2018-09-12: Eat Your Vegetables with the Creaking Planks

OK, if we're going to be coming out of involuntary retirement for a gig at this year's Accordion Noir Festival, why not make it two gigs? In keeping with our final (?) big bash as a full band one year ago, this will also be an appearance at a farmer's market -- the Main Street Station Farmer's Market at 1100 Station Street. We'll be workshopping some new covers, playing there rain or shine, to let everyone know that an accordion wind's a-blowin', and to reinforce that point, weather allowing, half of our 4-6 pm set (Wednesday, Sept 12th) will be turned over to the Squeezebox Circle Orchestra. You've seen the devastation one accordion can unleash -- just try to imagine what a dozen of them are capable of, acting in harmony!

2018-09-13: "Echoes and Ripples" art opening at Creative Coworkers

Because being regular institutions interfered with the festival's (successful, as it turns out) attempts to apply for grants (as it telegraphs a certain nepotistic pipeline from taxpayers into the same private pockets year after year: the idea is that the government doesn't support festivals established solely to further their founders' personal enrichment), we were given an official send-off from the Accordion Noir Festival back in 2014. Nonetheless, our principals are so thoroughly intertwined with its affairs that it's proven impossible to extricate ourselves completely from their dealings even if we genuinely wanted to, and over the past four years we've kept finding ourselves returning in little off-brand festival support roles - leading an accordion parade, promoting the fest at farmer's markets and performing at the pre-fest launch party. And so forth.

Switching tacks for a moment -- ever since we finished our Imaginary Games business with Afterland back in 2015, we've been inviting its lead artist, Elin Jonsson, to mount an art exhibition of her work (long since overdue!) and have us back to perform at its opening. Our two flavours worked excellently together once, obviously they would be a great fit again (and again!) She's been wrapped up since then with professional transitions and a regular gig we matchmade, pairing her with the Accordion Noir Festival where she has produced three amazing on-brand posters three years in a row. Every year we ask her about her inevitable art show, and every year she agrees that it should happen ... eventually, sometime down the line. This year, we cracked the nut: yes, let's do the art show as part of the Accordion Noir Festival this year!

Finally, a legitimate pathway back into the Accordion Noir Festival! Now that it's backslid out of the complicated ties of grant support, there's nothing to stop us from dominating the fest forever, like the evil shadows of Geoff Berner! There's only one problem: while waiting to be let back in, the band had withered on the vine and died in the meantime!

(Here's a narrative high point, let's frustratingly interrupt it for a protracted parenthetical aside!) (I know, this rigorous historical approach (insider baseball is the only kind of baseball we have!) to telling the story of how this event came to happen -- "back when the Earth was young..." -- is as exhausting as it is exhaustive. But we like to believe that it is instructional for musicians to get a better idea of the long tail answer to Where Gigs Come From, and we like to believe that it is genuinely interesting to understand when gigs happen for a reason instead of simply emerging spontaneously and organically, if there is a story behind it.) (I know, everything that elapses happens in some sort of context -- all context is a story, and not all stories are interesting. But look at it this way -- if I get to vent it in the promotional blurb, it greatly lessens the chances that I'll stink up the performance sharing the blow-by-blow account as stage banter mid-set!)

OK, so the band's not completely dead ("I'm getting better!") -- we still Tweet a couple of times per month, and optimists still look us up periodically to offer us paying gigs which, in supreme frustration, we have to keep demurring after conferring with the membership and establishing that no, we can't make quorum. (13 years is a long time to build up a band to be in the position of declining paying gigs! However, if you say "no" enough times, they will eventually stop knocking at your door.) But what ails us is more than mere hibernation -- more a species of torpor. What we have before us is a pre-festival gig, eerily resonant with the last time we managed to successfully get together to play a complete set as a band -- at a pre-festival gig slightly over a year ago. If your band goes more than a year between successfully pulling off gigs, you can definitively consider it to be In Poor Health.

But we'd been pushing Elin to put on this show for years, and here at the threshold of its realization, it would be a betrayal of the dream to back out -- just because of a little thing like dying. Pish tosh! So "we" signed on for what might reasonably be expected to be the last time the Creaking Planks brand appears on a poster -- the only guarantee is an accordion rather than a band, but at an accordion festival at least that's the one context where that bait-and-switch wouldn't be a bit of a letdown. It's looking like we're going to be back to basics with our founding ukulele as well, and it may well be as though the past 12 years were nought but a species of very weird fever dream.

