SoundPress.net: Probing Questions An Interview With Rik Emmett of Triumph

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Probing Questions An Interview With Rik Emmett of Triumph

by Rich and Laura Lynch

ABOUT RIK EMMETT: Rik Emmett was a founding member, singer, and guitar player in the much-lauded Canadian power trio, Triumph, whose hits "Magic Power", "Lay it On the Line", "Hold On" and "Fight the Good Fight" elevated them to superstar status in the 70s and 80s, when they were staples of FM radio. Rik embarked on a solo career in the late 80s that has produced an abundant amount of inspired music. Most of Rik's solo CDs can be purchased directly from his web site.

Kicking off the July 4th Independence Week on a high note, legendary guitar virtuoso Rik Emmett will perform an intimate acoustic evening at the Bottom Line in New York City on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2002, at 8:00 p.m. This marks Emmett's return to New York after more than a 15 year absence. Rik took the time out of his very busy schedule to speak to Kweevak.com founder, Richard J. Lynch, for 40 minutes on Monday, June 10, 2002.

KT: Kweevak.com is talking to Canadian Rock Hall of Famer, Rik Emmett. Hi Rik - how does it feel to be a member of such an exclusive and prestigious institution, along with bands like BTO, the Guess Who and Rush?

RE: [laughs] It's a very nice feeling to be part of it... there's certainly some prestige and it's a nice thing to be able to brag about... but, by the same token, it makes you realize that you're just an old fart...

KT: What's the requirement for induction into the Hall of Fame?

RE: I think it has to do with how much beer you've been able to sell over the years [laughs]... in terms of club owners, concert sponsorships and concert tickets that were sponsored by beer companies... it's a very Canadian-beer related kind of award...

KT: You have two new CDs coming out - "Handiwork", an eleven-tack instrumental collection - and a greatest hits package. Can you tell us a little about these projects?

RE: "Handiwork" was something that grew at the same time I was putting together singer/songwriter stuff. In the past I tended to have records that would be relatively eclectic. There would guitar pieces on them, and pop songs, and blues things and jazz things. So, since about 1995 - 1996 I've started to think about, as I accumulate instrumentals, they should probably end up going on instrumental kinds of records, and as I accumulate songs they should go on CDs that gather the music together in that kind of structuring. Because, after all we live in a boutique, demographically-sliced kind of world now, with narrow-target marketing. It just makes it sort of easier for me to organize it myself in any case. In the last little while I tended to organize some finger-style pieces, into classical kinds of things, and then jazzier things onto a record that would be jazz. In "Handiwork's" case it was predominantly nylon string classical kind of guitar, although the lead track "Full Sail" is an electric smooth-jazz king of thing. It is sort of a smooth jazz/New Age kind of an approach throughout. I think people will find that there is a consistency in the material. But, it all grew out of guitar-oriented concepts and ideas, and acoustic-based ones at that.

KT: And the "Greatest Hits" package is coming out around the same time?

RE: Yeah, it was essentially an accumulation that Rick Wharton, who does a lot of marketing and promotion and works with me very closely in a management kind of way, this was an idea of his that he has been keen on. He knew the people at Universal in Canada, they have this series called the Millennium Collection, which is "best of" kinds of compilation packages, and it's sort of a budget line. You've got everything from old Billie Holiday to Peter and Gordon. I've got the catalogue, I couldn't believe it, there's over 200 titles in there... this was something that traces my solo career since I left Triumph... there were three albums that I did that were singer-songwriter kinds of mainstream pop, and I re-recorded four songs, three of them from the old Triumph catalogue that are live versions, and one live track from the "Absolutely" album from 1990. So there are about 12 songs on this CD, four live and seven or eight studio tracks from my first three solo albums.

KT: You've been quite prolific over the last decade, releasing nine solo albums covering a wide-range of musical styles, including rock, pop, jazz, blues, and classical. What type of preparation is required on your end to present a particular style of music to the public?

