with them last August en route to our legendary trip down to California, but the fates have intervened and seen fit to give us another opportunity to share a stage with Portland's Underscore Orkestra, thanks to Jeff Andrew, last seen giving up his own performance spot to allow us to play his double-booked Hallowe'en show at Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive!

Of course, there will be no double-booking there this time. The Underscores straddle all sorts of lively genres from gypsy jazz and swing to Balkan and klezmer music -- with a shot of heady bellydancing thrown in -- and even gruff-voiced Jeff will be having a squeezebox backing him up, qualifying this show to be presented by Accordion Noir, Vancouver's (and, yea, the world's) pre-eminent all-accordion-music weekly broadcast.

Us Planks are still sharpening our alternate set of heady tunes we haven't been coasting on five years of perfection with, so if you missed our anniversary show, we should still have some fresh musical tricks in store for you... and of course, more is yet to come.

Admission is $10!

Creaking Planks flashback, larger than life!

We've played at more than our fair share of art openings but never before have we been the art on the walls! Piratical Planks Lee Shoal, Wyoming Johnny, Orange-Eye Sabre-tooth Skipper and Phaulonious J Knucklebones burst off the wall seven feet tall at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a panel in their "WE: Vancouver - Change is coming" exhibition concerning itself with the Vancouver Public Space Network. Our performance at their "Pirates of the SeaBus" flashmob (remember?) is just taken as the most iconic moment of the occasion. It was fun... and years down the line, it turns into still more fun that we get to share with still more people!

Still, a shame we weren't invited to perform at THIS art opening!

2011-01-26: Creaking Planks radio takeover on CaBaRadio and Accordion Noir!

In promotion of our fabulous 6-year-anniversary show next Monday night, we've hit the airwaves! Last night we joined Teddy Smooth and E-Roc at CaBaRadio again over at CiTR in the UBC student union building, where we played tunes and made strange innuendo late into the night. Always good times. We hadn't confirmed the engagement with enough advance warning to let potential listeners know, but ... in all honesty, how many of you would be tuned in to campus radio after midnight? (More than I expect, hopefully!)

We lifted a page from our friend Ryan Fletcher at CJSF's Melodies in Mind and as guest troubadors took it upon ourselves to musically interpret some public service announcements the show wanted its listeners to know about, including a very special rendition of a song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, screening this weekend... well, you'll get all the info in the recording. Also excitingly present, though you have to wait through the whole recording -- a world exclusive sneak peek of some recent studio work we've been doing on Phaulonious J Knucklebones' original songs, thanks to new friends made at the Orange Party! Admittedly this recording isn't done yet, but it's more than half-baked ... and it's been a very long time since we were committed to any permanent media in any form. A better representation of us, to be sure!

We managed to mine the Plankian portions of the show from its podcast and serve it up to you here; in the meantime, it's not too late to catch the black wave of our promotional hype, as we'll be on the air tonight down in the downtown eastside studios of CFRO Co-Op Radio at Accordion Noir, whose audience we haven't joined since an Accordion Noir Festival promo appearance back in 2008. Excitingly, we're hoping to take on the challenge to do our own version of their lovely theme song -- and would encourage you to do the same!

In the meantime, here's a log for our truncated CaBaRadio recording:

• Creaking Planks - Dead Man's Pants (Al Mader) 3:39-5:54 (2m15)


• Creaking Planks Duo - announcements medley - LIVE! 6:56-10:37 (3m41)


• Creaking Planks Duo - The Girl In The Pink Canoe (Big Rude Jake) - LIVE! 16:14-19.25 (3m11)


• Creaking Planks Duo - Womanizer / Toxic medley (Britney Spears) - LIVE! 22.28-28.28 (6m00)


• Creaking Planks - Kishka Anthem (debut!) 32.06-34.57 (2m49)

We've also managed to skip the queue usually involved while waiting for the Accordion Noir folks to post their episodes online as a podcast. It's here, 12 hours later, and though we don't have a full track listing (edit: the AN folks do, up at their website, with creative song titling), here's all the places you can hear four mighty Planks playing their hearts out:

• Creaking Planks Quartet - Accordion Noir theme (Andy Fielding) - LIVE! 0:00-2:32 (2m32)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Insane in the Membrane (Cypress Hill) - LIVE! 11:07-14:30 (3m23)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Flatbush Waltz (Andy Statman) - LIVE! 15:03-17:14 (2m13)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Tanz Tanz Yidelehk - LIVE! 23:47-27:33 (3m46)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Sometimes All Of The People Aren't Here All Of The Time - LIVE! 29:39-32:49 (3m10)


• Creaking Planks - Kishka Anthem (studio mix) 33:04-35:53 (2m49)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Vanha Jatsi Station ID - LIVE! 42:52-43:38 (0m46)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - Psycho Killer (Talking Heads) - LIVE! 44:00-47:41 (3m41)


• Creaking Planks Quartet - the Song of the Count / Bones Bones Bones (Sesame Street) - LIVE! 50:20-56:58 (6m38)

Also eminently worth mentioning -- us welching on our word! We were going to take all January off to develop new material for our anniversary show, but we did join the cool cats at Bandidas again for their own anniversary back on Jan 6th. We didn't promote it since it was their own private party of sorts, but we played the heck out of lots of great songs there. Many happy returns and hope to see you again there next January, Bandidas!

2011-01-31: Creaking Planks 6th anniversary

Sunday January 30th, 2005, in the auditorium at the Western Front, a room which has seen so many deliberately stranger things, an accordionist with a performance poetry troupe met an outsider acoustic noise duo with slightly more underground musical sensibilities than the Shaggs had, and knew that their two great tastes must go great together. Enter: the Creaking Planks. Six years later, we skip lightly past the endless living rooms, back yards, and festivals, Vancouver's introduction to the ZombieWalk, a pirate flashmob, two stage musicals, gigs down the US Pacific seaboard (studded with the abandoned hulks of derelict tour vehicles), and memorable mixed bills -- following '50s squeezebox sex symbol Dick Contino at the 20th annual Cotati Accordion Festival, and opening in turn for free software guru Richard Stallman... our two biggest gigs!

Now we actually know how to play our instruments, and our musical sensibilities have matured from "Can we play this?" to "Should we play this?" In honour of our six years we're putting to bed many of the songs we've kept close this whole time, and celebrating onetime contributors whose paths led them through the rotating roster of Planks before settling for other, less strange projects. We may not match our record of 11 Planks on-stage simultaneously, but we should be able to at least cumulatively meet that high-water mark over the course of the night. Joining us will be musical guiding lights Petunia the yodeling cowboy and Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band, whose "I'm a Lousy Lay" were the magic words that got us together in the first place.

It's also a retirement for Dieter Friesen's tenure booking his Deet Street nights at the Railway Club, a long association between him and us dating back to our first appearance there in April '06 sharing a bill with his band Rick Danko's Ghost under the auspices of Tamara Nile. In short, we have numerous reasons to be celebrating this night, of things changing more the more they stay the same.

Update! Allan reviewed it, in a roundabout fashion, and an American friend came up from Bellingham to enjoy some great music and take a bunch of pictures capturing the night's wild and woolly energy!