By Jim Barber
Todd Kerns has lived a pretty amazing life as a working musician , one who was born and raised on the Canadian prairies in a little town, called Lanigan in Saskatchewan. First, he rose to national acclaim as part of the 1990s alternative rock boom with his band Age of Electric, which produced such radio staples as ‘Remote Control,’ ‘Ugly,’ and ‘I Don’t Mind.’ Then, after moving to the United States, Las Vegas to be precise, he soon became a valued member of the rock scene there, as well as in nearby Los Angeles, playing in a variety of projects, including Sin City Sinners, and making a name for himself as an eminently talented, endlessly versatile and congenial collaborator.
Which led him into what is essentially his main gig, being a part of Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, alongside the Guns ‘N Roses legend and Alter Bridge frontman Kennedy. Touring the world with a bona fide rock and roll icon, and playing songs at huge venues around the world, songs that are integral to both pop culture and rock and roll history is not only a pretty freakin’ good way to earn a living as a musician, but also just a sublimely cool bucket list experience.
Already a lover of the rock music from his home and native land, a few years ago Kerns got together with fellow Canadian and Conspirator Brent Fitz, as well as another Canucklehead, noted producer Cory Churko, to form an epic tribute band celebrating his heroes from the Great White North – Toque. Covering classic rock bands from throughout Canada’s history is also a pretty awesome way to make a few bucks, play with your pals and remind those of us living north of the border that we’ve always had brilliant bands, creating iconic songs.
The proverbial cherry on top of this musical cake for Kerns came last spring, when, kind of out of the blue, he and Fitz were tapped to join the original lineup of Triumph for a special performance in Edmonton to take place before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers. For the first time since 2008, Canada’s ‘Rock and Roll Machine’ was going to get together for a performance, but bearing in mind that all band members, guitarist Rik Emmett, drummer Gil Moore and bassist Mike Levine are well into their 70s, and one of them, Levine, is not in the best of health, it was decided to augment the lineup to help share the load onstage. Enter stage right Kerns, Churko, Fitz and another ex-pat Canadian musician who’s done alright for himself – currently Bon Jovi axe slinger, and actually a short-lived former member of Triumph, Phil Xenidis, aka Phil X.
It seems as though most of the ex-patriate Canadian musicians all know one another, so it was not a huge surprise that Toronto native X reached out to Kerns and Fitz when he was tasked with helping to assemble a crew to help bolster the original members of Triumph, firstly with their appearance in Edmonton.
“My coming into this process was because of Phil X who, as you know, was affiliated with the guys way back when [he replaced Emmett briefly performing and co-writing the band’s final studio album, Edge of Excess, released in 1993]. Phil initially reached out and it was sort of very bizarre because he was talking in very broad colours and there was a lot of grey area. But he essentially said that Gil had been talking about doing some kind of Triumph type thing. And it was very loose and he said he wasn’t even sure what involvement the guys would have if they had any at all, or maybe it was going to be some kind of tribute band with some sort of show. And it was because the documentary [Triumph: Rock and Roll Machine, released in 2021] kind of lit a lot of new fires that they had not really sort of thought about. It was one of those things where we want to celebrate the music of the band. How can we do that? So Phil had reached out to me, and his direct quote was something like, please don’t make me sing this all by myself. And I remember thinking, dude, there’s very few tasks more daunting than taking on the vocal performances of a young Rik Emmett, which is obviously the one where you go, ‘damn!’ But even actually listening to Gil’s stuff – these guys were no joke. I mean, they were going for it. It’s something to be said about the kind of piss and vinegar of young men like that who were firing on all cylinders. So of course I said I was interested,” said Kerns.
