2011-09-25: Planks close Accordion Noir Festival with Duckmandu

We opened for him last year at the Cotati accordion festival and now we're going to do it again at the 4th annual Accordion Noir festival -- San Francisco's infamous Duckmandu, the man who married the unhip squeezebox to the entire back catalogue of the Dead Kennedys, is joining us for the fest's closing party Sun, Sept 25th at Cafe Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive). Show $10, starts at 8 pm!

Now, enjoy one of the strangest posters we've ever had:

Update: would you believe that Duckmandu got held back at the border by Canadian Customs? The whole festival pitched in side-acts playing a song or two to help fill the gap -- Barbara Adler, Katheryn Petersen, Geoff Berner. Sadly, the chaotic scene depicted in this unique poster would remain merely an artist's fevered vision, never realised.

2011-09-11: Planks back at the Fringe Bar!

For the last few years we keep finding ourselves playing at the Agro Cafe (1363 Railspur Alley) on Granville Island at this time of year -- playing Fringe Festival afterparties they have there every night at the Fringebar, as part of the Sounds of the Fringe series. This year we'll be playing there at 9:30 pm, NOT ONLY with our own Dr. T., again promoting his Vancouver Fringe magic show Things That Never Happen, but also we'll be followed by (or: we're opening for, if you prefer) last year's Shindig! winners The Oh Wells. Thanks to Wild Horse Canyon wine and St. Ambroise brewing for sponsoring the stage and venue -- now we just need you to come on out and enjoy the party they're throwing for your benefit! The Globe and Mail marked us as a Hot Ticket!

Update! Another glowing endorsement by DiSCORDER! It was our month to shine in their pages, to be sure.

2011-09-05: Kozmic Zoo w/ Eugene Chadbourne

It's true: much like our legendary Nina Hagen show that never quite was, the Planks sometimes move through circles that enable us to eat above our weight class. Elizabeth Fischer of Dark Blue World is now booking at Kozmic Zoo (53 W. Broadway, formerly the Hennessey Lounge) and has sagely folded us into a bill with legendary noisy improvisor Eugene Chadbourne, with Darren Williams and Kenton Loewe in tow.

This is a bit of a dry run for the following night, where plenty of Planks are performing -- but not in any Creaking configuration -- at Nyala (4148 Main St.) for the Accordion Noir Festival precursor show ACCORDION HALLUCINATIONS on Sept 6th. Lee Shoal will be handling and mangling the squeezebox in Ejaculation Death Rattle, Rumblebucket will be exploring the darker side of bent and tweaked reeds as Polly Hatchet, and Airbeard should be backing up Mr. Chadbourne -- desperately trying to keep out of the way most likely. Also on that bill is a set from the Cross-Disciplinary Studies Department (Dream Casino) and the Antique Accordion Orchestra (BYO!)

Bonus! A fragmentary clip of us in action at the Kozmik Zoo!

2011-09-03: Franklinfest 4

When's the last time you had the Creaking Planks playing in your backyard to celebrate Labour Day? (You, in the back: sit down.) Well, you should have thought of it sooner -- we're taken this year, off to Salisbury & Franklin this long weekend to share some great tunes in a sunny yard with some other great bands: the Belushis, the Hunnies, and our friends the Gentle Infidels. We can't disclose Nathan's address to the public, but if you're in the vicinity of the funeral home around 6 pm you may hear us tuning up. Let your ears be your guide and maybe we'll wake the dead!

N.B. -- Voodoo Ben Franklin is (c) Rob Schrab from Scud the Disposable Assassin.

Update! This party was a total gong show (minus the gong -- though we do have a gong show story about a gong, you should ask us about it sometime) but it still garnered a glowing review in DiSCORDER Magazine including our first mention there in our six years of existence!

2011-08-13: Creaking Planks at the Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival

We weren't able to make good on our invitation to attend this festival last year due to conflicting plans in California (say what!? Stay posted for that year-late update!), but prior incarnations of the Creaking Planks had attended two earlier installments of Pandora's Collective's Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival (was this really the 8th annual?), and Airbeard's "57 Varieties" open stage series fielded performers to several others. The host organization does good work with a number of reading series, workshops, and even scholarships for high-schoolers, so needless to say, we jumped on an opportunity to participate this time around. They even featured a shot of us on their bus shelter advertisements! Can't see it? Look a little closer...

The still is from Graham Ballantyne's great work photographing us at the Prophouse back in May. This rendition wasn't blown up quite as big as our surprise pictorial at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but it's still a bold stamping of us out there in the world when we're being so relatively quiet here on the web.

