Well the Smugglers started in 1988, and in 1990 we put out our first track on a Nardwuar compilation on Nardwuar records in Vancouver. We stayed on Nardwuar for our first couple of releases, a 7" and a 10" called At Marineland. Then we moved to Seattle’s Pop Llama records where we put on a couple of records on that (Atlanta Whiskey Flats/In the hall of fame). Then we went all over the place, we had singles in Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain... we put an album in Spain called Wet Pants Club and finally after a couple of years of screwing around with a whole ton of labels, we landed on Mint and Lookout where we settled down finally.

We’ve been doing fine. We really miss Beez cos he was such a good friend of ours and Bryce, we miss his drumming! But the other guys are really good friends of ours and we get along well.

Yeah, it’s weird cos Beez is such a performer! John is a little subdued but he’s a great guy and a great musician and yeah, he’s been producing us for a long time. It’s like having The Beatles getting George Martin in the band... not that I’m comparing us to the Beatles!

Thanks...

I guess so. People were bugging us, like why we didn’t put anything out. See, on Lookout, all these bands are productive, like MTX have an album a year! And nobody bugged the Hi-Fives and they didn’t put anything out for a long time.

So when everyone was bugging us, we were like "Jeez, we don’t have a new album ready to go - oh my God, what do these people want?" And then when Beez and Bryce at the same time decided to leave the band, we definitely weren’t gonna have something out for a while, so we said to them "Why don’t you record with us for one last time?" and that was the last time we saw Bryce, he left that studio that day! So that was the final recording with the long time line-up. And a lot of people said that it’s a lot more sonic than Selling the Sizzle, which surprises me, as I think that Mass did a good job with STS. Kurt Bloch produced BHC, and he really likes to rock!

Sometimes people think that we’re old! But we play to "the kids" every night all the time. I’m 26, Nick’s 26 and Dave’s 27, and I don’t know, some people consider that old and some consider that young! We started when we were 16, Smugglers’ tenth year anniversary is this year and we’re having a big party in Vancouver. Um, is there a division?

Um, I think that the Smugglers are one of the great cross-over bands where we can appeal to a very wide range of people. Cub used to be able to do this too, they could play with Rancid and the next night they could play with The Softies, and both crowds would really like them - and that’s really cool. So we can play one night with Southern Culture on Skids and next night with the Queers, two totally different crowds ‘cos both crowds would be into it because the basis of our music is rock ‘n’ roll and it goes into the direction of pop punk, pop and sometimes more rock ‘n’ roll. So we appeal to a cross-section, we’re just too loud!

Grant: What happened - okay! We left Dover at noon, it takes 5 hours to get to Birmingham from Dover. Therefore we would have arrived right at 5 o’ clock. We stopped for lunch for 20 minutes, so we were to arrive at 5:20. But when we were travelling up the M1, all of a sudden the traffic came to a total halt, we got caught in it for a long time and we pulled over and we called the promoter and we said we’re in heavy traffic but we’ll be there - he said "Okay, no problem! Just get here as fast as you can". We said "Okay, we’ll be there!" The traffic was still really heavy and we turned on the radio and they said "The M1 was chaos because of a flaming lorry", and so we pulled up and said we were "Stuck behind a flaming lorry, we’ll be there". He said "Okay, just hurry up!" He didn’t say anything about times or anything like that. When we showed up at the club, there was sign on the door saying "Sorry, Smugglers have cancelled due to transport problems" which was NOT TRUE, we never cancelled, we showed up at 8:15pm. So it took us 8 hours to get there, and it was very depressing for us cos we weren’t able to play!

The kissing contest, the Europeans don’t like - may be they don’t get it, I guess it’s American culture to hop up on stage and wanna engage in massive French-kissing. You know, you’d think in France they’d wanna do it - but no! They’re really really shy, and we do the kissing contest in America and it’s gotten to the point where everyone knows it’s coming and people are really ready for it! In the States, I ask Brady Bunch trivia that’s really hard (the prize being a chance to kiss or be kissed by a Smuggler) and they get them every night - that’s how sick it is!

It used to be Nick, just time and time again. Big blond Nick, sexing up all the gals! But now it’s Danny, our new drummer. In America, he had like ten kisses in a row or something until I finally broke the circle. It’s pretty amazing, I’ve gotten some pretty wild ones - I tend to attract the more on-the-edge girls, they’ll be a little unstable!

Oh, that’s good ! (laughing) would you say that you’re having more fun now than you did when you were back on pop llama?

Oh yeah, we’re having way more fun!

Just the opportunities are greater, we get European tours, the Japanese tours! We were offered a trip to Hawaii! That’s pretty amazing, so that’s all due to Lookout!

No, Lisa Marr, the leader of Cub, it’s her band and she’s a very determined and stubborn and smart and talented person. When she makes a decision on something, believe me, I’ve worked with her for a long time - nothing can change her mind! She’s one of the most determined and strong-willed people I have ever met in my life, and she’s driven me crazy because of it!

Yeah, it’s very secretive, they keep it very quiet! It’s called I am spoon-bender and it’s based in San Francisco where Robynn is pretty much living in now. And Lisa’s in LA with Ronnie from the Muffs (who she married in Las Vegas). But she’s playing keyboards, and I don’t know what’s Dustin’s playing - and I guess everyone will get to read about it as there’s an article coming out in Alternative Press.

They’re pretty outta control, they’re cool! We played a really amazing show with them in Munster, Germany and it was a great night, the best night of our last tour!

Everyone talks about Ska-T getting a hand job in the red-light districts, in Hamburg, Ska-T, our roadie, the Canadian king of ska. (for anyone who hasn’t read their last tour diary, there is a humourous account about Ska-T failing to get it on with this German gal in her sex-parlour, though the lovely Ska-T told me himself that incident was atypical of his behaviour as he was heavily under the influence of alcohol and band pressure.) But my favourite one is when our trusted, tried and true van that we have had for years and years finally broke down in the mountains of California. But I was really happy with that time because we all worked together as a band to make it to our last show that night! I immediately flew into action, I looked up and we were in the middle of nowhere and I see this sign - and I said "Beez, go over there and rent a truck!", and I said "Dave go to the pay-phone and call a tow-truck right now!", and "Nick, unload our van, right now!"... and then I caught some sun! No, that was a gag, I helped.

Let’s see, what’s Nick’s latest inventions? He’s really crafty at setting vans up. He got this bed going, and there used to be glass here and he took the glass out and now there’s a partition way to crawl through. You should have seen our last van, it had two double beds, one up, one down... so Nick made like book shelves and tape shelves and a metal cabinet with a TV in!

Nick: (interrupts) Have you seen my stinking pants back there? Is my tie on the dashboard too?

We’re releasing a ten year commemorative album and it’s gonna be a big multi-track thing like the Queers A Day Late and A Dollar Short or the Screeching Weasel’s Kill the Musicians. We made this At Japan video, we brought this video camera with us, and we filmed the Queers, Supersnazz and us doing crazy stuff all the way through Japan, and we edited it at a friend’s studio and put it out as a movie with a cover and everything.

Oh God! Erm... (Pause) Who is our number one British fan? Jennie from Tiny Bits of Spittle (laughing)...