FTV: No More Tours!

 

     When we reviewed Rik Emmett’s autobiography back in 2025 (FTV:  Lay It On The Line 2-5-25), we took note that he spent a lot of time telling long-time Triumph fans that there would be no more tours from this iconic Canadian trio.  The reasons included a) he has had some health problems, b) they are all getting too old for this young man’s game, c) he was having too much fun doing his own solo things, and d) it would take away from his family time.  A year later, an expanded and invigorated Triumph is doing just what he said they would never do again – touring.  Not a couple of one-off shows.  A full tour with all the bells and whistles.

     When Rush drummer Neil Peart walked away from the band after they celebrated their 40th anniversary with their massive R40 tour, not everybody was happy.  Neil was, but Alex Lifeson (guitar) and Geddy Lee (bass / keyboards) hoped that after taking a well earned break, a rested Neil would want to come back.  They said all the right stuff publicly (“Neil needs a break, it has been a long road, he was having some health issues, etc”) but in private they were frustrated about his decision to step away after the last show in August of 2015.  It took some time, but Lifeson and Lee eventually accepted Peart’s decision saying, “That’s life – no hard feelings.  The man certainly earned a break from the madding crowd.”  Of course, when Neil passed away from glioblastoma in 2020, the whole ‘will they tour again?’ question became moot.  Who could ever replace this irreplaceable cog in the Rush machine?  Cut to 2026 and you won’t have a hard time guessing where they are at this moment . . . on tour.

     After Emmett had already convinced himself that a Triumph reunion, let alone a tour, would never happen again, he was as surprised as anyone with what transpired.  Guitar World’s Andrew Daly interviewed Rik for GW Vol 40 No 7 and said, “Emmett was shocked by the wave of love and adoration that came his way.”  Emmett told Daly, “I had no idea there would be this kind of hunger.  There really is an appetite for nostalgia.”  There are some caveats to this undertaking.  Daly continued, “This version of Emmett’s band isn’t your father’s Triumph.  The group is dropping the power-trio format by adding Toronto-born Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X to the mix.  Phil X joined Triumph when Rik left the band in the early Nineties, thus becoming the only guitarist besides Emmett to play and record with the band.”  Also along for the ride this time are Slash solo-band veterans Brent Fitz (drums) and Todd Kerns (bass/vocals).  Drummer Gil Moore and Emmett will be full time participants but original bass/keys player Mike Levine has been sidelined by his own health issues.  Levine may or may not make some of the live shows, but the band will still pay tribute to him even if he is not physically there.

     Emmett made light of the aging band thing when he told Daly, “I think a lot of people are thinking, ‘Oh, my God, they’re defying reality.  Will Emmett make it to the end of the tour?’  I am curious too!  I’m kind of going, ‘We’ll see!’”  After beating a cancer diagnosis in 2024 (he is now cancer free) and with arthritis in his hands, Rik decided that the only way to play it out was to get into shape and see what happens.  “It might prove to be too much for a 72-year-old guy,” he says.  “I feel like if I get myself in shape over the next few months and we get the script together the way I really like it, we’ll be fine.  It’s a marriage of a rock band and technology now.  We’ve got screens, lights, pyro, lasers, and all this stuff.  It takes a lot of coordination, and I think it’s going to be fun.”

     Hockey started the ball rolling back in 2025 when Triumph played a short set for the Edmonton Oilers on the outdoor plaza at their arena during the Stanley Cup finals.  This was the first time they played with the expanded Fitz / Phil X / Kerns line up and afterwards, Emmett said, “It was fun and we kind of went, ‘This could work, you know?’  And then Live Nation is saying, ‘We think we could make this work.  Do you wanna put some shows up for sale?’”  When Phil X joined them again at Triumph’s induction into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in October of 2025, it got much harder to ignore how good it felt to play the Triumph catalog live again.  Rik concluded, “I know I’ve said this would never happen, so I’m sitting around laughing at the fact that I’ve turned myself into a liar [laughs].  I didn’t imagine it would happen, but it’s been kind of a circumstance of serendipity.  They started playing Lay It On the Line at NHL events (the reason the Oilers invited them to play during the playoffs), and Gil Moore started making noise, saying ‘I wanna put out a big tour, but it’s gonna be virtual.’”

     Yes, you read that right – virtual.  Moore’s first thought was, “We can spend a day filming in front of green screens and construct a virtual concert experience from there.”  The only problem?  They had way too much fun playing live to not take the show on the road.  Adjustments have been made along the way.  For example, Emmett’s twin neck Gibson guitar was always a big part of their live show as a trio, but at his current age, it is too heavy to play for any length of time.  Known for his stratospheric vocals, he now has back up from Kerns and Phil X.  The synergy of playing guitar with Phil X has also helped him find a well of energy that he didn’t think he had any more.  Will one tour suffice?  Only time will tell and they are rightly taking it one show at a time and just enjoying the ride.

     Triumph’s expanded line up seems to be one of the keys to their live success.  Rush, however, had a bigger problem with the absence of Neil Peart behind the drum kit.  How does one replace Neil Peart?  After Peart passed, the band did some one off performances (like the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts) with several well known drummers stepping in to perform with Lee and Lifeson.  Since then, they have been approached by other drummers they refused to name about filling Peart’s shoes.  They weren’t looking for a new drummer and were a bit put off by the thought of somebody offering to join up. 

      In the meantime, Lee and Lifeson busied themselves with other projects.  Geddy wrote three books and discovered, “It was very gratifying.  It taught me that instead of banging out notes, I can bang out words.  It sent me down a different path.”  That path produced Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass (2018), My Effin’ Life:  From Holocaust Roots to Rock and Roll Stardom (2023), and 72 Stories:  From the Baseball Collection of Geddy Lee (2023).

