The Smugglers at the Commodore Ballroom, Saturday, May 13, with special guests The Muffs, Chixdiggit and Needles and Pins. For more information visit grantlawrence.ca and thesmugglers.com.
Forgive Grant Lawrence for taking his time.
After spending nearly two decades firmly entrenched in the world of rock ’n’ roll, the lead singer for West Vancouver legends the Smugglers was ready for a break.
“I had spent 16 years in small rooms painted black that reeked of urinal pucks, beer and cigarettes – and if I wasn’t in those rooms I was in a van that reeked of way worse,” Lawrence says of the band’s touring days.
He’s candid about the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, a life that he mostly retired from in 2004 when the Smugglers sort of “stumbled to a stop,” as Lawrence suggests.
A Smugglers reunion gig tomorrow at the Commodore Ballroom set to coincide with the release of Lawrence’s new book, Dirty Windshields: The Best and the Worst of the Smugglers Tour Diaries, is poised to get that lifestyle rolling again, if only for the one night.
“It was a long time coming,” Lawrence says of reuniting with his old bandmates and finally sitting down to write the story of the group’s wild days.
Those wild days actually stretched across three decades from 1988 to 2004, a tenure that saw the energetic rock band release dozens of albums, EPs and singles. The band toured through much of Canada and the world during that time and along the way helped steer the ship forward for an exciting period in Canadian music.
Their adventures, the highs and the lows, are lovingly mythologized in Dirty Windshields, Lawrence’s third book.
Beginning with the halcyon early days when the Smugglers embarked on their first tour, a set of frigid weekend shows in Regina that the pack of fresh West Coast boys was ruefully underprepared for, to the ecstatic Japanese fans who made the band’s tours through that country such a joy some years later, Dirty Windshields packs a punch and leaves almost nothing unturned.
Though for a while Lawrence was more than content to leave the past turned over. His early stabs at writing a book about his time with the Smugglers in the years following the band’s extended hiatus resulted in one unsuccessful start after another.
“I was just so sick of the filth, the filth of rock ’n’ roll that when I sat down to write about it, I’m like, ‘Oh god, I’m so burnt out on all this stuff,’” he says.
Lawrence, who has since become something of a jack-of-all trades in Canadian media due to his contributions to CBC, the Westender and numerous books, was in much need of a comedown period.
He discovered the best way to come down would be by retreating to his far past in Desolation Sound.
Adventures in Solitude, Lawrence’s first book, was released in 2010. The memoir recounted his visits as a young man to Desolation Sound, a place where his family had purchased a cabin in the 1970s.
“It was like the exact opposite of what I had just lived,” Lawrence says.
Fast forward a few years later and Lawrence still didn’t have it in him to write his rock book. Instead, in 2013 he released The Lonely End of the Rink, a memoir about his foray into beer league hockey and his conflicted relationship with sports.
But while it took him awhile to get going with it, Lawrence already had the material on hand for Dirty Windshields.
A dedicated journal and diary writer from a young age, he kept tour diaries for the entirety of the Smugglers run, many of which are published verbatim in the finished book.
He insists that people were incensed when they found out his first attempts at writing following the end of the Smugglers were memoirs on famed provincial marine parks and beer league hockey.
“Everyone was just so against it. People were like, ‘Are you crazy? You’ve got to … publish your tour diaries!’” he says. “I’m happy that I kept all that stuff now. I guess at the time I wasn’t really sure. Like any diary, you just probably kind of think it’s for yourself to look back on in years, which was why it was kind of embarrassing for the potential to share it with people.”
Lawrence grew up in the Dundarave neighbourhood of West Vancouver, alongside his future bandmates.
He attended the former Hillside Secondary School there and played early gigs all over the North Shore.
He remembers vigorously calling venues and clubs trying to book bands – either for his own band or for the other musical acts he and his friends admired.
“When we first formed, you called everybody,” he says. “I would sit in my parents’ house and use the phone and I would call clubs like all over Canada and the States, much to my dad’s chagrin when the bill would show up.”
Lawrence says he likes to think in trilogies and that in many ways the publication of Dirty Windshields will be the conclusion of his memoir trilogy. It took him awhile to write what is arguably the most eagerly anticipated book in that trifecta.
“I’ve written three books about myself – I’d like to write about somebody else,” he says when considering his next moves.
For now though, Lawrence and the Smugglers have to make it through their reunion show. Considering the band’s international fan base, there’s a lot to keep in mind.
When the Smugglers reunion gig at the Commodore was announced in February – the first time the band will have played that venue in 17 years – calls from fans and peers from Canada, the States, Europe and Japan came rolling in.
“‘We want to come to the show. Where do we stay? What do we do?’” Lawrence mimes. “We’ve got to organize some stuff for these people.”
On Lawrence’s personal website right now a laundry list of information is available for those coming to tomorrow’s gig. Recommendations on where to say, how to get there, all the way down to an overview of the show itself are available.
A send-off brunch was tentatively scheduled at Tomahawk Restaurant in North Vancouver for Sunday, May 14 – until they realized that this Sunday is Mother’s Day.
“Their Sunday brunch is huge. We can’t block-book any place and it turns out a lot of people are flying out early anyway,” Lawrence says.
Lawrence, the Smugglers, fans and specials guests alike are still nonetheless eager for a send-off for the ages.
“We might just party all night and that be the end of it,” he says.
