Last week we had the opportunity to set up a last minute chat with the wettest party animal, Andrew WK. One call to Ricardo Gutierrez [i am genko] of our Peru chapter of FMLY, and BAM! It’s an honor to present the following…
Wanna talk random? How about sitting around, watching a game, when suddenly you get the chance to interview Andrew WK. Yes, Mr. Party Hard himself. I had kind of lost track of him for a couple of years, but I had heard his last couple albums and one of which was all piano (yes, he is a very very talented musician, not just a party animal). So I raced home, borrowed some gear from friends, and hacked into my neighbor’s wifi. I’m ready to go! Andy was a bit late, but everyone has had problems with their computer at one point or another so it’s no problem at all. This is what was said.
Genko: Where are you?
AWK: I’m in Los Angeles, just got back from filming my tv show. I’ve been out here for about a month filming the third season of our show called Destroy Build Destroy, and also recording my new album.
Genko: So we’re pretty far apart then…
AWK: Yeah, i understand you’re in Peru! What time is it there?
Genko: It’s actually 12:03
AWK: so it’s 2 hours later!
Genko: What i wanted to ask you first was how you got started? what drove you to start making music?
AWK: Well, you know… when you first asked I began thinking, like, “How did i get started working in music?” But when it comes to getting started in music period, that goes back so long ago to my early childhood… at age four and a half my mom asked me if I wanted to take piano lessons, and I did say yes, but it was sort of like how to read or learning math or learning how to ride a bike on two wheels… it was this very early primary experience. The great thing about learning anything that young is it becomes second nature. the reason i liked the piano was because my dad played piano and had a piano in the house since the day I was born.
Genko: Is your dad a musician?
AWK: Actually, I should talk to him about it more… I’ve never really talked to him about it because he’s very modest, but he did learn how to play well enough to really play… you know, i haven’t thought about that in a long time. I mean, I’ve talked about how my dad played piano when i was a baby. I would sit on his lap and try to play too, and i was always climbing up to the piano according to my mom… I mean I’ve seen these photos of me trying to play piano at age 2 or 1. I didn’t know what i was doing, of course… you always want to be like your dad at that age, and that’s what got me into it for sure.
Genko: So tell me what it has been like working with a variety of labels. What’s the difference? Which aspects did you enjoy most and why?
AWK: I’ve worked consistently, up to this day, between major labels and non-major labels. I wouldn’t even call them independent labels at this point because so many of them are part of the major label system, either through distribution or partnership, and at the same time the difference at this point is very small. It’s a time of change and that’s always exciting in any creative field. The business people get freaked out, but they’re secondary.
Genko: They do get freaked out.
AWK: They get very freaked out because they’re not responding to sensations based on the feelings that music and entertainment brings on the same way… they’re reacting to sensations that numbers bring, and that’s their passion. I love the interaction and the intersection of business and art. I’ve always really enjoyed working with corporations that have the resources to put together a really good team. A corporation can be a good group of people that have the ability and the will to get the best people they can, and when you get a chance to work with the best you can’t help but learn a great deal. Sure, there are pros and cons to the whole system but I just want to work with the best people, with the best resources, and have the best opportunities and tools to do what I love to do and do what I envision.
Genko: So what you’re saying is that working with a group of people with resources enables you to use their tools to fully express yourself…
AWK: Yeah! And learn from all of their experience… Odds are that they’ve been doing what they’ve been doing for a good amount of time, you hope. You always want to learn from anyone you work with, it’s like playing sports with someone that’s really really good.
Genko: Exactly, you always learn.
AWK: Yeah, and there’s a reason that the Yankees have these players. If you got to train with any baseball team there would be no shame in choosing the Yankees because they have the best.
Genko: Right… I’m actually a Red Sox fan.
AWK: It’s very similar. The Yankees have traditionally had, and spent, the most money out of any major league team. For example, the Angels are a great example of what we could compare to a non-major label: a very very limited budget and very limited resources in terms of the traditional tools that a lot of major league teams have. But they were able to build something completely amazing and incredible that they might not have been able to build if they had that huge machine that the Yankees have! So that’s what i think about working with a non-major label… there’s passion and vision and risk taking possibilities and spontaneity and drive and almost a romantic attachment to the love of music that gives you a huge amount of inspiration, motivation, power, and also at the end of the day, freedom.