(It's also one of a growing collection of photos of Airbeard pausing mid-chomp before he bites off more than he can chew. Can't he sing with his mouth closed? Well, I suppose that wouldn't be entirely unreasonable... still, the awkwardness of this increasingly frequent photo-op moment demands a gallery in the works sometime.)

Our Summer Dreams set lived up to the recent media hype: we were a folk duo, somewhat bewildered by the unanticipated shift of scale and schedule (and distracted by Lumberman's Arch and the natural splendor surrounding us all) but with a tight set of beautiful music nonetheless. Finally, an audience that really appreciates Margaret Atwood's Frankenstein song!

Here's to more of us entertaining more of you at future years' installments of Summer Dreams! (And, for that matter, more upcoming shows at the Prophouse! We had to back out of a stellar squeezebox bill there this coming Thursday night, Aug 18th, with our friends from the Gram Partisans along with Winnipeg's Ingrid Gatin, but you can still enjoy it in our absence!)

2011-07-30: Creaking Planks back at ArtsWells!

At the time the performance was a bit of a headache -- a beautiful historical chapel in a refurbished ghost town, but one mysteriously without electricity to even out our disparate sound levels. (Little did we realise, the entire district was temporarily without power. Worst of all, the ice cream in the coolers was starting to melt and being given away for free!) But we've gotten a lot of mileage out of that set, first on the inside cover of last year's festival program, and now again, thrusting us front and centre on Page A8 of the July 22, 2011 edition of the Vancouver Sun:

Did You Know: The Creaking Planks are a duo? It's going to be very awkward breaking the news to the other dozen or so of us... I suppose this is why it is so vital we publish our book, that at least one other print source compete with this bold claim from our newspaper of record. That said, it's nice to be considered the epitome of what a Vancouver-based folk ensemble looks like. (And it will be nice to Mike Fawcett to get credit for that photograph as well.)

We'll be playing at the ArtsWells festival this year at 8:30 pm at the Downstairs Hall on Saturday, July 30th. Unlike last year, we're not playing any other shows up there, but the festival is of course very worthwhile with sets from our friends in Blackberry Wood, Fish & Bird, the Joey Only matrimonial band, Raghu Lokanathan and Jeremy Stewart, Nice Verdes, Namgar, Mind of a Snail, High Society, Linda McRae, T. Nile, Jeff Andrew, John Pippus, and of course Geoff Berner.

Blackbox Squeezebeard (or, after last year's fundraising depilation, "Airbeard") will be hosting the Accordions in the Round session noon to 1 on the 31st also at the Downstairs Hall, and the Rev. Lucian Rumblebucket will be teaching a washtub bass workshop at 2 pm in the school.

But first, we're playing for a private wedding party July 23rd!

...

2011-06: We got caught by surprise

One of the classic benchmarks of the Creaking Planks is that we know we'll have an awesome time if we're not the strangest thing on the bill. (Don't get me wrong, we also have a great time when we are the strangest act, which we overwhelmingly are, but anything stranger than us really demands sitting up and paying attention to.) This past weekend we had the pleasure of enjoying two such shows on two consecutive days!

Saturday, June 25th, the Creaking Planks had their second performance in their stripped-down Royal Doilies format, playing without Airbeard, who was away hosting at the Campbell Bay Music Festival. This saw an unruly handful of Planks assemble at W2 to celebrate the book launch of The Amaranthian Testament, illustrated by the namer of the Planks, one Olo J. Milkman. Joining us on the bill were numerous experimental noise and video performance acts we hadn't crossed paths with since our very early days, as well as Vancouver weirdo music elder statesman Veda Hille. Sometime well after the show was done, the sound checks finished.

(Video by Joel Snowden)

Sunday, June 26th was Vancouver's first installment of the Mini Maker Faire phenomenon, a little slice of nerdy projects and Burning Man installations getting their test-run before the annual Playa marathon. Between such monumental pieces as the gramophone rail car, the world's largest tricycle and the shipping container gallery could be found tables full of hackers programming LEDs and lasers for good rather than evil. In the far corner outside was a musical stage featuring numerous peculiar and atmospheric acts, and toward the end of the program the Creaking Planks took the stage to show the Makers what we'd made out of some of their favorite songs. Highlights included having the fireball-spitting truck next to us spouting geysers of flame while we performed Peter Schilling's Major Tom, some operator punching instructions in to its Fisher-Price keyboard console in time to the beat. (Boy, playing next to that thing sure got hot, though!)

No photos yet, though it would have made for a killer music video.