RE: Well, it's fairly straight forward when I'm doing something like, I just went out and did a run of dates out in Western Canada where I was playing rock clubs. I put a rock quartet together and played old-time songs and rock versions of things. That's like putting on an old pair of running shoes, that's pretty comfortable, it's pretty easy to do, and I don't have do a lot of prep for that. I do a lot of solo performances of late... on those kinds of gigs I tend to bring acoustic guitars, a 12-string and a nylon string, along with the electric, and a piano player in tow. I tend to cover a wider range of stuff. That requires a little woodshedding to get some guitar pieces up, and to get my hands in shape, to be able to handle those kinds of shows. Every now and then circumstances will arise where there's new repertoire. As you say, I've been relatively prolific over the last little bit in my life, so there's a lot of new material that exists. It's one thing to be able to record it and it's a whole other thing to be able to present it live. A lot of times, of course, I'm overdubbing guitar parts and that kind of stuff in the studio. So that requires some fiddling and diddling. I got the band coming in here for a rehearsal for a gig in Buffalo, and there's a couple of little things, most of it's a reprise of things that I've done with them before, and we're just going to refresh each other's memories. But, you know, there's a couple of new tracks from the "Handiwork" CD that I want to work into the set. So that requires a little bit of work and forethought. But, to a great extent, my live performances... the best moments are the ones where I'm just kind of letting it rip. So, I try and structure them so that there are moments where we're just kind of jamming... making a record is making a record, and that's all well and good, and that's great, but a live performance is supposed to be about sort of walking out on the high wire a little bit, and taking some chances...

KT: Do you enjoy playing one style of music over another.

RE: I think as I get older, I must admit, I kind of appreciate the solo recital moments a little bit more than I might have when I was younger. Certainly, when you're young you love having that rhythm section just tearing it up, and it gives you a basis where you can really blow, and go crazy. I still enjoy that, and I like playing with the band, but there's a certain kind of an intimacy to just sitting down there with your guitar and making something work. I think I get my ya ya's out a little more, personally, that way. But, fortunately, I don't have to choose. You know when I play a show I cover a lot a different styles, and that's really, I think, in the end why people will become Rik Emmett fans, and that's what my good fans, my strong fans have come to expect... that I will be eclectic and I will cover a lot of bases, and that's really kind of what I do. I think the challenge for me now, really, is more, how do I take all these styles and evolve them, or merge them together into one kind of package, so that even though the song is a little bit jazzy, or Latin, or smooth-jazz, there is a little bit of that rock guy finding his way in there. Or, if it's a rock kind of tune, that it's pushing itself outside the boundaries a little bit, stylistically, and it's bringing some of those jazz influences, or fingerstyle kind of influences into what I do. So, amalgamating these things in some kind of harmonious way... I think that's really the challenge at this point for me.

KT: Being adept and skillful over so many genres - you must have been influenced by an equally wide range of performers and musicians - can you name some for us?

RE: Well, in the early days I really loved the English progressive guitar players, that's probably where that started. I'm a product of my generation certainly, born in 1953, so when the Beatles started to happen, that was really the thing that got me going, and I think the Beatles over the course of their career tended to become a little bit more of a stylistically enterprising kind of band. You know, they got experimental, so there was a little bit of that, that probably had something to do with sowing the seeds. But, of course, just like any guitar player of my generation there was Hendrix and Clapton, and that really started the whole lead guitar playing thing, but I quickly fell into the English school of guys like Ritchie Blackmore, and I liked Steve Howe of Yes, a lot. He was a real role model for me when I was a teenage guitar player. I thought, oh geez, this guy is playing all these weird, different guitars all the time and changing styles. He's a very fingerstyle approach player, and he had a little jazz influence, and he had a little country influence, you could hear Chet Atkins sneaking in through there a lot... and I loved that kind of stuff. So, that's probably where that came from. I think part of it too was that I ended up at a jazz college called Humber College for a very short period of time... but, the influence of just the whole Canadian scene of jazz guitar playing, Lenny Breau and Eddie Bickert, and you find your way to guitar players like Joe Pass, but that's kind of where it came from. When I first started, the first guitar that I had, the first good one, was a nylon string, and my brother had given me a Segovia record and said this is the real deal, you should be checking this out, so there was a little bit of that as well... maybe just growing up Canadian you end up having all of these different influences, because you got the European/British influence, you got a very multicultural type of situation... you got the American blues and R&B influence, so I guess that's probably why you end up being eclectic... Canadian guitar players all kind sort of cut their teeth learning Gordon Lightfoot folk songs.

