Most people would probably have figured if CBC Radio 3′s Grant Lawrence were to write a book, it would be about music.
After all, music has been a huge part of Lawrence’s life. Of course, he accumulated tons of experience in the studio and on the road while he was a member of The Smugglers. But he’s also got experience on another side of the music business, since he’s has spent a good part of this decade hosting a radio show and interviewing musicians for CBC Radio 3.
Adventures In Solitude, Lawrence’s first book, might be named after a New Pornographers song, but it’s actually a memoir about his time spent in coastal British Columbia’s Desolation Sound, where his family has owned land and a cabin since he was a boy. Desolation Sound is a deep water sound on the Pacific Ocean that’s known for its mountainous coastline and spectacular wilderness and scenery. That makes it a favourite destination for vacationers, people who want to “drop out” and escape the trivialities of city life and adventurers (Captain Vancouver is among that latter group).
Lawrence continually visited Desolation Sound with his parents throughout his childhood. But when he became a teenager and discovered rock ‘n’ roll, he chose the road and a touring van instead of the Sound’s bucolic scenery and the idiosyncratic personalities that came with it. When he returned to Desolation Sound earlier this decade, a rush of nostalgia hit him, and he says he realized he’d been wrong to cast it away.
“It was so sparklingly beautiful and natural compared to all the grit and grime that I had seen in places like Germany and even Japan [while on tour],” he says. “I hadn’t seen that kind of beautiful, untouched nature, so it was rush after basically being locked in a tour van for 15 years.
“And I started going to Desolation Sound more and more and more, and all those characters that I feared so much when I was a kid, as an adult I realized that they all had fascinating stories.
“By that time, I was working at CBC, so I realized — I’d been kind of trained to look for stories, ’cause that’s what we as media need. So I started going, ‘Geez, all these people have fascinating stories.’ I love stories. I’m a storyteller. I’ve always been one. Suddenly I got the bug to start telling the stories.”
At first, Lawrence started telling Desolation Sound’s stories over CBC Radio as a summer correspondent. But then he got the urge to write them down, and Adventures In Solitude is the result.
The book is full of hilarious and outrageous tales. Lawrence details amusing anecdotes like the time his family were invited to a naked pot luck (and didn’t realize it was a clothes-less affair until they show up), how he thought a cougar was going to kill him (only to realize he was very mistaken) and scaring the heck out of a young couple kayaking through the sound after he emerged from hacking away an abundance of brush, machete in hand, face completely taken over by his beard.
But there’s a flip side. As beautiful as Desolation Sound is in the summertime, its winters are harsh, abrasive, dangerous, isolating and can literally drive people mad. Captain Vancouver experienced a depressive episode while exploring the sound in the 1790s, and if you want to know what winters there are like, look no further than Desolation Sound’s name.
Lawrence says one of the biggest lessons he’s learned throughout his time there is not to “go bush.”
He describes this in Adventures In Solitude as what can happen when a person becomes so isolated from lack of human contact that they turn paranoid, thinking anyone they meet is out to get them. Adventures In Solitude contains a few shocking, disturbing and tragic stories of people who’ve “gone bush,” and how some people Lawrence knows avoided it by getting out and seeking human contact at the right moment.
“The thing that really attracts me to Desolation Sound, is that if Desolation Sound is a character, it’s a bipolar character,” Lawrence says. “So, as bucolic and as beautiful as Desolation Sound can be in the summertime, it can be horrible and dark and murderous and depressing in the wintertime.
“So, as many fun and bright and engaging stories there are, what fascinated me was how many dark, nasty stories there were from the same place, but just flipped by the seasons.”
Adventures In Solitude is in stores now, and Lawrence will soon be going out on tour to promote it. You can meet him here:
Oct. 22 Kelowna, BC @ Breakout West
Oct. 23 Kelowna, BC @ Mosaic Books
Oct. 26 Parksville, BC @ Lefty’s Restaurant
Oct. 27 Nanaimo, BC @ Harbour Front Library
Oct. 28 Victoria, BC @ Victoria Public Library
Oct. 29 Saltspring Island, BC @ Saltspring Books
Oct. 30 Galiano Island, BC @ Galiano Island Books
Nov. 1 Vancouver, BC @ Vancouver Public Library (reading, discussion, slideshow)
Nov. 5 Powell River, BC @ Breakwater Books
Nov. 6 Campbell River, BC @ Coho Books
Nov. 12 Toronto, ON @ The Drake Hotel (launch party) w/ Jill Barber and Matthew Barber
Nov. 14 Ottawa, ON @ Raw Sugar Cafe (launch party)
Nov. 16 Halifax, NS @ FRED (launch party) w/ Jill Barber
Nov. 21 Regina, SK @ TBA (launch party)
Nov. 28 Winnipeg, MB @ McNally Books
- Radio Radio Talk Polaris Music Prize Nomination
- Hawksley’s Juno And Euro Adventures
- CBC Radio 3 Leaves The Radio Airwaves
- Year End Questions: Lawrence Arms
- Lawrence Arms Meet The Press