So here are the details:

On the eve of the 11th annual Accordion Noir Festival, “Echoes and Ripples” is a celebration of visual art concerned with and inspired by live music, ranging from concert and festival poster designs to more profound meditations on the internal experience of performing or listening to music. In addition to paintings by multi-Accordion-Noir-Festival poster artist Elin Jonsson, this show will be featuring visual artwork by Mister Fire-Man, Jenny Ritter, Pinguino Kolb and Darren Williams, among others. Because art imitates life, stay for live accordion music by The Creaking Planks, Teapot in the Tuba, and the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra. The opening begins at 6 pm and runs until midnight. This exhibition is taking place at Creative Coworkers (343 Railway Street, Vancouver) and will be up for two weeks; admission to the opening is by donation ($10 suggested donation includes a drink ticket) and pre-sale tickets are available online at Eventbrite.

After all that, what's the take-home? Consider this -- the three following nights at the Accordion Noir Festival's run at the WISE Hall cost $20 admission. This show gives you three accordion bands, PLUS lots of interesting art to look at, PLUS a free drink... for half that! But I jest -- you should be attending all of these concerts.

And who knows -- will this be the final missive in the Planks logbook? (Speaking of which, thanks again to the Wooden Boat Society for having the rumpest configuration of Planks there is filling in an emergency opening last weekend!) We look forward to undertaking some restructuring after the Accordion Noir Festival wraps, and hopefully 2019 may see us gigging again, hopefully with some new hands on board.

2018-04-01: April Fool's with Aaron J. Shay

Briefly emerging from a long hiatus to revisit the very same venue as our most recent gig, way back last September, some small (that means tight, right?) configuration of the Creaking Planks plans on staying out at least long enough to see its shadow and try to tell it a terrible joke. ("Honestly I think shadow jokes are kind of dark.") It's curious, given our humorous (well, absurd at least) bent why we haven't made more of an annual celebration out of April Fool's -- our "Ship of Fools" cabaret (gulp) nine years ago was great fun but maybe we opted not to dilute the joke in the retelling. (If so, we we have apparently re-evaluated that position, as the gloves are off!)

We'll be at the WISE Lounge from 8-11 pm Sunday, April 1st (don't fear the Monday morning -- it's the Easter long weekend!) supporting a touring folk-punk musician. Suggested donation $10, 19+. Facebook really wants to know that you're attending.

Seattle's Aaron J. Shay (The Mongrel Jews) is a folk-punk singer-songwriter and inter-dimensional traveler, documenting his experiences in story and song while accompanying himself on banjo and ukulele. A longtime enthusiast of both literature and science, he has participated in several quantum-poetic experiments, including Project [REDACTED] and Operation [REDACTED]. Shay's performances are highly interactive, encouraging the civilians in the audience to stomp along and sing along to further study rhythm and melody deviations between universes. Be prepared to smile and ponder!

East Vancouver's "jug band of the damned" the Creaking Planks has made its name as purveyors of musical cognitive dissonance, performing sad songs like they're happy, elevating the profane to the sacred, and playing Nine Inch Nails covers for children. As one does. On this most Puckish of occasions they will be walking the metaphorical tightrope and angling to represent both the most foolish fun and the funniest folly in their repertoire. Now, more damned than ever!

Laugh until you cry or, in contrarian Planks fashion, vice versa! We'll be hooting it up downstairs at the WISE Lounge (1882 Adanac Street at Victoria) from 8 to 11 pm. $10 suggested donation, 19+.

2017-10-28: POLYVOX S3E1 opener

Just in time for Hallowe'en, our gentle folk cover of the Virgin Prunes' song "Sweet Home Under White Clouds" opens the first episode of season 3 of the long-running POLYVOX broadcast out of France. Listen through the whole thing and you'll get to compare and contrast our take with the original, which bookends at the other end! (And don't forget: for Hallowe'en a raven we'll be giving... NEVERMORE!)

2017-09-06: Accordion Noir Fest pre-show with Secret Emchy Society at the WISE Lounge

Longtime fellow traveler in West-Coast alt-accordion circles, the Bay Area's Cindy "Emchy" Emch has long been on our radar due to her activities in Vagabondage and Rhubarb Whiskey, but despite our ties to that sphere, we never managed to quite connect... until now! Upon learning that she's been visiting the area in association with Carolyn Mark, we found that she was going to be nearby juuuuust before the 10th annual Accordion Noir Festival. But when you have a winner's mind, there is no such thing as a loss, so we put our minds together and strategized a festival pre-show featuring the Secret Emchy Society (meaning Emch and her ad-hoc local supporting band) along with yours truly, the jug band of the damned! And, who knows... if the festival brings other surprise characters to town without official festival stage time, maybe we can share a slice of ours with them.

