Drummer Gil Moore of Triumph tells Nestor about the second leg of the most unlikely tour coming to Baltimore on November 21st and all of the history of a Canadian band that still inspires, rocks and brings the rock and roll machine to life with fresh energy and great songs.

The discussion previewed Triumph‘s second tour leg and what fans can expect from the Baltimore show.

Tour Update

• Gil said the band added 16 shows after a strong first leg, bringing the run close to 60 total shows.
• The current lineup with Rick, Phil X, Brent, and Todd came together after a Stanley Cup playoffs appearance led to rehearsals that proved the live format worked.
• Gil said the extension was driven by strong audience response, band chemistry, and demand from cities the band had not yet played.

Show Plans

• Gil said the second leg will add more lasers, pyro, archival footage, and some old-school effects while continuing the newer visual presentation.
• A second documentary is in progress, focused on the reloaded band and behind-the-scenes tour footage, with a target release in 2027.
• Open question: after the tour, will Triumph continue touring or make new recordings? Gil said that remains undecided.

Action Items

Outline

Second Tour Leg

• Gil said the first leg exceeded expectations, which led to 16 additional dates.
• Baltimore is part of the new run, scheduled for November 21 at CFG Bank Arena.
• The band sees the added leg as a way to reach loyal cities missed earlier.

Band Formation

• The live lineup expanded from an initially unplanned reunion tied to an NHL appearance.
• Phil X helped assemble Brent and Todd, and Gil said the chemistry formed quickly.
• Gil emphasized that the positive dynamic among band members and families was a major reason to continue touring.

Show Production

• Gil discussed combining newer visual content with archival footage and classic production elements.
• The second leg will include more lasers, pyro, and some older effects that were not practical on the first run.
• He framed the production as a mix of modern technology and classic Triumph stage identity.

Documentary And Future

• A second documentary is being recorded to show both performances and backstage access from a fan perspective.
• Gil said the team hopes to release it in 2027 and will keep filming on the second leg.
• He also mentioned plans to release archival live bootlegs, while future touring and new recordings remain undecided.

Nestor Aparicio 0:00
NST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We’re Baltimore positive, positively stoked that Triumph is coming back to Baltimore CFG Bank Arena. It’s on November the 21st. We chat with Rick Emmett. We’ve had these guys on and about, and I go back to interviewing Mike back in 19. This is it Thunder 719, 8687 at the Baltimore Civic Center. Gil came on in the middle of the tour earlier in the year. He’s back for a few minutes here to visit. How are you, round two? I knew it was coming because I follow your social media.

Gil Moore 0:32
Yeah, yeah, Nestor. I I can’t tell you how excited the band is, and you know how the first leg was just you know was overwhelming. How how positive the vibe was in the audience in the dressing room on the bus everywhere that you can imagine you know in the airports it was just it was a love fest the whole thing and you know it was hard to say no to Live Nation when they wanted to extend it because we knew there were you know great cities that have been really loyal to Triumph that we hadn’t played yet, and you know it’d be nice if we could just play every single city, but and retrace our entire history. Of course, we’re doing our best. We added 16 more. We did 27 the first round, so yeah, we’re we’re we’re getting up there in numbers. It’s close to 60 shows.

Nestor Aparicio 1:17
Getting this thing together and your vision of a show, and I go back to the Triumph shows from 40 years ago, and I’ve seen the documentary and know you, your dad, your business, and what you’ve done. You were dreaming up a Triumph thing for a long time, right? Like I’ve seen Getty and Alex recently, and they were dreaming up what their thing would be if they ever did it again. You did all of this dreaming without knowing whether Rick was ever going to do it, right?

