PREVIEW
What: Grant Lawrence with BUM
When: Saturday, 7 p.m.
Where: Bolen Books, Hillside Centre (1644 Hillside Ave.)
Admission: Free
Note: Lawrence will also appear Friday at the Black Dot (4 Church St.) in Nanaimo
Grant Lawrence’s previous two books were about summer cabins and hockey, for want of a better description. Which is strange considering he’s best known countrywide as an arts-centric host for CBC Radio and his tenure fronting Vancouver garage rock band the Smugglers.
Seven years after his first book, Lawrence has finally tackled rock ’n’ roll. And he does so from a first-person perspective in Dirty Windshields: The Best and the Worst of the Smugglers Tour Diaries.
The Vancouver author — a raconteur of the highest order — thought about compiling many of the diaries featured in the book much earlier in his career.
“But we stumbled to a halt, instead of going out in a flame of glory,” Lawrence, 45, said of the Smugglers, who formed while he was in his teens. “I was burnt out.”
Adventures in Solitude (2010) and The Lonely End of the Rink (2013) were the perfect professional precursors for Lawrence. He learned a lot about writing along the way, which set the stage for his tell-all memoir about 16 years in the rock business.
The book, “anecdotes of stories we would tell in the van,” he said, follows the group as they rise through the independent ranks to stages at large clubs across North America.
The Smugglers were defunct until a one-off show in Berkeley, California, last year — their first show together following their 2004 breakup. Release parties for the book have prompted a mini Smugglers reunion, which peaked with a show before 1,000 fans at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on May 13.
“One of the greatest career moves the Smugglers ever did was wait 13 years between Vancouver gigs,” Lawrence said with a laugh.
Lawrence wanted his longtime friends in Victoria power-pop act BUM, who reunited in 2014, to be on the Commodore bill, but it was not possible.
“I wished they could have played, but we share a drummer. And our drummer, Graham Watson, is 50 years old, and couldn’t play two sets in one night.”
Andrew Molloy and Rob Nesbitt from BUM will join Lawrence at the Bolen’s Books launch party for Dirty Windshields on Saturday. The two singer-guitarists will play acoustically at the event for the first time in their career, Lawrence said.
“BUM is a band I have worshipped. They are one of the greatest underrated Canadian bands ever.”
The release of the book, and the eventual reformation of his band, has altered Lawrence’s relationship with rock ’n’ roll. At first, he expected the book to end on a downbeat note. The band’s final performance was “an awful, awful show” in San Diego, he said. “And I was fine with that. The Smugglers did not end happily. By the end, it wasn’t fun.”
He had a blast playing music for a living, as the stories in the book confirm. But there were down moments aplenty, he said.
Those are vital to the book, especially parts about the Smugglers seeing their thunder stolen by the garage rock revival of the early 2000s, and groups such as the Hives, the Strokes and the White Stripes. “We played garage our entire career, but we couldn’t capitalize.”
Following upcoming dates in Toronto and Ottawa, two gigs remain on the Smugglers’s book launch tour. After that, the band might be done for good, Lawrence said.
“The reunion has been the gravy on top of the mashed potatoes that is this book.”
Victoria is featured on several occasions in Dirty Windshields, including a tale about sneaking as underage performers into the former Harpo’s Cabaret, “one of the greatest clubs ever,” Lawrence said.
“From gigs at the Cedar Hill Rec Centre to Harpo’s to Bolen’s Books,” he said with a laugh. “That’s my trajectory.”
