Fifteen Minutes with: Andrew WK

yourGigs parties hard with the irrepressible Andrew WK ahead of his Big Day Out appearances in Australia.

We join the joyride with white-clad one man party machine Andrew WK ahead of his Australian tour.

yourGigs (yG): How does Australia compare to other countries that you have partied in?

Andrew WK (AWK): It’s fantastic, it’s unique in all of the world, it’s got a unique vibe and atmosphere that is second to none. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a greater country. I haven’t been to every city in Australia, but especially last time I was down there I got to drive around the countryside a lot more and see a lot of the country that I’ve never been before and everywhere I went everyone was kind and excited and pumped up. There seems to be a general understanding there that it’s good to be alive and we might as well celebrate it, and for me that just couldn’t be more right on the nose.

yG: What are you most looking forward to about playing the Big Day Out – and who are you most looking forward to playing with?

AWK: I’ve been hearing about this festival for years and years, even before I went to Australia the first time, it definitely has a worldwide reputation for good reason. We always hoped to play it, and the years went on, and to be invited now, almost ten years into Andrew WK existing, to us the greatest honour and privilege of all. That people want to see us on the biggest and best festival that the country has to offer is truly thrilling and makes us very humble, but also so excited.

The line up – to be included in that line up is just incredible, it makes us very, very, very thankful. We’ve played with a lot of these bands before, Rammstein, I’m most excited to see of all, last time we played with them was in Spain and it was just tremendous, there’s no better band in the world in my opinion. Tool, we played with in Japan, I’m excited to think of the video display they’ll bring – they had an incredible display there. There’s lots of bands I‘ve never seen that I’m excited about seeing, Die Antwoord – I’m really excited about seeing them, it’s a really impressive line up.

yG: You have just finished playing the Warped tour – do you enjoy the travelling festival environment?

AWK: I imagine it is similar to Big Day Out in terms of stage sized and production, I assume the crowd will be larger at Big Day Out, but at the end of the Warped Tour – you get to play to half a million people across the country and you get to play every major city.

There’s no other rock tour that offers that. The Warped Tour is so diverse, it has rock music and hip hop and rap and pop music, Katy Perry was playing there last summer, that to me is very exciting, it is all high energy, exciting music it is pretty open when it comes to that. That is the same thing I get from the Big Day Out – it is all kinds of music but there is a unified spirit there of ‘it’s going to be exciting’ I didn’t see anyone on the list that wasn’t exciting.

yG: Do you enjoy the fact that you get to play your own sideshows as well as the festivals – how differently will you treat them?

AWK: The main difference for us is that we’re headlining that show and we have a much longer time to play, we get to play to people that are much more familiar with our songs.  We can play deeper songs from the albums and play more rare songs that we may not play if we only have 28 minutes or half an hour, I’m not sure how long our Big Day Out sets will be.

The festival and sideshows give us the opportunity to pay in front all sorts of people who have never seen you, but you also get the satisfaction of playing a show for your die hard friends that are already very familiar to what you do. You have a chance to introduce yourself and turn new people on and also deliver on the promise that people have come to expect as friends and fans of the music.

yG: It has always been an important thing for you to interact with your fans – why is that, and do you enjoy the fact that technology has made it much easier for you?

AWK: Of course, I am very grateful and have always enjoyed it – because what I do, just the nature of this music is partying. And we can interact at a party worldwide. That’s how I feel about it. I mean if I was hanging out with a group of ten people in New York we can all talk and laugh together and dance and sing together and party together. But I can’t do that as easily with someone in Brazil at the same time as someone in Australia as the same time as someone here in New York.

Using the technology the computer offers now we can interact all the time all around the world, and for me, someone who is partying, and it’s the greatest thing. We are having a big interconnected party at all the times. It just happens to work very well with the nature of what I am creating here and presenting, if I was an artist who is engaged in a less celebratory type of offering, or something that was more solitary, it wouldn’t make as much sense. But for me it is just more ways to get this feeling of excitement going.

That’s all I care about, generating this feeling of energy, like a raw energy, not really even a happy energy, or a sad energy, or any kind of mood, just  pure energy that anybody can take and use how they want and use it in their life they way that it makes it for them. I’ll use music, I’ll use interviews, talking, computer, TV, radio, writing a book, whatever I can throughout my life, that’s my goal, as many was as I can to create a feeling of excitement.

yG: Do you think the ever changing times we are in and the fact your message is one that is so simple has made you so successful for so long?

AWK: I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep working, it’s a miracle, I’m extraordinarily grateful and amazed and thankful and every day count my blessings. Not only that I have gotten to do everything that we have done, but also that we somehow continue to have opportunities. It really is a minor miracle just to keep working at all in this industry, there is a lot of rejection, but also a lot of opportunity. The only reason I am still here and still able to do any of this is for the people out there who are getting things out of it, until they don’t get anything out of it or don’t want anything from me, I’ll keep giving everything I have.

That is what makes this a collaboration, if you don’t have an audience that is discerning and values what you are doing and has a level of care about it, then there’s really no point in what I do, I don’t do this for myself, I do this for myself and for others. It is that team effort that makes it meaningful for me, that makes it satisfying work. We can go into a room together where nothing is happening and by all putting our effort in we can make an amazing moment happen. And we make it out of thin air together, I can’t make it without the audience, and they can’t make it without me, and it’s a project that we work together as a team, and there is no better feeling in the world for me than doing that.

yG: Does having your own venue and label let you make it be what it can be?

AWK: To take all the lessons that I’ve learned and all my experiences and combine them into doing it the best way I can imagine it being done is also a great privilege and a great opportunity to have that. For me the Santos Party House – the venue me and my friends opened in Manhattan – that was really the biggest and most challenging project I’ve ever taken on, even more than we ever could have imagined when we started.

But at the same time to be able to give back to New York City, or really to the world - because this is such an international town – to give back a spot, a place for people to go that is a physical expression of partying. An actual location built on that premise, from scratch, it was a brand new place we built it from nothing, it wasn’t like we just got a venue in there and we changed the name.

It was time to create a new place so that other people could move to New York like I did and have a place to have their experiences, have a place to find opportunity, have a place to meet people, to party and to celebrate and live life. Because I feel like so much of what I’ve gotten to do, has happened since I moved to New York, and the city has given me so much, so to give back to the city with a venue is a privilege, and I just feel very lucky.

yG: Have you got a last message for the people of Australia?

AWK: I could not be more excited about coming there in January, I could not have better memories of the last time I was there in 2007. Before that Australia has made a huge impression on me and my band as being a place that seemed like it was made for us, and us made for them.

We are truly, truly thrilled and honoured to be coming back for this festival and the sideshows and we look forward to seeing people there and want to make sure people understand we are truly, deeply thankful that you are giving us a reason to keep partying with you!