This big fun goes down by donation Wednesday September 6th downstairs at the WISE Lounge, 1882 Adanac! 8-11 pm. Be there, or ... you'll be slightly better rested for the official start of the festival the following day. (But you'll have missed out in so many other ways!)

For those who like to kick off the celebrations a little early, here's a punky little alt-squeezebox warm-up show to kick off the 10th annual Accordion Noir Festival like we used to do it -- by the seat of our pants!

Inspired by 1920s cabaret music, murder ballads and Leonard Cohen, Emchy has been keeping the squeeze dark and alt for over a decade through her projects (list heavily abbreviated) Rhubarb Whiskey, Vagabondage and the Oakland Wine Drinkers Union, Local 88. A great friend to Geoff Berner and Carolyn Mark, you just know you want to join their rarefied ranks also.

http://www.emchy.com/

House band of the Accordion Noir project on and off for the past decade, the jug band of the damned the Creaking Planks continues in their exploration of cognitive dissonance through juxtaposing a contemporary songbook with folk revival arrangements. Your brain tells you "that's just WRONG!" and finds itself utterly incapable of explaining the grin on your face.

At the WISE Lounge. Admission by donation, at the door. Please join us to kick off a Most Eventful series of concerts!

2017-09-02: Creaking Planks busk the Trout Lake Farmer's Market

It's a thing now: two years running, we promote the Accordion Noir Festival by busking at local Farmer's Markets during the lead-up to the festival concert dates. Last year, this curious system brought us downtown with Jet Black Pearl; this year, it takes us to the great grand-dame of them all, the hallowed Trout Lake Farmer's Market (held in the Lakewood & E. 13th parking lot at John Hendry Park) where buskers typically don't even get a chance to apply to play before years of hazing at more marginal markets. The Musical Career Of The Creaking Planks: Years of Hazing? I can't connect those dots with confidence (finger painting abstracts, that's more my speed), but what I can tell you is that a sizable contingent of Planks will be Creaking up a storm there acoustically from 11:30 am through to 2 pm. So come on by, pick up some fresh Chilliwack corn, let us put some roots (music) in your ears and leave some lettuce in our hat. Cheers!

2017-08-26/27: washing up at the Wooden Boat Festival

So here's the thing: we've spent literally a decade being incorrectly introduced as "Vancouver's premiere pirate band, so get ready for some sea shanties!" because, well, we never got around to changing our name... and it was indeed with an eye toward filling that particular hipster niche that we initially formed beneath that banner. But with the exception of our standout Vancouver Public Space Network gig at Pirates of the SeaBus literally a decade ago, a "Lowbrow on the High Seas" art party at the (long-defunct) Marine Club, a couple of pirate parties, a cancelled engagement launching Salesforce.com in Gastown... and of course that Hallowe'en spent at the McBarge... well, suffice it to say that if you thought that our central conceit was an empty one, you'd have been hard pressed to be proven wrong. Our not-so-secret secret identity as a chanty crew sailing the high seas of melody was just a left turn at Albuquerque we'd failed to make.

But now, arguably at our least nautical ever, we've finally been invited to perform at the 30th annual Wooden Boat Festival, presented by the Vancouver Wooden Boat Society. Go figure. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win," right?? OK, actually, that comparison is totally inappropriate, so moving right along...

There's a lot going on there at Granville Island (where we haven't played since our Fringe Festival appearance accompanying Melinda Gidaly's Jew! A Musical at the BBQ pit) over the course of some four days -- music, workshops, and yes, actual boats made of actual wood. (Irish coracles, go take a long walk off a short dock.) Turning you on to the complete schedule of events would... overstep our actual knowledge of the festival proceedings, but we can tell you with authority that we are slated to perform twice across two days, from 3:15-4:15 pm both on Saturday the 26th and Sunday August 27th at the Market Courtyard venue -- which I expect is out back behind the Public Market, so ... don't let the seagulls steal away your hot dog!

Years ago I had no success getting Planks to join me busking (to middling reception) in the environs thereabouts, but this time we will do much better because this time around I do solemnly promise I will refrain from singing Kurt Weill's Alabama Song with my amendment to the lyrics "Show us the way to the next bag of soup", in deference to the nearby "Stock Market" stall, selling prefab soups in little baggies.

You can't reasonably expect us to end on a higher note than that, so... see you at the market! (And thanks to the guests at the Dunbar garden party earlier this month for making the most of our diminished turnout... one accordion still can crank out quite a bit of music!)