This Place Is Awesome

Before five star hotels and personal jets, before regular hotels and economy class seats, even before Motel 6 and tour buses, there is the tour van. In 2009, music photographer Adam PW Smith flew to England to spend a week touring with the Vancouver-based celtic-gypsy-polka-cider-punk band The Dreadnoughts in the middle of their first European tour. The result is a book that reveals much about life as a young, touring band who bring real meaning back to the DIY ethic, and a few things about what it's like to be a 43 year old trying to survive in that environment.

Before five star hotels and personal jets, before regular hotels and economy class seats, even before Motel 6 and tour buses, there is the tour van. The mobile circus that serves as transportation, bunk bed, dinner table, and rec room for hundreds of hungry young musicians. In 2009, music photographer Adam PW Smith flew to England to spend a week touring with the Vancouver-based celtic-gypsy-polka-cider-punk band The Dreadnoughts in the middle of their first European tour. Smith was in the thick of it, suffering all the standard indignities but one. The result is a book that reveals much about life as a young, touring band who bring real meaning back to the DIY ethic, and a few things about what it's like to be a 43 year old trying to survive in that environment. This Place Is Awesome is Smith's first book. Packed with comical stories, insightful reflections, and a selection of his highly-regarded photographs, it brings new perspective and a splash of cold reality to the rock bio/tour diary genre.

Adam PW Smith is a Vancouver-based photographer with a highly regarded reputation for live event photography using available light. He has been called "the best concert photographer in the country," and can be found hiding in the wings of concert halls or crouching behind speaker stacks in theatres, clubs, and bars all over Vancouver, England, and, more recently, Poland. His first book, This Place Is Awesome, is a "witty and observant" account in stories and photos of life on the road for a group of Vancouver musicians in the midst of their first spartan European tour.