“We have a band called Toque, me and Brent Fitz [along with Churko and well-respected Innisfail, Alberta drummer Shane Gaalaas] that celebrates nothing but Canadian rock. Except for Triumph, because Triumph feels too daunting. I mean, we’ll do some Rush, but it’s very obvious Rush like ‘Tom Sawyer,’ which feels kind of bar band – like almost everybody plays that song. Listen, I feel like I’ve got a black belt in playing music, but I don’t have a sixth-degree black belt in playing and that’s what it feels like I need taking on any Triumph song. And that’s certainly no slight on the pedigree of the guys in Toque because we’re all seasoned players. But it was always like, ‘wouldn’t it be easier to maybe do ‘New Girl Now’ by Honeymoon Suite instead? I love Phil and of course obviously I love Triumph and I love Canadian rock and it sounded like an exciting whatever the hell it was going to be. But the Edmonton thing happened so quickly, and even there, it was originally going to be just one song, but it turned into three, and here we are a few months later with a full-blown reunion tour.”
Kerns talked about the preparation and experience of playing alongside Emmett and Moore in front of thousands of rabid Canadian rock and hockey fans in Edmonton last June. After all, Triumph songs such as ‘Magic Power,’ ‘Lay It On The Line,’ ‘Never Surrender,’ “Fight the Good Fight,’ and ‘Follow Your Heart,’ have been seared into the Canadian psyche for decades, still garnering regular airplay.
“It was certainly magical. Ahead of time, in classic form, the three of us got together, Phil, Fitz and I were at rehearsal together first. The idea was let’s get together for an hour or two, just to go through the songs and know them well enough that the other guys can just kind of step right in and just play. I have enough trust in Phil and Fitz as professionals to know that when they show up, they’ll know their parts and know the arrangements and all the kind of stuff. So that part of it was pretty quick for us. But then when those guys walk in it’s like, ‘okay, here we go.’ I mean, it was sounding great to me but you can’t help but think they’re like the teachers coming in with the red pen to grade our papers. They came in and we played together and it was great. And it was interesting to watch them because there’s a real team effort happening. There’s a lot of passing of the puck, there’s no puck hogging. I tell you though, when someone like Rik looks at you and goes, ‘you should sing ‘Fight the Good Fight,’ I’m like, ‘what are you talking about? You’re Rik Emmett!’ It’d be like Michael Jordan just kind of handing you the ball and saying, ‘you got it.’ But he said, “I don’t like singing in this key anymore.’ And it’s because he’s so incredibly musical. And within the internal dynamics of the band, when comes to the arrangements and that kind of stuff, it’s very much in his wheelhouse. And he’s so generous about it. He wants to do what’s best for the song, and he’s really kind of without ego about it. And that’s what I appreciate about him. So when he decides ‘ah, you go ahead and sing that song,’ it feels like there’s an immense pressure to that, but at the same time, it just felt like a vote of confidence, where you just wanted to do your best,” he said.
“Rick and Gil and Mike are such a huge part of the sort of foundation of playing music for guys like me and Phil and Fitz. You can’t help but include them in that conversation. I admire Rik as a guitar player, I always say it was kind of half annoying as a kid looking at this good-looking blonde guy playing guitar like that, singing like that, and writing like that. And it’s like, ‘can’t you leave some of that for the rest of us?’ He was the total package. And Gil, obviously, is the other side of that too, having so much to offer to the picture as well. Now that I’m kind of on the inside, what I’ve learned about Gil is that he’s all about the big picture. The visual aspect, the whole impact of the production, that’s all him. And he still has all of that creative energy and passion.
