One of my biggest guitar and vocal hero's over the last 30 years has been Rik Emmett. I finally met him last night here in London after a concert he did playing Woodstock music. Hell of a nice guy.

For those of you who are not familier with his stunning guitar work, follow this link for a taste of him at the US festival in 1983 infront of 300,000 people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNhw1Ln9g4o

Check out what is to be a 20min guitar solo at 3:30 of the clip.



paul

One of my favorite bands back in the day, saw them in concert back in the early 80's..

Hmm, took him about 2 minutes to actually start playing something that resembled music. I'm not sure i could watch 20 minutes of the same.

Great you met your hero though. I'm more of a hockey fan.

Rik is quite a humble guy from what I've seen on our local TV. He seems quite down to earth for the type of industry he's a part of. I believe he's been doing alot of classical type music lately, as well as writing for some of the guitar magazines. He's a great singer as well.

Chess, you must be some musician then...

Nah just a critic.

After Rik left Triumph in very late 80's, he had 3 solo pop albums that did quite well (although no where near the sucess as with Triumph). He then started working on more blues and classical based guitar centered works. Last year he met up with Mike Shotton (drummer) to create a band called Airtime and put out a long awaited rock / hard rock album. He was also inducted into the Canadian Rock and Roll hall of fame with the other two Triumph members (Gil Moore and Mike Lavine). He reuinted with Triumph last summer to do one rock festivel in Sweden and one in the southren US. He said they may do a summer tour as Triumph in 2009.

And yes, very humble. I saw him play in a hockey arena in Lucan Ontario infront of about 30 people, not kidding, 30 people. I was expecting him to do a ho hum show due to the poor tournout. However, out of the 11 or so times I have seen him, that was probably one of the best shows he ever put on. So yes, humble is a great word to describe him.

paul