Rik Emmett’s story with Triumph may have come to an end. But the singer-guitarist and Canadian rock veteran still has plenty of chapters to write. And plenty of tales to tell.
Today, he shares a full 10 — and in more ways than one. In what is easily his most ambitious and multi-faceted project to date, the 71-year-old Emmett has just published Ten Telecaster Tales: Liner Notes For A Guitar And Its Music. Written over the past few years, it chronicles the commission, creation and construction of Emmett’s newest love, a custom-made Telecaster-style guitar, then details the album he wrote and recorded with it. In some ways, the book also serves as a followup to his 2023 memoir Lay It On The Line: A Backstage Pass to Rock Star Adventure, Conflict and Triumph, delving into his life before, during and after his tenure with the arena-rock power trio.
But Ten Telecaster Tales is more than just a set of rock ’n’ roll recollections. To be sure, there are plenty of musical memories to be found in these pages. But that’s just the starting point for a wide-ranging, thought-provoking work that finds Emmett musing and meditating on everything from life and technology to metaphysics and philosophy to art and aging, sometimes flitting from topic to topic in a stream of consciousness. Voiced in a casual, conversational style, it feels like catching up with an old friend over a beer.
A few weeks back, Emmett and I did just that — albeit over Zoom instead of a beer — when I interviewed him for the first time in more than a decade. Come back later in the week to watch that. But first, read this exclusive excerpt from Ten Telecaster Tales, which is out now. And while you’re at it, listen to the simultaneously released album below.
Chapter 2 | The Stories Within The Stories
Within The Story
The stories in this book all began with one story, which began very practically: design a guitar. I was committed to a casual and logical long-term development plan that aimed for the hardware to meet the software of my soft machine. The original question was: could one guitar embody the ergonomics of a lifetime spent developing my preferences? I conceptualized, then consulted with Mike “Smitty” Smyth, the guru of MJS Custom Pickups in Mississauga. My aesthetics of simplicity still mandated enough design features to provide for a range of sounds I would be requiring for tasks that lay just beyond the horizon.
My main concern was ergonomic comfort. Smitty then curated the design of a hybrid electric guitar — a Telecaster shape and style, with a Les Paul’s scale length, bridge height, and neck angle, sporting a Stratocaster’s bar-of-used-soap body sculpting.
Approaching my 70th birthday, I played seated more often than standing, so this imagined guitar needed to float on my thigh — no more than seven pounds. The perfect instrument would feature Smitty’s new zero-hum pickup design, offering a lower output, which yielded a more articulate range of character in its voice.
We took on a teammate. As curator of the project, Smitty recommended Garren Dakessian of Loucin Guitars in Oakville, Ontario, as our custom builder/luthier. The original construction took several months; subsequent tweaks and modifications lasted even longer. As I became more intimate with the aesthetics and subtleties of the guitar, it eventually took on top-of-the-line locking tuners and a black pickguard.
A romantic historical notion concerning Fender Telecasters is that the playing of Roy Buchanan originated the historic obsession with “blackguards,” a single-ply black Bakelite pick-guard on a butterscotch finish. In turn, Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen did their own things to enhance and perpetuate that romantic infatuation. I concur.
But the list of Telecaster champions is long, and my own story about the guitar would not be complete if I didn’t include Ted Greene, Ed Bickert, and more modern standard-bearers like Bill Frisell and Julian Lage. More on them in a bit. As any lifer musician will tell you — new gear can be very inspiring. At the very least, it helps you time-travel back to your youth, when new gear was lusted after and highly cherished. Still — bonding with my new instrument took over a year. During that time, the prevailing question became: what kind of music might this new guitar facilitate?
I began composing and learning the pieces that comprise the Ten Telecaster Tales. In the fall of 2023, I finally settled on the guitar’s nickname: Babs.
Firstly, it’s an acronym — Blackguard And ButterScotch. Secondly — for a while, I’d been calling her “Butter” (for the colour of the finish on the swamp ash body), which morphed into “Buttah,” pronounced like Mike Myers’s SNL character, Linda Richman, in describing Barbra Streisand’s voice.
Streisand’s nickname? Babs. (I’m a big fan. Such a voice.)
So, there it was. Had to be.
