Dirty Windshields: The Best and Worst of the Smugglers Tour Diaries

Dirty Windshields is the long-awaited memoir from CBC host and award-winning author Grant Lawrence, baring all the salacious and hilarious details from his touring days as the lead singer of Vancouver-based rock and roll band The Smugglers. Formed when most of the members were still in high school, The Smugglers came of age during the height of the grunge explosion in the early 1990s, when Grant, working as a concert promoter, put on shows for Nirvana, Green Day and Bad Religion, among many others.

In Dirty Windshields, Grant chronicles the band's booze-fueled, sweaty, broke and wayward attempts at rock and roll glory as they trekked across Canada, the United States, and eventually, Europe and the Pacific Rim. In their sixteen years of touring, the Smugglers experienced all the highs and lows the road can offer, from playing a gig at New York's legendary CBGB club to starting a riot in a Denver nightclub to having their performance tuxes stolen in Australia. Through the fights, sexual misadventures, new friendships, dance contests and mayhem, the band grew up together on the road. Told with Grant's signature self-deprecating wit, the anecdotes develop into a compelling story of the growth of an independent, do-it-yourself touring band, a community, and a musical movement. So crack open a semi-cold can of Black Label beer, stick a Smugglers tape into the cassette deck and let the good times roll.


About the Author
Lawrence, Grant: - Grant Lawrence is the author of The Lonely End of the Rink (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013) and Adventures in Solitude (Harbour Publishing, 2010). He hosts the award-winning CBC Radio 3 Podcast and can also be heard on various CBC Radio One programs such as North by Northwest, All Points West and On the Coast. He is married to musician Jill Barber and they live in Vancouver, BC, with their two children.