“So getting back to the Edmonton thing and how it progressed from there, with Phil there had been a conversation about this amorphous idea. And of course I was interested. I have no idea what we’re talking about here, but it sounds interesting to me. And then this Edmonton thing just sort of came out of nowhere, months later. We had sort of talked about the idea and then this thing came up really suddenly because ‘Lay It On the Line’ was being used on the Canadian hockey broadcasts for the playoffs. And of course it was sudden because no one knows how far anybody, especially a Canadian team, is going to go in the playoffs. So, all of a sudden it’s like, ‘hey, what are you doing Tuesday?’ The next thing I know I find myself in Edmonton rehearsing with those guys and the vibe was amazing. Gil was ready to blast ahead in whatever fashion because his foot’s on the pedal regardless. But it wasn’t until Rik was there, and Rik had a blast and he enjoyed playing with us and that’s when I think Gil realized, hey this could be a thing. We can make this work. Obviously not having Mike there is a massive hole. So you have to fill that hole with three dudes, and we’ll do our best to cover for his absence, and I appreciate getting Mike’s blessing in doing this and moving forward because he is of course one third of the conversation. We’re not sure how involved he’s able to be. I think it’s more a case of seeing how things go between now and the tour occurring, or it could be that the tour is up and running and we still might be having a day-to-day conversation about how this is going to go. People have been saying, ‘well, what are you going to do if Mike suddenly comes back.’ I’m going to hand him the bass and go out in the audience. I just love seeing the OG guys, so if Mike can do it, I would be happy to step aside.”
For most of the reunion tour, another staple of Canadian rock and roll music, April Wine, will be the opening act, a super special added bonus for fans, but also from the already acknowledged dyed-in-the-wool Canadian music aficionado Kerns.
“We’re quite excited about it. We know a couple of guys in the band and they’re great. I remember when I first heard April Wine was opening I was like, ‘no way! Really? We get to go and watch another incredible Canadian band every night.’ I mean, we did a version of [April Wine classic song] ‘Roller’ for a Toque record that we did. And over the years I had a dialogue with [late April Wine founder/frontman/songwriter] Myles Goodwyn, who is one of my favourite people, but also always sort of notoriously prickly. Myles could be a tough guy, but I loved him for it. Because I like a guy who stands up for himself, stands up for the band, someone who knows what it should be, and I always appreciated him for that. Again, like Triumph, April Wine has one of those catalogues, and also Trooper if you think of it, that is just so classic and so iconically Canadian,” he said, talking about how it’s still cool to know those bands, and others of the same era, are still out there performing, even though there are no longer any original members onstage.
“Knowing Ra [McGuire] and Smitty [Brian Smith] of Trooper for all those years, at a certain point it’s like, we either we shut it all down or we go out and sort of celebrate the songs, celebrate the catalogue and the legacy and see what happens. I mean, I live in Las Vegas, and I’d be driving around and see a billboard advertising The Four Tops. Well, who the hell’s in that? You’re thinking, who the hell is in The Four Tops? And that’s now sort of filtered into some of the 1980s bands and even 1990s bands. It’s been like that for 1970s bands for a while, but even now we’re in a day and age where these sort of package tours are happening with 1990s bands and it’s one member of a band, or a band that has no original members. So I think this is going to be kind of a continuing thing where eventually you’ll see a billboard adverting the Music of Rick Springfirld, with just some guy. Which is why this thing with Triumph is so cool because it’s THE guys back together.”
Kerns did have an earlier brush with Triumph, although not that much earlier than his participation in the Edmonton gig. When producer Mike Clink was putting together what became a special tribute album Magic Power: All Star Tribute to Triumph, which came out in the summer of 2025, but had been a few years in the making, Phil X became his right hand man throughout the production, not only performing on many tracks, but also helping to recruit the artists to play on it. A couple of his early calls were to Kerns.
“Phil was definitely a big part of the musical direction of that tribute record. When I came in, it was right in the middle of COVID. It was really weird because we recorded right in Hollywood, at EastWest Studios, which is a really cool old studio. They had the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys record there. It was a really cool experience in the studio, but it was also this really weird time when you’d be heading there and you would look down Hollywood Boulevard or the Sunset Strip and there’d be no one there. It was like The Walking Dead,” he said,
“The first session I did was with [former Ozzy Osbourne and Whitesnake drummer] Tommy Aldridge, which was a trip, Phil on guitar and me on bass. The second one I did with Kenny Aronoff and the last one I did with Josh Freese [A Perfect Circle and briefly The Foo Fighters]. For me, I was just thrilled to be a part of it, honestly and to have my picture inside the album jacket with Joey Belladonna [Anthrax], Dee Snider, Mickey Thomas [Starship] and Nancy Wilson [Heart], that was a trip. Being able to play those songs and be on an album with all those amazing people was something, man. But then if you were to tap me on the shoulder of 14-year-old me in small town Saskatchewan and said, ‘someday, you’re going to be playing in Triumph,’ I’d be like, ‘yeah, that’s not a thing. That’s never going to happen.’”