KT: "Handiwork" is being released on your very own label "Open House Records" - is this a vehicle for your own music only or are you releasing music from other acts as well.

RE: No, I only do it for myself. In a way it's similar to, in the book publishing business, of vanity publishing [laughs], you just make a deal with somebody who is a printer, and you're doing limited runs of your own stuff. If at some point I decided that I wanted to try and make it be something that was like a label that was trying to do other artists, that would just change the whole nature and tone of my approach, and I don't think I'd ever really want to do that. I really did it purely so that I would have a vehicle for myself to be making my own records, in my own good time, in my own studio, and then find a way to actually get them out into music stores. But, primarily a way to get them manufactured relatively cheaply.

KT: You're doing a special live performance at the Bottom Line in New York City on July 2, 2002 - a record release party for "Handiwork" - can fans still get tickets for this event, and, does playing in New York take on added significance following the events of 9/11/2001?

RE: Uh, wow, yes I'm sure they can still get tickets... I'm not exactly sure how because I'm not a ticket agent, I'm just the act [laughs]... but the Bottom Line has a site they can check out (www.bottomlinecabaret.com). As far as the significance after September 11, first of all I should say that my wife and I went to New York City in the summer last year because it was our 25th anniversary and we decided to spend a week in New York, really doing the tourist thing. Because, all the time I had ever spent in New York in the past had always been business related kinds of things. New York just struck me as this giant pressure cooker of no fun. So, we wanted to go and do it right so that we could realize what an incredible city it truly is. So, it was great, we did it all. We went to the museums, and had the carriage ride in Central Park, and we went to the top of the World Trade Center and had a meal there. So, we had done it all and this was in July. We did really romantic things. We went to a jewelry store on Park Avenue and bought rings, and then went to the oldest Church of England in lower Manhattan, and we went in there and exchanged vows, renewed our vows, and exchanged the rings and stuff. So, when the footage of 9/11 on the TV, you'd see the two feet of ash in the cemetery adjacent to the church, but miraculously the church had survived and had not really been damaged. But it was a very powerful, moving, profound thing for my wife and I to see that. So, this will be my first time going back to New York after that, and certainly it does have... it colors everything, I can't see how you could be doing anything that you take seriously, and not have those events play into your thinking. It is, quite literally, something that changed the psychology of the world. Having said all that, I think one of the great things that's come out of it is this indomitable human spirit, you know, this aspect of people finding courage that they didn't know that they had, finding resiliency that they didn't know that they had. You know, life goes on, and for me to come to the Bottom Line, in fact even in the old days in Triumph we used to avoid playing Manhattan because of union costs [laughs]. We used to play out on Long Island all the time at the Nassau Coliseum and we never really played New York proper. So, this will be the first time that I've actually played in New York City. So, I'm just going to be very light-hearted about it... I'm coming there to play solo, and I'm bringing my piano player, and we're just going to do some old things and some new things, and have a great time. The legend of that club is a long and storied one, so I'm just hoping that I can contribute something of value to that kind of a history, and give a performance that falls into that kind of category. Because, I know I'm going to have a lot of fans that go, "Oh, the Bottom Line in New York, this is great, this is a historic moment." I think if you worry too much about historic moments, sometimes they end up coming up flat. So, I think the best way to approach it is to be extremely light-hearted about it and not let the thoughts of 9/11 creep into it, or the thoughts of the fact that it's the Bottom Line in New York... you know, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere [laughs]. I think you just gotta forget all that shit and you just gotta do what you do.

KT: Speaking of your old band, what are some of your fondest memories or best achievements from the Triumph days?"