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Gil Moore 1:43
Well, I didn’t think I was going to do it. Never mind Rick. So we laugh about it now because you know Rick’s. It’s like, oh, I was saying no. I said no. I said no. We’re arguing about who said no first, right? Well, it’s a big laugh because I was moving on this whole thing for mixed reality, which I talked about in tons of interviews, and it it’s still something that you know that that I’m working on in the background. But we we didn’t realize it fell together. We didn’t realize we would have a live band. Rick, I called Rick to say, look, the NHL wants us to play on the Stanley Cup playoffs. Why don’t we just bring our like wives and kids and just kind of like make like a vacation out of it for a day or two, and we both love hockey, of course, and so it was. It was never planned to be, you know, a tour, a band, or anything like that. But we got out to out to Edmonton, and and you know, we rehearsed with with Brent and Todd and Phil, and it was like after the first, you know, like hour of playing, we’re looking at each other in the rehearsal hall, and we’re going, “Hey, man, this is good. Like, this could be something. How did you find

Nestor Aparicio 2:46
those guys? Because I don’t know that story, even as a fan. I I’ve watched some interviews and stuff, but where did they come up from? The I mean, out of the cosmos on a week’s notice, kind of, sort of, right?

Gil Moore 2:56
So, so if you think about, yeah, the history of Phil and I, like, Phil is from my neighborhood, so Phil and I, you know, were buddies before Triumph ever. Before he joined Triumph, after Rick left Triumph, Phil and I’ve been buddies for you know decades and decades and decades. So the first guy, the how it came together is I phoned Phil and I said, “Hey, Rick and I are going to go do this. Like we we could do it, you know, kind of like mutt and Jeff and just you know do acoustic or whatever and make fools of ourselves, or maybe we should do something more sensible and like put some guys together and like do some hard rock, and so we joked around a little bit and I said I don’t know how we would do that and Phil was like yeah I know how we’ll do it and Phil said we’re gonna bring Brent and Todd and you know was Rick and I just trusted Phil, and of course we met Brent and Todd, and we just we just fell in love with those guys. I mean, they are phenomenal players, phenomenal musicians, but phenomenal people, as Phil is. So we just formed this brotherhood that just freaking came together like a, you know, a bucket of glue had been thrown on all five of us, and and here we are. It’s like that’s a true story. Well, you’re still wired this way,

Nestor Aparicio 4:09
though, right? You’re wired to go do more, do more, do more. Let’s do 16 more shows. What’s happened in these last couple of months that when this thing ended after 27? And you know, it it was nice. It was good. I felt like you had more. I felt like I wanted to see you again as someone that drove up to Camden to see you. I’m thrilled that you’re coming to my hometown on the 21st of November, and we’re getting the so are all my friends who did get a chance to see you, who just saw videos or reels, or I told them how great it was, and hey, you should have gone to see Triumph. Then there’s the energy of actually doing this, right, doing it all over again. That it was really as good as it looked to me at that point in the tour.

Gil Moore 4:46
Yeah, I think for me personally, like I just it wasn’t part of my game plan to get back and and do a rock and roll tour. But then I got into it, and it was kind of like it grew on me so fast, and I thought, wow, we’re happy. If if the band was if we weren’t having such a blast, it would be different. Like if we were out there slogging it out and like, you know, people aren’t getting along and you know that kind of crap. I I wouldn’t be there. It’s it’s the fact that we had our families with us and the band was just having a blast the whole time and the audience too. I mean that was, I mean, there were people crying, you know, at certain songs and multi generations in the audience. It was it was overwhelming when you looked at the audience. The emotion coming to the stage from the audience was crazy, crazy different than you know back in the day when it’s all kids and everyone’s cheering. And now you’re seeing, you know, hey, we’ve all spent decades together on the planet, and but this music is pulling us back together in a positive way. So it was kind of overwhelming, honestly, Nestor.

Nestor Aparicio 5:49
Well, the music means so much. I took my pal Ray Bachman when we saw you. Ray got very emotional because his mother loved your band. I love your band. The word, I mean, it’s the words. It’s it’s the spirit of the band and singing those songs out loud, and I think they take on. I know that for me, they take on a different meaning 40 years later.