Oh yes, it’s happening, with shows starting in Orlando, Florida on April 10, then a show in Hollywood, Florida three nights later, before a cross-Canada run that starts at GFL Memorial Gardens in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario April 22, going back and forth across Canada until May 8 at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary. There’s then a run of American shows, wrapping up in Boston at the Leader Bank Pavilion on June. 6.
Besides prepping for the Triumph tour, and then the actual tour itself, Kerns is still busy with many other projects, including the next Slash album alongside Kennedy and the Conspirators.
“We have a record all done and recorded with Slash and the guys. We recorded it through the end of last year, into the beginning of this new year. That’s in the can. At the time, we realized, okay, everybody’s available, go make a record. Towards the end of the year we hope to have a single out of some kind, and the perhaps the tour would occur in 2027, so ’27 essentially becomes kind of a Slash year for me. This summer I have a bunch of Toque stuff. Toque is such a labour of love. We sort of just started by doing some charity shows in Winnipeg and places like that and it was Fitz who came up with the idea of just doing Canadian classic rock. And I was like, ‘dude, all day long!’ We all know these songs, although we do have to woodshed them for a bit, but we all have them in our musical toolbox. They’re in our DNA as Canadians,” he said.
“When you travel abroad, every place has bands that are huge there, that are part of sort of the fabric of their culture, but no-one knows about them. When you go to Sweden or somewhere else, somebody there will mention a band that you’ve never heard of, but they’re gigantic in Sweden, or in Australia. So now all of a sudden, all these years later, we’re out there celebrating all of those bands that are important to Canada, but are not known really outside of Canada. But they’re huge to us. Toque has become this thing now, and all of a sudden all these years later, our summer is filled with these festival dates. Last year we were doing the Def Leppard and Joan Jett tour, and we were thinking, ‘what are we doing here?’ We’ve also been writing songs as well. We’re sort of perpetually kind of peppering our sets with original music because, well, that’s what musicians do.
“And it’s cool because now we’re getting people suggesting bands and songs that we need to cover too. There are so many bands, and that’s the beauty of Canadian rock, so many of those bands had some sort of traction, bands like [Regina, Saskatchewan’s] Kick Axe. I played with Kick Axe. There was sort of a reunion show in a club called Frankie & Johnny’s in Calgary, so we did a show there which was sort of a tribute to [band co-founder and guitarist] Larry Gillstrom. I was there and so was [wrestler and Fozzy frontman] Chris Jericho, and we just sat in with the band and even with that, again, if you would’ve told me at 14, ‘you’re going to play a show with Kick Axe,’ no, that’s not going to be a thing. It’s bizarre. Life just keeps cranking along and getting the opportunity to do these things is pretty amazing. The significance of it is not lost on me, honestly. Phil and the rest of us, we’re all so excited about getting to play with Triumph’s toys.”