RE: I survived with some of my hopes and dreams intact. I played in many countries, cities, and met some amazing people. I learned a lot about myself, and learned even more about human nature. I got several tons of experience in many things. I bought & paid for a house for my family, a house for my parents, and gave my brother a big jumpstart on buying his first house. I kept a lot of my friends from high school, even though I became a "rock star". I wrote songs that were mostly about positive things, and weren't very often about partying & chasing chicks. I snuck classical guitar pieces and jazzy/bluesy stuff on to hard rock records, and my partners encouraged that. I played the US festival. I played the Heavy Metal Holocaust in England, and saw Randy Rhoads play with Ozzy. I got to meet and play with Steve Morse, and Steve Vai... I worked with the legendary Eddie Kramer. I played on stage one night in Texas with Sammy Hagar and Ted Nugent - at the same time - and survived with my pale Canadian skin intact! I still feel very proud of some Triumph recorded moments - some things from the Just a Game album, and the Allied Forces record... Some of the stuff on Thunder 7... Success in Triumph got me my writing gig with Guitar Player magazine. Success in Triumph got me a chance to record with Alex Lifeson, Ed Bickert, and Liona Boyd. I have fond memories of the early days in Triumph, when we were touring, and travelling together in rental cars and playing "Name the Obscure Original Six Hockey Player from his Initials"... Playing pinball in the old Phase One and Sounds Interchange studios... Playing Name That Tune in crappy dressing rooms while we waited for the road manager to get the paycheck before we'd go on stage... Landing the first record deal with RCA in the States.....And all the cliche moments - the time you first heard one of your songs on the radio - the first time you could step away from the microphone and have thousands of people sing your lyrics back at you... And then later on, the gigs in places like Joe Louis in Detroit, or Reunion Arena in Dallas, or the Horizon in Chicago, The Aud in Buffalo, all the hometown gigs in Maple Leaf Gardens... There were a lot of highlights, a lot of memories, a lot of stories, and a lot of mythology... Maybe someday I should write a book.

KT: Recently you got to jam with a musical idol of yours, George Benson. What was that experience like for you?

RE: Aw, it was amazing. That was a great thrill. You know, that's one of those kind of things where when it's happening you kind of feel like you're just in some kind of dream, you're in some kind of movie, and it's happening but you're not really taking it seriously, and then it's over and you go, "What just happened... that was George Benson up on stage. I was trading licks with George Benson." It was a lot of fun. Fortunately, they had a TV camera there from PBS and they shot some of the stuff, so I been able to see footage of it and go, "Oh, yeah, boy what a knucklehead I am." It was great. Benson is such a complete musician is so many ways. To have a guy like George Benson say, "Oh man, you can sing great, and you can play great," that's a really neat feeling... kind of a validation as an artist and a musician. If I can go toe to toe and trade smiles with George Benson, that's as good as it's ever gonna get. No paycheck can be as sweet as that.

KT: Being an established artist who has gone the indie route, has the Internet been important for you and has it had an impact on your record sales?

RE: Ah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that for me it been a question of having already been around the block a time or two. I know what it's like to be with a major label that's putting on a huge push, spending millions of dollars, and getting your videos on MTV, and making sure you're front-racked in all of the stores. But, the world has changed and the music business has changed, and that kind of game is not one necessarily where... you know, I turned 49 this year. I don't think record companies look to 49-year old guys to be that kind of fodder anymore. The whole industry on that level is driven by being able to sell truck loads of units, and a 49-year old guys who is making eclectic records is not exactly going to be somebody that does that for them [laughs]. So, this aspect of the Internet has been something that has allowed me to be able to pursue my own music and my own vision, and at least be able to sell enough records, and reach enough fans directly, that I can sustain myself and keep doing what I do. That is a fantastic thing. I don't think the Internet is the answer to every man's wish and I think that it has a lot of problems. I think the aspect of digital copywriting, and the fact that people just download at will, with no regard for copyright has done tremendous damage to the value that people perceive in songs, and I think its done tremendous damage to songwriters, and publishers, and you know, very traditional kinds of forms of respecting people's property rights, copyrights. So that's not a good thing. But it is a good thing that there is this way now that you can make music and take it directly to your fans, or your fans can find their way directly to you. People don't realize, they buy a CD for fourteen bucks or twenty bucks, or whatever, however much they spend for it, and they don't realize how much of that is a markup for the retailer, and there's a markup that the record company puts into for all their marketing. So, when I sell a CD for fourteen bucks on my web site, you know, I'm probably getting to keep as much as $10 or $11 or that price, for me. So, does that seem like I'm gouging people? Well, if I'm only selling six CDs, that's not exactly gouging and, in fact, that's what people have to realize about the Internet at this point... I think the truth of the Internet is more that, because it's totally unverifiable, anybody can make any kind of claim about the Internet. They can say, "Oh, yeah man, I sold a million records yesterday," and who's gonna tell you you're a liar [laughs], because it's not like you got SoundScan numbers that are verifying the fact that this happened. I think the truth of the Internet is, that whatever it is that you sell, you sell it to your true fans and your patrons, and because you can keep the lion's share of the revenue from selling those CDs, you don't need to sell a million in order to feed the machine. The machine can be fed, if you can sell a few thousand, you're doing all right, you're doing good and you'll be able to feed your own little machine and make a payday.

