Leaning Into It with Triumph’s Rik Emmett

If Rik and his publicist Emily Varsava are reading this, I owe them a huge apology. First, while recording this interview a few weeks back, my computer shut down, not once, but twice. I was told by the engineers that corporate was doing some sort of update. Rik, being the great guy that he is, hung on the line each time it went off until we agreed to finish the interview at a future date. That day came earlier this week. When I went to log in, I didn't see the Zoom link and assumed I forgot to send it to Emily. I hurriedly rushed her a link, only to figure out that I somehow made a Zoom link using my personal email and sent that to Rik, who had logged in. By the time I figured it out, Rik had logged off. Completely my fault, and very unprofessional on my part. Apologies to Rik and Emily.

Being huge hockey fans, I had to start by asking Rik about the Team U.S.A. gold medal victory. "You know, I'm a good Canadian, and so I was watching, and it was heartbreaking for us, and, you know, lovely for you guys. But, you know, there's a thing, too, about sports and stuff, and I write about this a little bit in, I was aiming at it when I was writing in the Leaning Into It poetry book, but the stuff I've been writing a little bit more lately has gotten into it, which is the idea of pride and humility and how, you know, there's certain things that institutionalized pride. Oh, we have to have, you know, pride in our country, pride in our symbols, our flag, our, you know, the maple leaf in my case, you know, and I get it, and I do like it, and, you know, my guitar straps, I don't know if you can see this here, like, well, I'm going out on tour.
Like, I'm going to wear it. I'm going to have a certain amount of pride."

He went on, "Now, you know, now you're making yourself look like a bit of an asshole if you rub it too much in other people's faces, you know? And so, this is a thing where the difference between Canadians and Americans, it might become fairly obvious because, like, you know who I really liked in hockey? I really liked Stevie Yzerman. Yeah. He would score a goal, and he would not even raise his stick. He would just look at the other guys on his line and kind of give him a little fist pump, like, yeah, all right. Okay, let's get back to business. And I go, man, that's my kind of guy."

That's a great analogy. I mean, we got to watch the great Barry Sanders for years here in Detroit.

While Rik gets ready to hop back on the Triumph train this summer, May 30th at Freedom Hill, he's dropping his book of poetry called Leaning Into It on April 7th. He started this during the COVID lockdowns. "I did a lot of the writing then. And so, there's this weird thing about books. They're even worse than albums. I used to hate, you know, the Triumph days when you'd make a record, but it would take, you know, months before it would finally come out. And then you're touring on it, but you're going, Well, I'm already writing new songs, you know. So, poetry, it's like, oh, my God, I wrote these things, you know, three years ago, four years ago, and they're finally coming out. And you go, won't it have lost some of its topicality and its currency? And, you know, like all of those kinds of things. I go, well, you know, and my editor will say, no, no, when you write a poem, it's for all time."

How does he explain this project to someone? "Well, the easiest way in is through the title. So, it's called Leaning Into It. So, what is it, you know, like when I wrote my memoir, it was Lay It On The Line. And you say, okay, what is it, you know, what is it that you're laying on the line? And you go, well, it's the truth. It's honesty. That's the "it". So, now when I'm leaning into it, sometimes we're just leaving the SH off the word. Because, you know, there's an awful lot of stuff that I find very first, like, you know, I'll be honest with you. I make art, you know, I make commercial art. I write songs. I write books. I hope people will buy them, you know. But I do art because I'm trying to express things that are my frustrations about not just the world, but the people that inhabit it."

Rik wrapped up the analogy of him, a rock star, writing a book of poetry like this, "Leonard Cohen is probably the greatest Canadian example of all, where an extremely legit poet who then was, you know, wasn't such a great singer, but, you know, he won male vocalist. So, like, I think there was one, there's a famous thing where Cohen was the record company guy, saying, Leonard, we know you're good. We just don't know if you're actually any good!"

Phil X and I (Meltdown) share the same birthday, March 10th, which was the day before I recorded this interview. When I brought that up, Rik told me about his relationship with the former Triumph singer, whom he'd met for the first time at a guitar clinic. "You know, I'd never met him personally. But when I did meet him, and I was shaking his hand, I pulled him in close. I go, Phil, I just want to wish you all the luck in the world because there's nobody on the planet earth that knows what you're stepping into more than me. So, you know, good luck to you. And, so I, you know, I've, I've always liked them and respected his talent and his ability. And it's just a great joy to get to play with him."

Grab Rik's new book of poetry on April 7th, and make sure to see him and the band out on tour this summer....I'm going to!