Triumph, April Wine
Smart Financial Centre
May 22, 2026
Canadian rockers Triumph always occupied a kind of liminal space with regard to their rock and roll peers. Songs about the magic power of music and holding onto your dreams cast them as more congenial than many of their ’70s and ’80s counterparts. At the same time, their material was less opaque than Rush, their fellow power trio from the Great White North.
There’s not much I can say about these rock stalwarts that my colleague Classic Rock Bob didn’t cover in his interview with singer/guitarist Rik Emmett. The band is currently in the middle of their 50th anniversary “Rock and Roll Machine Reloaded” tour. They played Smart Financial Centre last night with just two of their original lineup (Emmett and drummer/vocalist Gil Moore). Mike Levine, the band’s original bassist and keyboard player, is sidelined with health issues.
The band took the stage last night bolstered by Phil X (guitar), Todd Kerns (bass), and Brent Fitz (drums, keyboards). In addition to looking like 1989-era Skid Row, the extra guys lent their voices to several songs. Kerns offered a reasonable facsimile of Emmett’s yowl on “Spellbound” and “Follow Your Heart,” for example. And Phil X sang lead on excerpts of “Little Texas Shaker” and Zep’s “Black Dog.”
But first up were fellow Canadians April Wine. Their music is familiar to classic rock fans and early MTV viewers alike (“Sign of the Gypsy Queen” got a lot of airplay prior to the Rise of the Video Pretty Boys). I didn’t realize until yesterday that none of the original lineup are currently part of the band, though guitarist Brian Greenway has been in the lineup since 1977. Founding member Myles Goodwyn handed over vocal duties to Marc Parent in 2022, before passing away a year later.
They’re a disparate bunch, with the bald, leather-clad Parent taking the lion’s share of vocal duties. In my hunt for musical analogs, Parent was like Right Said Fred with talent, Meanwhile, Greenway looks like R.E.M.’s Mike Mills. Bassist Richard Lanthier resembles American Movie’s Mark Borchardt, while I dubbed bandana-clad drummer Roy Nichol “Hulkamania.”
But they were good! April Wine’s 10-song set consisted of several straight ahead rockers. “I Like To Rock” featured a nice “Hair of the Dog” outro, and Greenway stepped in for a boisterous “Before the Dawn.” However, I must once again insist on an immediate moratorium on septuagenarians singing about teenage girls (“Right Down To It”).
They closed with a solid trifecta: “Just Between You and Me,” “Sign of the Gypsy Queen,” and “Roller.” They played with what the French (Québécois?) call joie de vivre, and made the most of their foreshortened stage.
Triumph, the only band to give Judas Priest a run for their money in the “shiny chrome logo” department, rocketed out of the gate with a quintain of their biggest songs. “When the Lights Go Down,” from 1983’s Never Surrender, was the first up. It was followed by “Somebody’s Out There,” the band’s last charting single. They continued spreading the love among eight of their ten releases with “Spellbound” (Thunder Seven), “Hold On” (Just A Game), and “Allied Forces” (duh).
Emmett, Moore, and company then elected to switch things up, with variable results. Call it personal bias, but “Blinding Light Show” has always been a little to “Stonehenge-y for my tastes. Especially not the extended jam version, though Emmett did bust out the double-neck for the occasion. “Rock and Roll Machine” did show that Emmett can still shred, even if the various solos might have overstayed their welcome.
My distaste for their cover of Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” is also legitimate, if not entirely fair (I can never disassociate it from a pukey car ride home I took after a Halloween party in college). The band also shouted out Levine, which was nice. Still, if they’d cut out all the noodling around they could’ve played four more songs.
The show got back on track with “Never Surrender,” which led into a rollicking “Lay It On the Line.” Emmett prefaced show closer “Magic Power” by talking about the desire for hope, while giving credit to the audience for getting his fat ass (his words) off the couch.
Touring after you hit your 70s (Emmett is 72, Moore 73) is nothing to sneeze at. And 50-year anniversaries are impressive as hell. That they’re still able to go out and play several shows a week is an achievement of its own.
A triumph, if you will.
Personal Bias: I may or may not have drawn the Allied Forces logo on my junior high book covers. You can’t prove anything.
The Crowd: No longer so young, significantly less wild, but still somewhat free. Kinda.
Overheard In The Crowd: “I remember 1981…”
Random Notebook Dump: “Remember this moment, kids: you will never again see three dudes simultaneously playing Flying V guitars.”
SET LIST
When the Lights Go Down
Somebody’s Out There
Spellbound
Hold On
Allied Forces
Blinding Light Show
Rock & Roll Machine
Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh cover)
Never Surrender
Lay It on the Line
24 Hours a Day (Snippet)
Follow Your Heart
Magic Power
ENCORE
I Live for the Weekend
Fight the Good Fight
