Last time we chatted with Rik Emmett in 2001 the topic was his latest Smooth Jazz album "Handiwork." As we revisit the singer/guitarist the topic turns to his new musical venture the singer/songwriter influenced "Good Faith." There are many touches of Jazz on the new album though like "Beacon Street Hotel," a tale of an imaginary smoked filled seedy bar and "Wicked Miss" about just that an evil temptress. Emmett told us he lost his mother to cancer during the making of "Good Faith" and as the title suggests "there was a concerted effort in the songwriting to try to find positive things. Things that were life affirming" We talked to Emmett via phone on October 2, 2003.

John Beaudin - Hi Rik, How are you doing man?

Rik Emmett - Hi John, nice to talk to you. You've done some nice things for us over the last little while. You've printed some stuff and written some really nice things so thank you.

John - Not a problem. The thing about the new "Good Faith" album that I find interesting is it incorporates the many sides of your personality. Jazz, Pop, Singer/Songwriter and it even touches on a Triumph flavor on the more driving tunes. How long has this album been in the works?

Rik - I guess probably all my life would be one way of answering that question the other way would be to take note that some of the songs like "Spare Change" has been around in various forms for maybe ten years. Other songs like "Way Back Home," "Beacon Street" and "Unconditional Love" all cropped up over the past year and a half. Part of it was in the making of the "Handiwork" CD which as you know was an instrumental album. I don't write and only think of instrumental ideas. So, as I was rolling along with the "Handiwork" album I'll get ideas from wherever they come from and sometimes they're singer songwriter ideas and sometimes just lyric ideas. You know because we are in a demographic kind of time where the more you can pigeon hole it stylistically the better chance you have in the marketplace. The "Handiwork" stuff was all organized into instrumental and the songwriter ideas were put aside and those songs turned into the "Good Faith" CD. I think six or seven came that way and the rest were rewrites and revisions that were around for a while. Once I knew what the core thing was for "Good Faith" and knowing there would be some good acoustic bass.

John - So none of the songs on the last one "Handiwork" were ever going to be vocal songs, right?

Rik - Well maybe but that's hard to say because as I go through the creative process I get to a certain point and I have to make a decision and say, "I'm going to take it in this direction now." It's not like I've ever had lyrics for something and thrown them out. I think anyone who has a musical ear will listen to a song like "Libre Animado" on "Handiwork" and listen to a song like "Way Back Home" on "Good Faith" and see that these two are coming from the same kind melodic , harmonic ballpark. I can hear them saying, "Listen to the way the verses work and then it goes to the relative major in the chorus, he's kind of stolen from himself." (Laughing)

John - (laughing) Hey, you have to keep quiet about that stuff.

Rik - (laughing) No, I think that's really cool. Anyone who's done any studies in college on music will know that Mozart and Hayden and Bach would liberally steal from themselves and besides in that process of doing "Libre Animado" you think okay this is going to go into the Latin direction with percussions where as "Way Back Home" has a different feel and groove. One of them was saying to me, "Hey, play nylon string lead guitar" and the other was saying, "Write some lyrics and sing something." So, they are related but geez you could go way back to the first album and see that one song was in E minor and think this guy writes in E minor a lot. Well, it's the guitar player's favorite key you know. (laughing).

John - You have a Jazzy one on the album with "Beacon Street Hotel."

Rik - You know you could go all the way back to Triumph to songs like "Suitcase Blues" or you can go forward to the "Swing Shift" album with songs like "Mister Bebop." They are songs that have a lot of chord changes in them and came from the whole Joe Pass sound and a guy named Marty Grosz he was more of a tenor guitar player in the really early days of Jazz guitar. I just love that kind of stuff and when I try to come up with one of those it takes me about a year or two to just write them and learn how to play them and sing it at the same time because it's tough for me. It's not something necessarily that comes completely naturally I really have to work at it. Once you get those kinds of songs down they are so much fun to play. Beacon came from a couple of different ideas. We played in Boston and did a live album at Berklee and there is a place called Beacon Street in Boston but there's no hotel there. There was this really crappy of a dive hotel in Toronto called the Edwin Hotel that I had played at even before I was in Triumph. It was a wrong side of the track, bikers, and hooker's kind of place. So "Beacon Street" sort of became a fantasy in my head I just saw this crazy kind of place for musicians and people from the wrong side of the tracks but everybody's having a good time. (Laughing) It's not like it's a terribly, horrible evil place. It's just one of those swing era kind of tunes and we did it as a trio.

