“Dirty Windshields,” Grant Lawrence’s New Book on Touring with The Smugglers

Readers of this blog may recall how much I enjoyed Grant Lawrence’s first two books,  Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of his many summers spent in the environs of a family cabin on Desolation Sound in the wilds of British Columbia, and The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with hockey. That’s why I’m delighted that yesterday I received a copy of Grant’s new book, Dirty Windshields: The Best and Worst of The Smugglers’ Tour Diaries, which chronicles the life of the band he was lead singer and frontman for in the 1990s, before he became a CBC broadcaster and music journalist. I began reading it right away, and was fascinated with the Prologue, which provides the origin story of The Smugglers. What I love about Grant’s books is how he blends hilarious laugh-out-loud tales you instantly want to share with your seat-mate, along with tug-on-the heart stories that leave you touched and a bit teary-eyed. Rock writer Ira Robbins, publisher of the Trouser Press Record Guide enjoyed Dirty Windshields: “Told with equal measures pride and shame, this uproarious chronicle of vans, violence, alcohol, cops, fires, floods, blizzards, wrong turns, crooked club owners, actual snakes, robbery, bodily fluids and calamities of all sorts is the perfect companion to the band’s mega-fun music.”