Gil Moore 6:09
Yeah, me too, Nestor. I you know I I think when you’re a drummer, like I was telling this to Rick the other day, you’re so focused on rhythm all the time that you don’t really listen to the words. Like you your your brain is into the rhythm, not the words. They just kind of go by like it’s almost like teletype or something, you know, or subtitling in a movie. You’re not really paying attention. And even when I’m the lead singer, I don’t. Again, I’m not really paying attention because the the I’m trying to play drums and sing at the same time. So you you can’t be thinking about what the words mean. You’re just it’s just memory work and and you’re still more into the rhythm than you are into the singing part, and but now I listen like more more like an audience member. I go okay, now I get what that song is all about. So it’s a different perspective, like having a lens backwards in the rearview mirror versus looking forward is two different things altogether. What could you not have known

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Nestor Aparicio 7:05
about this a year ago that you know now?

Gil Moore 7:08
How how perfect the the shows would be, like, and I don’t mean perfect. Like we never made mistakes. Of course we made mistakes. We just laugh it off and you know grin at each other if somebody made a mistake. Perfect in the sense of the harmony of the audience, the band, and our families. Like the total feeling of this this one love that’s in the venue that’s unmistakable. I’ve never seen Rick Emmett as happy ever in his in my life. Like the guy hugged me a couple times and it brought tears to my eyes on stage. I couldn’t take the emotion. Watching Phil X and Rick Emmett like feed off each other. These guys are monster guitar players, but they have such respect for each other’s playing. Getting to hang like as a drummer, getting to like work with with with Brent on every aspect of of the drum kits themselves, of stick control exercises backstage, discussing this drummer and that drummer and this type of rhythm and that type of rhythm. I’ve never had another drummer to collaborate with. Like guitar players get this all the time because tons of bands have two guitar players. That’s nothing new, but two drummers pretty rare, you know. And and you know, thankfully, like to fill Mike Levine’s shoes, you had to have somebody that was a monster stage presence, and and Todd Kerns is that monster, and what a singer! I mean, Todd’s vocals are are incredible on top of how he plays bass, and and a superhuman being, so I guess I’m I’m going on and on here, but that’s just what I really think, Nestor. That’s all right.

Nestor Aparicio 8:48
We’re I think we’re all going to come see you on November 21st. Gilmore is here from the band Triumph, drummer and a visionary as far as the show and what the show looks like. Man, you’ve been doing this forever for lots of other bands, it’s been sort of a life’s work in in doing sound, lighting, design, all of these things. What is like science fiction for you now that you couldn’t have done 40? I mean, that must be fun for you to put a show on. And again, I I saw Rush recently. They always did video, all of these different things. You came from that school of that larger than life, even when I was a young man to see the shows, what are you pulling off now that technology allows that you think’s neat?

Gil Moore 9:30
Well, you know, we got a lot of kind of three dimensional or what we call two and a half D content, which I think is really really cool effects in the show, and you know we have some more upgrades on this leg too. Like we we had a lot of lasers back in the day. We didn’t have lasers on the first run. We just we just didn’t have enough truck space. But with this tour, we’re we’re or this run, this part of this tour, yeah, we’re putting in a major laser infrastructure into what we’re doing. So I think we’re going to. Some really really cool lasers. I’m working on trying to put in a couple old school effects that we didn’t carry on the first tour because they were considered too clunky and old school, you know. And I’m like, no, I think you need the old and the new. Like, I think you need the the you know the the fancy video, or I’ll call it the three the 3D or the two and a half D video. You need that. You need archival footage. Of course, we have to have Mike, you know, involved in in that footage as well if he’s not playing. So all of that stuff combined,

Nestor Aparicio 10:30
it’s a great learning experience, Nestor. And I, we’re just polishing it a bit more. And like I said, we’re adding some more pyro effects and some more laser effects and organic old school stuff that I think is going to be, you know, even better on this front. I saw the first documentary and all those fans that got together and were surprised by seeing you play. It was a one-time thing. Now you’ve gone out and done 2716, more. I hope a lot of those fans, and I know a few of them, are coming out to be a part of, you know, all of this stuff. But documentary, you’re filming some of this, right? Like, there’s gonna be there’s gonna be another story you want to tell at the end of this, right?