KT: I totally agree with you on that. That's what I tell anybody who is starting out that's an indie, or people I know who are putting projects out. You don't need to sell that many to be successful and to make it on your own.

RE: Yeah, that's right. It's still hard, it's a very difficult thing... if you're an indie an nobody knows who you are... you see, it's easier for me, in the sense that, I used to be the guy that used to be the guy. If you're the guy that used to be in Triumph, then you've got certain die-hard fans from the old days... anybody new and young and starting out doesn't necessarily have a history to be able to draw on... I teach a career development course at Humber College to up-and-coming musicians that are studying in essentially a jazz program, although they all realize they're not going to be able to make a living just playing jazz. They gotta be able to play pop, and they gotta be able to play world music, and all kinds of things in order to be able to survive, it's a very eclectic world. In any case, the career course is structured so that they start to realize that, if they can sell 800 records or a 1000 records, that's a significant accomplishment. They have be very careful in the early stages to predicate their business not on the kinds of numbers and the kinds of structuring that's old school kind of thinking. Because, you know, record companies [laughs], they were set-up to be incredibly wasteful. Ninety percent of the stuff that they put out was not successful or lost money. Because, they banked so much on having the big hits, and the big hits pay for all of the mistakes, and cover all the losses, and return the gigantic, huge profits. If you can promote Celine Dion, and you can sell CD number six million, you're making incredible gravy, you're making fantastic profit, but you had to spend a lot of money to start selling a million Celine Dion records, or two million Celine Dion records, and you probably didn't make much money. So, that's the thing that I teach. If you can only sell three hundred CDs, then make the CDs in a way that you can still return a little bit of profit, on selling three hundred or selling a thousand, or selling whatever.

KT: Is it true that fans can book you for a concert themselves and bring you to their hometown and how would someone get involved in that?

RE: They can go to my website, and they can go the concerts section, and click on "book Rik." There's contact information there, and yeah, we try and do that. We have promoter kits that we send out to folks so that they can see what's involved, because it's a pretty heavy-duty undertaking to try and do it properly. But, a lot of the people that have done it find it to be an incredibly rewarding experience, and really enjoy it, and really love it. The concerts themselves, as far as I'm concerned, those are the best concerts I get to play. [laughs] You know those network shows, that's a fantastic little piece of gravy for me, in mid-life to be able to play those kinds of shows for those kinds of people, in those kinds of environments, very intimate and almost sort of interactive kinds of things. It's a little bit of payback for fans, in a way. I think it gives them a chance to rub shoulders, and sit down at the table with the guy who wrote the songs that they really liked from the 70s or 80s, or the new CDs they like from the 21st century. But, I think more important is this personal connection, this ability to really just kind of be myself, and not be a guy who's lost somewhere in a machine, that's really just an image that they get, there's this real kind of intimate interaction.

KT: Rik, you're also well-known as a rock columnist, cartoonist, and instructional author for your guitar instruction series, "For The Love of Guitar". Are there any new writing projects on the horizon and do you still get a chance to draw your "Rocktoons"?