Then there’s the band that first put Kerns on the proverbial musical map, especially here in Canada – the band he formed with his brother John, and the Dahle brothers, Ryan and Kurt [the latter two would go on to form Limblifter] in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1989 – Age of Electric. After releasing their first two albums, 1991’s The Latest Plague, the Ugly EP in 1993, and their breakout self-titled release in 1995, Age of Electric was signed to Universal Music Canada, and entrenched themselves at the heart of the mid-1990s alternative rock scene, alongside the likes of I Mother Earth, Moist, Econoline Crush and Our Lady Peace, with the 1997 album, Make A Pest A Pet. Songs from those records, especially ‘Remote Control,’ ‘Ugly,’ ‘I Don’t Mind,’ and ‘Don’t Wreck It’ are still staples on terrestrial radio in Canada. After breaking up in 1998, the Kerns brothers formed Static in Stereo, which released a self-titled album in 2002, and not long thereafter, Todd made the sojourn to musical pastures new south of the border. Age of Electric did a few scattered shows over the years, and even toured back in 2016, but since then, it’s been all silent on the western Canadian front.
“Age of Electric is always a funny thing. I truly do believe bands never really break up. I think that there’s some sort of lifeline that’s connected between us all. And it’s like a chat thread on your phone, there’s constantly things being sent around, funny things and whatnot, so you’re still in touch with these people; they’re all still there, but it doesn’t go beyond that. But I know that if the right opportunity comes up, everybody will go, ‘yeah, sure.’ There are so many factors involved with adults having lives and families and all these things that come into play, including musical careers on their own. Just the other day, I remembered that Kurt now plays in The Odds. He did a whole huge run with The New Pornographers, including being on Letterman all the time. And now he’s with The Odds, who are old friends of ours. And Ryan still has his thing, and my brother John’s been playing with The Black Halos, who are also old friends, a punk rock band from Vancouver. And I’m doing my thing,” he said.
“But you know, Age of Electric just had a song on a soundtrack last year for this film, ‘This Is Not a Test,’ which is coming out soon. I went to the premiere. I just happened to be in Toronto and the director invited me to the premiere at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which is a film festival for horror movies. So my brother and I went down and sure enough, there’s an Age of Electric song in the middle of the movie. It’s a zombie movie and it was shot in Hamilton, Ontario, and the director [Adam MacDonald] is fantastic. It’s one of those things, when you think about it, music is what makes you immortal in a way. Obviously losing Ozzy Osbourne and Ace Frehley, was so tragic, but we’ll be playing their songs forever. And to a lesser degree my songs will be playing somewhere long after I’m dead. I just realized a few weeks back that by the time the new record comes out, I’ll have been playing with Slash for 17 years, off and on, which is bizarre. When he went to do the Guns ‘N Roses reunion in 2016, I was firing up to do an Age of Electric tour, two very different sized operations, but still both kind of time travelling.
“And it was so much fun to do. Then of course, as it happens, the thing ends and everybody just goes off in their other directions and yeah, maybe we’ll try to do it again, but then everybody gets caught up in life and off it goes. So I say that, although next year is a big Slash year, it’s also the 30th anniversary of Make a Pest a Pet. There’s this weird sense of how these things, these anniversaries come up and I’ll see where people will post on line, that it’s been this many years since so and so did this or Age of Electric did that. And I’ll be like, ‘geez, okay, wow.’ The thing about music is it just sort of lives on, and I appreciate it. We did re-release of the album on its 20th anniversary, which seems like yesterday. We had all these unreleased tracks from that recording that were really cool. So we did a vinyl version of Make a Pest a Pet with four extra songs, plus we also released an EP of unreleased new music that we had sort of been chipping away at for about a 10 year period. It’s something funny about rock bands, as I said, you never really ever break up. You may go through a period of not even speaking to suddenly, ‘hey. I got a riff,’ and the next thing you know, Ryan and I, who were adversaries for the briefest of moments, are suddenly in each other’s living rooms noodling around. But we weren’t a band and we didn’t have anywhere to sort of facilitate that, so as the years went by I just sort of turned it into an EPs worth of music that was called the Pretty EP, in sort of conjunction with the Ugly EP that came out in 1993.”
For more information on the Triumph reunion, visit https://www.triumphmusic.com.
For more information on Kerns’ various activities, visit https://www.toqueband.com, https://toddkerns.com, or https://www.slashonline.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