Gil Moore 11:04
Yeah, yeah. Like the Rock and Roll Machine documentary did really great things for us, and and you know it was a great. I felt like it was a great payback too to people that were kind of after us, yeah, because we hadn’t toured, and so and but the documentary ends with a big question mark, as you know, and it’s like, okay, what’s next? Well, well, that’s why we’re doing a part two, which is well, here’s what’s next. It’s this band. This is the reloaded band, and you’re going to see it full on. We’ve recorded it from the point of view of a fan. In other words, I went back to when I was a kid, and I wanted to be kind of backstage. I want to see how did how did you set the drums up? You know where did you guys come in the building? Like what’s it like to be in the dressing room? All the stuff that you don’t get to see when you’re a fan. Well, I can remember being like that as a kid. So I thought, okay, be a kid. This is something that everyone’s going to want to see. Is want to get on the tour bus with us and see what we talk about. Listen to the jokes, like all the things that you don’t really get to see-the backstage maze, all of that. So, as well as the actual show itself, there’s going to be all this behind-the-scenes footage, which I think is going to be-I think is going to be really special. I’m hoping we get it out in 2027, and we’re continuing to record it on League Two. So, anybody that comes to League Two, hey, you might end up in it.

Nestor Aparicio 12:21
Gilmore’s here. Rick Emmett has already joined us. We talked to him. You know, I talked to Rick a little bit about you know your relationship and the first question my pal Ray, who you met with me and Candy, said, “When you get those guys on, ask them why they didn’t do this for the last 40 years. If they have regrets about, I think that’s every fan would look at this after listening to Magic Power and Fight the good fight later online all these years and say, “Man, I haven’t had a chance to see you. Well, this is your opportunity. How do you address that for fans as well as yourself and books that were written and tours that were had and really the band that stopped for a couple of decades, couple three four decades? I never set out for myself. I can only speak personally. I never

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Gil Moore 13:00
set out to be a rock star. You know that wasn’t my thing. You know I I had a little sound company that was like like a kid company I guess you’d call it when I was a teenager and I loved the sound and the lights and I loved just audio in general. I always dreamed about recording studios and stuff, but you know being in front of the spotlight wasn’t wasn’t really my thing, so I was kind of like lucky, I guess, that I got in a band that was successful and and ended up, you know, playing big shows and so on. But by the time for me, you know, we stopped playing with Rick. It was like, okay, so I I need to be there for my family. My my mom is elderly. I need to look after my mother. My dad has passed, so I got it. I’m the man in the family. Was all that stuff, you know. So my life just took a totally different direction, and I never missed, you know, the the I’ll call it the quasi rock star situation. I never missed it. It was just something I did, and it’s kind of like when I go out there now. I look at it like it’s it’s an exploration, you know. Like I I I don’t need necessarily to you know have the the reaction of whatever you’d call the the life in the spotlight. That’s just not me. I guess being behind the drums a little bit is always a thing. Drummers are a little bit behind the scenes, and I’m I’m still I’m still that guy, and I love the way this band is because I feel like wow I got four brothers on stage with me that are it’s it’s like playing on a great team where you look around you oh that guy’s incredible well this guy’s phenomenal all these guys so it pulls you up it’s a different experience than when I was a kid and I was trying to do this with with with Mike and Rick, this is a a different phase of my life, you know.

Nestor Aparicio 14:44
I think there’s the fan in me and the music guy from 40 years ago that interviewed Mike would say, if you get together 40 years later with the younger guys, what would what would you tell them that they didn’t know then, right? I mean, I guess for all of us, and the songs themselves have such depth to them. That the songs are different now, aren’t they?

Gil Moore 15:03
Yeah, I mean, I I felt like you know earlier when when we were playing them in in in back in the day, like the lyrics sailed right over my head. I’m a drummer. I focused on rhythm. Even when I was singing lead vocals, I’m still more focused on what I’m playing on the drums than I am what I’m singing. So the lyrics are just kind of on autopilot, and you know now seeing after all these years what the lyrics meant to the fans and the positive message that’s kind of become the band’s legacy. I’ll say the never surrender ethos. I I now listen to the lyrics, and I actually it’s a different lens into our music, and I’m trying to say, okay, I think I get it now.

Nestor Aparicio 15:42
Got a favorite? You you got you got a favorite or no?

