Bio

Grant Lawrence has long been a leading voice in Canadian arts and entertainment.

For years, the gregarious and encyclopedic Lawrence has hosted the top-rated CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, a weekly showcase of Canadian independent music. Grant also hosts Grant Lawrence Live, a live and interactive daily program on CBC Radio 3′s popular web radio station, also airing on Sirius XM 152. Grant can be heard throughout the week on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, All Points West, On The Coast, and various afternoon programs across the country, and has been a frequent past contributor to Q, Spark, and Sounds Like Canada. Grant also hosts many major music events, such as the Polaris Music Prize Gala, the Western Canadian Music Awards and various festivals around North America, and conducts music industry seminars and keynote addresses on music and media related topics.

Prior to his work at CBC, Grant was the lead singer of the internationally acclaimed Vancouver band The Smugglers. Grant co-founded the band in high school and the group went on to release 8 albums on independent record labels from around the world, including Mint Records in Canada and Lookout! Records in the USA. Over the course of the band’s sordid 15 year history, they played throughout Canada, the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Grant recently published his first book, Adventures in Solitude, a memoir of his experiences spending his summers growing up in the coastal wilderness of Desolation Sound, BC, which went to #1 on the BC Bestsellers List, #2 on the National Bestsellers List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. Grant still spends much of each summer at his cabin in the Sound between MC gigs at summer festivals.

Grant is also the goalie of the Vancouver arts-based championship-winning beer league hockey team the Vancouver Flying Vees.

Grant is married to Canadian singer Jill Barber and they live together in Vancouver, BC Canada.

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