A SMUGGLER’S DIARY
Frontman’s book tells tour tales
Grant Lawrence was just another West Vancouver teen with a rock ’n’ roll dream until his life was changed on a rainy Monday night in June, 1987.
That was when he and his buddy Nardwuar the Human Serviette snuck into the long gone Club Soda to see Montreal garage rockers The Gruesomes.
The lead vocalist for Canadian indie rock band The Smugglers writes of that evening: “I had never experienced anything as exciting as forbidden or as visceral as I did that Monday night.”
It led him to dedicate nearly two decades of life to being on the road with his band, hoping to give audiences that same kind of live concert jolt.
Coming May 13, Dirty Windshields: The Best and Worst of the Smugglers Tour Diaries (Douglas & McIntyre), recounts the highs and lows of that life in the anecdotal style that has put the CBC broadcaster on the B.C. Bestseller list for both his previous books: Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound (2010), and The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie (2013).
It’s memorable fare, particularly because of the singer’s meticulous documenting of every show the band played as it toured North America, Europe and Japan.
“My dad always urged me to write stuff down and, right from gig one with the band at the Chicago Pizza Works at the corner of Homer and Nelson across the street from where Club Soda used to be, I kept a gig diary of every show,” said Lawrence.
“Scrapbooking was something I got from my mom, and for the duration of the time with the Smugglers I obsessively hung onto seemingly everything.”
Lawrence admits that while the diaries and memorabilia were always intended for personal use, there was an idea flickering at the back of his mind regarding historical preservation. Like most musicians, he dreamed big.
There was only one U.S. tour where Lawrence quit his diaries because his heart just wasn’t in it. This still annoys him.
Fortunately, guitarist Nick Thomas kept meticulous photographic records, so it was possible to piece things together. Some diaries went missing completely, but the record is mostly complete.
Lawrence writes poignantly about the down side of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle in Dirty Windshields. A number of former members of the band died young, and others suffered health issues. But time heals all wounds and the Smugglers — Lawrence, Nick Thomas (guitar), Kevin “Beez” Beesley (bass), David Carswell (guitar) and Graham Watson (drums) — have reformed to play the book launch event at the Commodore Ballroom. Mint Records will release a musical partner to the book as well.
“I have to credit fellow author Aaron Chapman for coming up with the idea, because he reasoned that the Commodore was the sole remaining venue from The Smugglers’ era,” said Lawrence.
“And I thought he was crazy because the only time in the band’s history that we could play the place was when we were at our height around the time of our 2000 album Rosie. It’s exciting.”
The Smugglers will be back on the road again this summer with shows lined up in Toronto and at the Ottawa Explosion Weekend. Lawrence, 45, says it feels right to be back on stage.
“I think we are all lucky to have put the miles under our feet and not had any accidents, to have mostly made it through a job where you are actively encouraged to do it wasted every single night of the week,” he said.
“That spider web dragged down some who didn’t make it, some who have to look after themselves every day from now on, and some who emerged unscathed. The one great thing about rock ’n’ roll is you leave a legacy, and live on.
“I had read this book titled Shout about the very early Stuart Sutcliffe era of the Beatles in Hamburg which mentioned how one of the band, George maybe, had kept a diary and held onto concert posters, flyers and so on,” he said.
“And maybe I thought if we ever did get really huge it would be great to have all that stuff around. Of course, we never reached that level, remaining a hitless wonder down in the underground.”
Readers will laugh loudly at Lawrence’s matter-of-fact descriptions shared from this personal archive. Band members’ habits (“Paul puked before the show”), show posters from across the world, candid snapshots and more make Dirty Windshields the rarest of things: A largely evidence-based musical memoir.
“I’m really happy that I did keep all that stuff, from the interview in some ’zine that probably had a distribution of 30 copies, to all the other crap,” he said.
“My parents could have easily tossed all this stuff and I probably would have shrugged my shoulders and moved on, but they kept it all and it was key to spurring the memories. I remembered a lot, but re-reading those diaries and seeing night-of accounts written after a Town Pump show at 3 a.m. triggered so much.”