Gil Moore 15:45
Fight a good fight is is kind of been one of my favorites always. Again, selfishly, I I love playing drums in that song, but you know what? I’ll actually go with never surrender. I mean, that wasn’t even on the table in the rehearsals, and Rick said at one point, I remember this, and he said, “I don’t think we should play Never Surrender. I said, “We gotta play Never Surrender. I said, “That’s my favorite song. So when we play “Never Surrender, Rick mentions a lot of times from the mic when he when he teases it up and he goes, “Oh, this is the Gil insisted that we play this, or “This is Gil’s favorite song, or words along those lines, you know. And I don’t know. My dad was, you know, he’s in the in the Air Force. He he fought he fought in World War II, and I think about never surrender. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. I know what it means to me and my family, so kind of gets to me. Yeah, I love that song.

Nestor Aparicio 16:36
Well, as an American, you’re coming back to America. I apologize to all of you ahead of time for all of the nonsense that’s going on, but we’re going to welcome you back here. So I I would say for you that you know last thing just putting this thing is is is the end the end the end or the like people are going to ask you you’re not recording music you’re out on is is this our last chance maybe or you know theater will never say that right

Gil Moore 16:59
I don’t know for sure Nestor I mean, we’re gonna release what I’m hearing, anyways. We’re gonna release a series of bootlegs from back in the day, which I think is gonna be really cool. Do you have the Towson Center

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Nestor Aparicio 17:09
one that that I saw here that was on video, or

Gil Moore 17:11
no? I don’t think it’ll be that one, but I could be wrong. It’s a collection, but the thing that’s neat is it’s as if you were standing at front of house, right? Like you’re hearing the PA. It’s it’s like not mixed in a studio. So, you know the good, the bad, the ugly, the incredible, the spectacular, the failures. It’s all on those tapes, so that’ll be kind of cool. And then I think the documentary, as we were talking about earlier, I think that’s going to be a really neat thing for for everybody to be able to kind of go on the tour with us, and but beyond that, like future touring or or fresh recording or whatever, I guess we’ll just have to see what what comes out of Pandora’s box because I myself I’m not even sure. So, all right, we

Nestor Aparicio 17:53
got about eight weeks to ramp up. What are you looking forward to the most about all of this and and putting this together and going out and being a rock star again for a change.

Gil Moore 18:02
I I think the the the three things I would say, and they’re all sheer joy. So one’s the sheer joy in the dressing room with the with the guys because I just love every one of them. The second would be having our family and the sheer joy around that because they are like all our families are so over the moon happy and seeing the you know the kids that are now you know growing up and they’re young adults and they actually you know they’re they’re old enough that now they’re they know what’s going on you know they’re not four or five years old and then I guess the sheer join the fans faces so you come to a place like Baltimore or you know I was just talking to the folks in Pittsburgh like coming to coming to see you know face to face with people that supported us, you know like at Baltimore Civic Center. Man, I have so many you know memories, or you know just up the street in in in Providence, you know like so many great cities in America, and to be able to visit our friends and supporters and and kind of thank them for when we were kids, you know, making us making us rock stars. So we we we could have just been flops like all the other bands that didn’t make it. But thanks to them, thanks to those fans, you know, they they put us on the big stage. We’ll never forget them for it, and we’ll try to pay them back by by playing good shows this time around. And whatever we can do in the future, we’ll do.

Nestor Aparicio 19:23
I am thrilled that you’re coming back to Baltimore, Maryland. Gilmore from Triumph joining us. You can also find Rick Emmett at Baltimore Positive. You can find them at CFG Bank Arena. I call it the Baltimore Civic Center on November the 21st. Stay healthy. Stay out on the road. Put it all together. Tell Todd. Tell tell all those guys come on in Phil. All on in here. Phil played here a couple weeks ago with Bon Jovi, so I know he’s out doing the thing with Kiss and these guys. So appreciate you and thanks for doing it again for us. We appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me on, Nestor. Always a pleasure. All right, man. Love the music of Triumph. november 21, come see him in Baltimore. We’re Baltimore Positive.