     Lifeson posted a couple of solo instrumentals on line (Kabul Blues and Spy House) before putting together a non-touring alt-rock group called Envy of None.  They released a self-titled album in 2022 and a follow up (Stygian Wavz) in 2025.  Alex said when he and Geddy played with Primus and then at the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows, it gave them a chance to also honor Neil Peart.  He told Daly, “To play our songs again with some other brilliant musicians, it showed us that our music is still alive.”  Still, the prospect of touring with a different drummer hung over them until Lee’s bass tech, John ‘Scully’ McIntosh tipped them off about drummer Anika Nilles.  They did a Zoom call with her and pitched the idea of having her play with Rush  if they went on the road again.  She replied in the affirmative and flew over to spend a week testing the waters.

     Nilles bonafides were not in question.  She is a German composer, producer, and music educator who happens to also be a ‘virtuoso drummer’ as one would have to be to tour with the late Jeff Beck.  On the last day of her introductory visit (it wasn’t really looked at as an audition), Lee said, “Alex and I looked at each other and went, ‘Wow, I think we have a drummer – now what do we do?’”  Obviously the long term layoff meant they had to work out the kinks before attempting anything like a full blown tour.

     One of Lifeson’s major kinks was his health.  His guitar chops were still up to the task but he  had to have stomach surgery to correct a hiatal hernia.  The procedure resulted in gastroparesis.  The muscles in his stomach would not move the food properly through his system so it wasn’t being properly digested.  After attending a wellness clinic in Austria, he learned to manage this chronic condition.  This meant a change in lifestyle;  no more alcohol, smoking, gluten, lactose, and junk food.  With things more under control, he and Geddy began getting together to jam.  The old friends had a blast and in short order, they began jamming on old Rush tunes.  It took some time before they warmed up to the idea of touring again.  Finding Anika put them at the tipping point where they would have to make a decision.

     Geddy said it was Al who first said, “Let’s play a Rush song for fun and see if we can remember it without doing any homework.  Of course, we could only remember parts of them.  That’s kind of how it started.  I think Al remembers Freewill as being the first song we tried.  Sometimes, we’d pull up the song and play along with it just to see what it sounded like.  That would help you remember all the things you forgot.”  Lee said getting his bass finger chops back in the game was no walk in the park, but they still had fun running through their old songs.  After that first jam, they began challenging each other when they would get together:  “Can you remember this one?  We would end sessions with a little sheepish grin and ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing here?  Are we quietly tricking each other into going back on the road?’”  Again, this transpired well before they had any drummer in mind to take it a step further.

     Lifeson acknowledged that he was not healthy enough to even think about touring at the beginning of 2025.  Once they began talking about it, they realized jamming a few songs is a far cry from playing forty songs in a show.  Alex says, “It was gradual.  When we started really sounding good together again, like more recently, when I could see a faint light at the end of the tunnel, it almost turned a switch on for me.  I went from having self-doubt and not being really positively sure that I really wanted to do it . . . but I’d made the commitment.  It was at that moment that I realized that, yes, this is going to be a good thing.  It’s going to be a good thing for me personally and for us.  It all comes back to you.  Muscle memory is a mysterious thing, but it’s beautiful.”

     Geddy had Anika’s name in mind because she had been mentioned to him by Scully.  He said, “We didn’t really know where to begin to look when it was time to choose a drummer.  We started with Anika because she had been recommended to me, and I had done some research on her.  I loved her vibe and her diverse style, and I had her in mind in case I was going to do some kind of project.  We didn’t have a list.  We never, ever accumulated a list of drummers.  When Al and I finally said, ‘Okay, I guess we’re getting serious.  Who’s going to sit in that impossible seat?’  How do you ask someone to replace a guy who’s irreplaceable?  It’s daunting.  We started with the name that was already on my mind.  We called her, she came, and we hit it off.”

     Lee expanded upon what they saw in Nilles:  “She brought a lot to the table, but more than her chops, more than her guts and her willingness to sit in that hot seat, she brought an intelligence and a story.  I love her story.  This is someone who grew up in Germany in a family of musicians.  Her dad was a drummer.  She’s played drums her entire life.  She doesn’t even remember the first time she picked up sticks.  It’s who she is.  I thought ‘Wouldn’t that be nice to bring in someone so fresh in our midst to inspire Al and me?’  She is younger than us, and she likes to remind us of that.  Every time we tell a story about a gig in 1971, she goes, “Wow.  I wasn’t even born yet.’”

     Will the fans embrace her?  So far, the fans love her and Geddy wants to see that continue:  “They’re going to scrutinize her, and she’s up for it.  I just love that about her.”  Lifeson knew she was good and seemed to have a good grasp of the songs but it wasn’t until the last day of that first week together that things really meshed.  He says, “And then after that, it’s just been better progressively through the whole year of rehearsals we’ve been doing.”  Lee adds, “We went to that last day with an open mind, but a little doubt.  And song after song we played with her, she just killed it.  I mean, she understood all those little things that Alex and I had been telling her all that week.”

     There is one thing both Triumph and Rush have in common for their respective tours.  Rush is bringing along Loren Gold as a touring keyboardist.  As Geddy explained it, “People will come in and see the stage setup and see it’s not a trio.  It’s not Rush 2.0.  It’s a new time and we’ve got a different vibe, but the music is treated respectfully.

      Neither band is making promises beyond 2026, but as Fats Waller used to say, “One never knows, do one?” 

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