John - "Unconditional Love" is probably my favorite song on the album.

Rik - You know that one is influenced by the whole Paul Simon catalog and I've always been a big fan. There was an intention with that to be a story song that names a lot of places and I wanted to name a lot of Canadian places. Like Espanola is a place outside of Sudbury and Manitoba makes an appearance in the song. You know when I was writing some of these songs my mom was very sick with cancer and she eventually passed away but there was a concerted effort in the songwriting to try to find positive things. Things that were life affirming and that was one of the tunes that she really liked and she liked the lyrics on "Way Back Home" a lot too.

John - Nice horns on "Unconditional Love."

Rik - You know originally it wasn't going to have the horns but when I started working it up with Marty Anderson who helped me produce the record he was the guy who really pushed for the horns. So, there was a blend or a real horn section and a sampled horn section as well. Jane Bunnett also played some really neat interesting soprano sax on that.

John - "Butterfly Lullaby" features one of the craziest Canadians, Ian Thomas.

Rik - (laughing) Well, he's a character and a good friend.

John - In the eighties I syndicated a one hour Canadian content foreground show called "The Cross Canada Report" and one of my ex partners Steve Burgess did this interview with Ian that was the funniest thing.

Rik - (laughing) God bless him! I think we're taking the wives out to dinner on Saturday so I still see him socially and hang with him quiet a bit. He's such tremendous company and a sweetheart of a guy. I've said it many time before and I'll say it again I love the guy like a brother. I had gone to see him play and he was doing some dates and he was doing the songwriter kind of tour thing. He was doing gigs with Murray McLaughlin, Marc Jordan, Cindy Church and I had asked him to work with me. Years ago he and I had collaborated and worked on some television shows together and we'd done some co writing together and he was going to produce some tracks. The tracks ended up sounding like Ian Thomas songs with Rik Emmett singing. The process kind of kicked my ass a little bit and I realized I was just being a little afraid here and that I should be trying to find the courage to do this on my own. He had encouraged me and helped me to find my feet as a writer and as a performer. I don't think I would have ever found my way to the records that I have been making in the last few years if I hadn't had his friendship and his support. So, it's a love fest when we talk about each other. (Laughing) He is one of the funniest guys in the world. Dave's (Thomas of SCTV) a funny guy too but Ian has a slightly wicked streak in him because he's had to survive the music business for so many years. (Laughing)

John - I've been a fan of Ian Thomas for years. I grew up in the seventies so I was a child of that era but I've always looked at him of being very underrated.

Rik - Yes but not only that there's something that people don't even realize about Ian is that he has such unbelievable ears on him. People see him joking around, they see him being an MC of an awards show cracking jokes and doing bits but that guys ears are unbelievable.

John - In what sense?

Rik - If someone was playing the piano he could tell you what notes are out of tune. If he was listening to a record he might be able to tell you what EQ unit was used on the bass. He just has unbelievable ears. He hears music on a much higher level than most people do. That's not to say that he could do Jazz arranging on the same level as Gil Evans could but if he decided that he wanted to spend some time to learn how to write those charts he easily has the ears to be able to do that. He would be the Canadian equivalent of let's say if you took Becker and Fagan of Steely Dan and glued their brains together that's the kind of brain that Ian has when it comes to music. He hears things on such an unbelievable, clean, pristine kind of level. He's very analytical and that's why his records always sound like they do. You could eat off them.