Rik Emmett sees himself as a caretaker – a musical caretaker.

No, he doesn’t go around cleaning up stages after bands or vacuuming recording studios. The 54-year-old guitarist sees himself as having a responsibility for preserving the legacy of the music he created for 14 years as a member of one of Canada’s most successful hard rock bands, Triumph.

For part of the early 1980s, Emmett and bandmates Gil Moore and Mike Levine were one of the top touring acts in the world, with a string of hits beginning with Rock and Roll Machine, through Lay It On The Line, I Live for the Weekend, Magic Power, Never Surrender, Follow Your Heart and Somebody’s Out There.

Emmett left the band in 1988 and put out his first solo record, Absolutely, in 1990. A dozen or so solo albums later, including dalliances into the realms of smooth jazz, blues, classical and folk music, Emmett has come full circle, playing a number of dates each year focusing on Triumph material.

He will be bringing such a show to Random Ranch on Thursday, Dec. 6, on a bill that also includes Honeymoon Suite.

In an interview with the Advance back in January, Emmett, who played at the Gryphon Theatre Feb. 2, doing an Eric Clapton tribute show, talked about rediscovering his inner rock star, and embracing the fact that he is best known for his incendiary guitar licks and intense, passionate hard rock tunes like the aforementioned Magic Power, Fight The Good Fight and Never Surrender.

“What is a rock star, really? I watch these shows like Cribs and you see (Motley Crue singer) Vince Neil’s house, and you see the way the guy acts and you see his wife who is a Playboy bunny, who looks like she’s made out of plastic, and the house looks like it’s made out of plastic and his world looks like it’s made out of plastic,” he told the Advance recently.

“And I don’t mean to put the guy down, because I’m sure that he’s as real as anybody else. It’s just that it’s a surreal real. And there are people like that, the guys who are sort of the rock star clichés … and I never really was that. I could play at it … I certainly didn’t mind being up on stage, delivering the goods on that level, but I never really took the whole rock star thing very seriously.

“But I had denied that part of me for a long period of time, or at least sort of intentionally pushed it over to the side of the plate and not really indulged it in any kind of large way,” Emmett explained.

He jokingly wondered whether he even had the stamina and strength to play the rock star for any length of time.

“For example, I went down to the Gibson Lounge (a Toronto guitar store) and I picked up a double-neck (guitar) because I’ve got a gig and the gig is sort of a trip down memory lane … and I haven’t played a double neck in years, but I’ve made this deal with Gibson and they’ve got all these nice guitars and I’m like, ‘can I borrow one of those Gibson double necks?’” he said.

“So I brought it home and I wore it for about three-and-a-half minutes and, wow, my neck and shoulders were really sore. I’m not too keen on the weight of this thing.

“I’m thinking, ‘man, I used to wear these things all the time. I used to jump around and run around on stage with them. What kind of idiot was I?’”

He said part of the rock and roll attitude is related through the intensity of the music and the performance.

“It’s much more of a hormonal intensity than an intellectual one. Maybe that’s the defining thing, you know, when you try to revisit your inner rock star, you realize that, hormonally, ‘maybe I need some Viagra to do this,’” Emmett said with a laugh.

The music Emmett penned for Triumph has always had a positive vibe to it. Even the song titles refer to overcoming obstacles, sticking to your guns in the face of adversity, and the power of love and music. Never Surrender, Fight the Good Fight, Magic Power, Hold On, and Lay It On The Line, are all about building the listener up, and not bringing the listener down.

Lyrically, Emmett always preferred to take this high road approach to his songs.

“There’s all kinds of music out there nowadays that’s like that. It’s bleak and it’s dark and it’s pessimistic and, yes, it reflects society, and, yes, it reflects our cold, ironic age and all that kind of stuff, but that wasn’t what ever really interested me in music,” Emmett said.

“For me, I wanted music to be something that kind of put a candle in the window. When I’m doing adjudications, or listening to people, kids in college and they’re playing these kinds of songs … I go, ‘jeez, I can tell you’re a great musician and you’ve got some talent and everything like that, but can’t you just light a candle and put it in the window for me, because your song is so dark, and it leaves me feeling like, bitter or sad.’