RE: I don't get a chance to draw as much as I would like. I wish that I could cartoon a little more, and sketch and stuff, but life is pretty full for me, especially this time of year. Baseball season is up and running, and I'm coaching again, so that eats up a lot of my time and energy, away from the studio, and the guitar, and gigging and stuff. I just finished a book called "Bric-A-Brac", which came out within the last year, which was sort of more like a collection, a compendium of old things and old lyrics, and stories and poems. I did a little marginalia in there where I was making comments about what I had written before, sort of putting it into perspective. Its got some photos and pictures, so we got a bunch of those, we printed them up and sell them off the site, and we sell them at the live gigs. That's an interesting read, I think not just for fans, but for anybody that might be curious about the process of being a writer, of writing songs, and being in a rock band and what that might do to the creative process sometimes. It is my intention to try and do a little bit more prose writing as I get older. I would like to try and write more stories, and maybe even take a crack at a novel, before I kick off of this earth. But, I know that's also a bit of a cliche, that everybody thinks they're gonna retire and write a novel, but I do think at some point I would like to take a crack at it. Meanwhile, I got so many other musical things that I want to keep accomplishing, just the way that my life runs now, it's pretty full.

KT: As if all this wasn't enough, you're also a successful husband, a father of four, a coach in neighborhood baseball and soccer youth leagues, on the Board of Directors for the Songwriters Association of Canada, and a college professor teaching a Music Career Development course. What do you do in your spare time?

RE: [laughs] Yeah, exactly... well, I guess I do interviews with guys like you.

KT: Rik, you've seen the industry from all sides having been signed to a major label and having been part of a very successful recording and touring band in the 70s and 80s; to your impressive solo career and duties as an indie executive; and everything in between. What advice would you have for someone starting out today in the music business?

RE: Well, first of all advice is a funny thing, and general advice is even more dangerous. You really need to know what you're dealing with before you start giving advice. Here's some of things, if I can encapsulate it, these are some of the truisms that I try and impress upon my students, and anybody when I'm in lecture situations, or seminars and workshops. First of all, every success story is it's own unique story. So, if anybody ever tells you, okay here's the industry standard, here's how things work, start running scared. Because, anybody that says they understand the true nature of God, that's a televangelist that's just trying to take your money, you know what I mean? You better be careful if somebody starts to tell you that they know the truth, because the truth, it changes. You know, I do a thing in my class, where I'll take something like a Coke can and I'll put it on a desk, and I say, "Okay, look at that can." I go, "Tell me what the truth of that can is," and I point to somebody over on the left side of the room, I go, "What's the truth about that pop can?" And, you know, they're a little confused and stuff, and then they start to describe it, and then I go to somebody on the right side of the room, "How about you tell me what the truth is..." and it becomes clear to them then that the truth is just something that comes from a point of view. It comes from a perspective, and that's what reality is. Reality is only a point of view. So, that's the first thing I try to get them to understand, and the next thing is a real cliche, but you gotta be true to yourself. You have to know who you are and what it is you actually really want. This starts to enter into Tony Robbins territory, but, that is a real significant part of it. It has to be your own self-realization that fuels it, or else it's going to be very empty, success is going to make you unhappy because it's not going to give you what you hoped you'd get. You know, you have to know what it is you want before you set about trying to do it. You find all kinds of musicians, and songwriters and artists, who are really happy, centered, good people, and they've never made it to the top-10, and no one knows who they are. I've seen plenty of rock stars that were miserable, awful human beings, you know, fucked up on drugs, because they got into it for all the wrong reasons. Now, having said all that, I've seen some rock stars, they're totally delighted to be all fucked up on drugs. They got into it because they just wanted to be famous. They're like the class-clown, everybody pays attention to them, everybody notices them, but it's a pretty shallow pool that you're splashing around in, if that's what you're doing. So, I just try to get people to figure out what is the depth of the pool they want to work at and I think that's a critical part of it.

KT: Thanks for taking the time out to talk to the Kweevak Music Magazine, Rik. Good luck with the new CD and the Bottom Line show.

RE: Alright man, thank you, it was nice talking to you Richard.

Related Links: For more information on RIK EMMETT and the other organizations mentioned please visit the following links -- RikEmmett.com | RockandRollMachine.net