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!

2019-06-16: off-brand Creaking Planks at Car-Free Main Street's Accordion Noir stage!

Basically, we can't accept gigs as the Creaking Planks anymore because we can't guarantee you'll get anything beyond a crazy accordion. This isn't to say that you ever just get a crazy accordion, only sometimes we don't learn just what else will be on offer until we take the stage. So it is that this weekend, we'll be delivering up a set of songs from the Creaking Planks end of the musical gutter, by three historical Creaking Planks... billed as "Stupid Accordion Tricks", Blackbeard Squeezebox's solo YouTube accordion cover song series.

We're back at the Accordion Noir stage at the Car-Free Main Street festival that we played at two years ago, still on the west side of the intersection of Main Street at East 21st Avenue. Our set, which should liberally be peppered with such new covers as have been populating the video series, is scheduled to run from 3 to 4 pm. We're part of a program of free musical performances -- with accordion! -- running there continuously from noon through to 7 pm, so if you're at the festival, do please swing by and check out what's being offered, it's all amazing stuff, culminating in a headlining set from our disciples in the Argyle Embargo! As for us, this is just about the end of our rope. You should be catching one or two of us making a joyful noise at the June 28th launch of Bruce Triggs' book Accordion Revolution (7-9 pm at the CFRO Co-Op Community Radio studios) but ... that's grist for a different post.

2019-06-01: Anyone Can Play Guitar

It would be ... a little much to expect a full-band concert out of the Creaking Planks at this point. We're hoping to reconstitute ourselves, but baby steps. That said, you can hear three of us playing this Saturday night! Not playing together, mind you, but at the same event at least!

It's a Radiohead tribute night called "Anyone Can Play Guitar" (sadly, Blackbox observes, anyone usually does), and in addition to Blackbox Squeezebeard, Ludwicka LePearl and Daisy Jones-Locher, you can hear Radiohead songs from the likes of A New Craze (Daisy-Jones' new band), Bob Neubauer, Carolyn Neapole with Jocelyn Cameron, Danny Echo and Tania Gosgnach. It's a talented lot, and the songs are good, so please consider joining us... cover is $10, at the old Cottage Bistro, now rebranded "Hood 29". The three-hour show starts at 8 pm!

2019-04-14: The Second Voyage of the Ship of Fools!

Creaking Planks activities have been in a strange limbo these past few years: more than we might reasonably expect, and simultaneously less than we'd like. (And yet, we ourselves are the bottleneck. So... go figure.)

Case in point: this Sunday night, April 12th, our hirsute accordionist Blackbox Squeezebeard will be celebrating turning 40. He was a little down at the prospect, looking back at the amazing show we threw on the occasion of his 30th birthday, but perked up when he realized he could just... put that show on again a second time! Now, not all participants were able to join us this time around on such short notice, but hopefully you, at least, might well be able to.

Starting around 8:30 pm, set sail on the Second Voyage of the Ship of Fools, featuring music by Monsterdinosaur artist and longtime Little Mountain Gallery proprietor Ehren Salazar, magic by the alter-ego of Planks alumnus Dr. Steelhand -- Travis Bernhardt, and poetry insanity by Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band! All that plus bare-bones Planking by Blackbox Squeezebeard plus... well, anyone who plays along with the Creaking Planks is deputized as a Creaking Plank, but conversely Planks can never manage to confirm scheduled appearances, so... we are looking forward to being joined by unconfirmed, unscheduled guests, some of whom may be actual historical Creaking Planks, Planking along with us. But due to the x-factor we can't actually bill it as a Creaking Planks appearance. All we know for sure is that there'll be Creaking and Planking.

Suggested donation $10. Be generous with your server at the WISE Lounge bar (downstairs at 1882 Adanac at Victoria), they usually don't have shows there at all on Sunday nights!

2019-02-15: Creaking Planks feature at Beats on Broadway!

At our peak, we were sometimes playing two gigs in a single day.  In our deepest slump, it felt like the pace was closer to two gigs in the same year.  Having just poked our heads out of hibernation (never give a woodchuck on Groundhog Day!), we never expected to have a second gig lined up just a week later, and yet here we are!  A big part of show business success is simply being in the right place at the right time, and as it turned out we were exactly the right shape to fill in for an unexpected cancellation looming on a venue's calendar. The plan always was for 2019 to see a renewal of the Creaking Planks, but I was expecting we'd need to reform the band first!  I'm a little concerned that this pace isn't sustainable, but probably we will have a long break after this to strategize our next move.

But I'm burying the lede. Yes! You can find us -- well, two of us, the primordial, essential skeleture of the ensemble -- featuring this Friday night back at the monthly third-Friday Beats on Broadway acoustic open mic at the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House (800 E Broadway) for the first time since our last appearance there eleven years ago! It's an open mic, so if you'd like to share a bit of tunage or your latest poem also, don't hold back! Signup from 7-7:30 pm. See you there!

2019-02-08: A musical evening in support of Wet’suwet’en

Bet you weren't expecting to see anything else come up on the listings here anytime soon, were you? Our big, beautiful band has well and truly scattered -- you can find one member on Vancouver Island, another in California, one unreachable midway up their ascent of the ivory tower, another swamped in local politics. Can we all find the time to come together and play some frivolous songs for a small and confused audience at a coffee shop tomorrow afternoon? Less likely than ever... and to be fair, we were always unlikely!

After a dozen years in show business, you build a reputation, accumulate contacts, and a certain momentum continues ... if not propelling you forward, at least buoying you up. But after enough gig inquiries are declined due to being impossible to fulfill, the invitations will eventually slow to a trickle and then eventually stop indefinitely (at least, until the 20th anniversary reunion tour.)

This isn't to say that we're done as a band! But it is safe to say that our particular most recent configuration of the band is done as a band. 2019 should be a year of rebuilding, because we still have songs in our hearts with no other outlets. If you know of anyone who'd like to casually perform unlikely tunes in a guitarless* acoustic idiom for peanuts, please send them by our way.

In the meantime, two of three original Creaking Planks (Hell has not yet quite frozen over, the prerequisite for completing the circle with the third) have managed to arrange to coincide on stage for one night, this Friday, Feb 8th, to do their strange thing for a good cause. We've had to turn down two of these so far due to inevitable conflicts with our impossible schedules, so we're very fortunate that the third time seems to be doing the trick.

Salal and Cedar have set up an all-ages benefit concert to help support legal defense of the Wet’suwet’en struggle against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline under construction in their traditional territory without the consent of their hereditary chiefs. From 7:30 pm on (doors at 7) through likely well past 11 pm, there will be musical performances going on down at LanaLou's (362 Powell St. -- on unceded Coast Salish territory, land of the Squamish, Tsleil Waututh and Musqueam) also featuring:

- the Celtic harp of Clarity,
- 2018 Accordion Noir Fest alumni and Creaking Plank acolytes, the folk-rockers of the Argyle Embargo,
- spoken word from Rudi Krause,
- morally centered pickin' tunes by Paul "Professor Banjo" Silveria,
- ripe fruit falling from Barbara Jackson and Earle Peach's Songtree,
- musical education from Jim Sanyshyn

Suggested minimum donation - $10 (kids free!) ... if you can't make it out, you can still support the cause at https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/unistoten-camp-legal-fund and https://www.gofundme.com/gitdumt039en-access-point

Hopefully we'll have more to announce soon, even if it's just a practice schedule for the Planks Class of 2019. * Steel guitar and dobro welcome!

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!