“And I didn’t want to ever think that’s what I was doing, that at the end of the night, people were leaving my show going, ‘whoa, I just want to kill myself,’ or ‘my God, isn’t life bleak and horrible. Yeah, I think I should divorce that person, and I think I should get some drugs in a hurry.’”

Emmett says it’s quite possible his early exposure to music in school and church choirs has been reflected in the uplifting tone of his own compositions.

“And I’ve heard Elton John talk about this too, where a lot of his influence comes from hymns that he picked up through the Church of England. So you end up trying to have songs that end up having that kind of positive quality to them,” he said.

“And as Triumph became more successful, I really liked the fact that we were the band that wore white and had white guitars. We weren’t wearing black leather and studs, just falling into the clichés that so many other heavy bands did.”

There must be something to that philosophy of songwriting because Emmett’s Triumph tunes are still the soundtrack to many people’s youth. They have become more meaningful than mere songs, and Emmett realizes there is a sort of responsibility to honour the legacy of songs like Magic Power and Hold On.

This is where the caretaker aspect comes into the play.

“I knew that once the band became popular and songs became successful you are becoming, to use the cliché, part of the soundtrack of somebody’s life now. So they’re always going to have an investment, an emotional investment in that,” Emmett said.

“But that old rock stuff, it’s stood the test of time … it must have something, because lots and lots of stuff dies and doesn’t last. If this does then, okay, I must have got something right.”

He finds the seemingly undying loyalty of Triumph fans and fans of his solo work, and the affinity they have for his songs very humbling.

“So here I am. I’m the caretaker of these tunes, and I’ve got to try and do that best I can with them,” he said.

Emmett’s détente with the two other members of Triumph, Moore and Levine is also continuing. Emmett is now included on the band’s official website www.triumphmusic.com, and the triumvirate has discussed the possibility of a full-fledged reunion.

Things started rolling late last year when it was announced the band was being inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, and the three musicians got together, face to face, for the first time in 18 years.

“I’m not saying that we’ve resolved every issue - we certainly didn’t - but we just decided that we won’t make an issue out of those issues any more. They’re gone, forget them. Let’s just move forward,” he said.

From the moment Emmett, Levine and Moore began getting together, inevitable offers came from promoters looking to book a reformed Triumph.

“Gil, he’s not even in playing shape, and he’s got a huge business that he’s running: a big PA production company … and he’s got the studio (Metalworks), and he’s got the (recording) school.

So he said, ‘look, the earliest I could even dream about something would be May of 2009.’ So we said, ‘okay, good.’ So there’s no pressure. He said, ‘I’d have to spend months trying to get myself back into playing shape, and get my cardio back up to a point where I could actually cut it,” he said.

Emmett added that if a reunion were to happen in 2009, it would have to be done in such a way that it was both fun and financially worthwhile.

“We have to do it in a way that it will be really fun, that we’ll be able to do it first-class, and we’ll be making lots of money and having lots of fun, and there’ll be no pressure, and it’ll be just like the old days, only the good parts of the old days.”

Emmett’s return to his rock roots is about more than just nostalgia.

He and fellow musician/singer/songwriter Mike Shotten formed a band called Airtime, a melodic, progressive rock project, and released their first album, Liberty Manifesto, earlier this month.

It is Triumph-like, in that there is a combination of pounding rockers, inspirational tunes and thought-provoking lyrics, and startling production.

But there won’t be any Airtime tunes at the Barrie show.

For tickets to the Rik Emmett/Honeymoon Suite concert, which is presented by BEMO.ca, ROCK 95 and 107.5 KOOL FM, at Randon Ranch, call 1-866-943-8849, on go online to www.ticketbreak.com.

They can also be purchased at NBX Action Sports, 19 Hart Dr., Ranchwear, 8 Collier St., at Random Ranch, 56 Bayfield St., or at Liquid Chrome, 11 Dunlop St.

For more information on Emmett, visit www.rikemmett.com

-    Jim Barber is the Arts, Sports and Lifestyles Editor for the Barrie Advance. Contact him at jbarber@simcoe.com.