Genko: That’s a beautiful analogy with the Angels… like an indie team!
AWK: Really an inspiring story.
Genko: So you started your own label, did you find that it gave you more control? Do you have the resources that a major label would have?
AWK: In a way. I’ve been very fortunate to have money coming in consistently that has enabled me to fund projects on my own… and it’s interesting, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit actually over the last week, that you kind of don’t buy much stuff. These days not so much and over the last twelve years not so much. Almost all of the money that I’ve spent, which has been hundreds of thousands of dollars, has always gone back into this endeavor; Andrew WK and the entertainment that we produce. Whether it’s hiring people to work with me, or paying to go on tour, or buying gear and recording equipment… and that’s because you hope you spend your money on the stuff you love the most. I’m very thankful for that.
With the label it has been great to have, as you said, complete and utter control. But it’s also terrifying. I actually ran a label when i was 16 to 18, it was called V records and there was another label with the name V which is one of the reasons that I stopped. I released a bunch of records with very beautiful printing and artwork… really extreme and intense, what people often times call noise music. But also death metal and grindcore and all kinds of things. I can’t believe that I ever even did that, thinking back now.
Genko: That was back in Michigan, right?
AWK: Yeah, I had no idea what i was doing AT ALL!
Genko: But you had to start somewhere!
AWK: Yeah, I even had friends that ran labels and I asked them how to do it and they wouldn’t tell me. They said, “You have to learn how to do it on your own. No one taught me, and I’m not gonna just give you all of my experience.” And when they said that I was really freaked out and hurt in a way…
Genko: But it was all for the best, no?
AWK: They were right… and now there’s a whole new adventure with starting this label, it used to be called Skyscraper Music Maker but the name was changed. It was a bit of an ordeal. It goes back to issues I’ve had with people I’ve worked with over the years and situations I’ve gotten myself into that have still been affecting me. Fortunately when we changed the name of the label that was sort of the last piece of the puzzle in resolving this conflict and things have been fantastic for the last year, so it has been great.
The way it started was, in 2005, I made a decision to do a lot of the opposite things that I had done before and one of those things I had sworn I would never do was to work with other musicians. So I decided to go against that and began producing other musicians’ work! The first band I did was a band called Sightings, an amazing three-piece heavy rock group from Brooklyn. It’s an old friend of mine from New York who started the band right when I met him – I actually suggested their name! I don’t think there’s any better new rock band, or at least in the last 12 years. It was so special to produce an album with them after having seen them from creation through now, I mean that was amazing! Then I got to work with Lee “Scratch” Perry, the legendary break and dub artist, and produce his album called Repentance. It was nominated for a Grammy, an experience that changed my life, and afterwards I worked with a band called To Live And Shave In LA. All of these very personal projects were dreams within dreams coming true.
Eventually I began producing brand new artists, like this guy Aleister X. Another artist whose songs I began mixing ended up being Cherie Lily, who I later ended up marrying. When I started working with these artists I figured, “We’ll make this music and then find a label to release it.” You know, find someone to put it out. I remember very clearly that i was in London looking out the window of this hotel I was staying in, all of a sudden thinking wait a minute, what if we just start our own label? I mean, the whole point is to get that stuff out and we can do that! That same night I had played a show in London – this was like, 2009 – and one of my closest friends, Chris and his friend Joe, told me that he worked at Cargo Distribution. A legendary company! He asked me if I’d like to start a label. It was just so…
Genko: Serendipitous
AWK: Oh yeah! I mean, that sort of stuff really happens if you notice it. I couldn’t believe the overwhelming level of synchronicity, and that’s how it all began.
Genko: Now I’ve gotta ask, ever since i saw the first Andrew WK single ["Party Hard"], I’ve had this question on my mind… why the blood?
AWK: Well I took that photo with an amazing photographer named Roe Ethridge. I met him through a band called Fisherspooner, you heard of them?
Genko: Yeah.
AWK: So i was playing shows with them, the first shows i played in New York. Very unusual shows like playing in Starbucks and the top of the World Trade Center, just really wild strange shows. I was just completely amazed by this group because they put so much effort into their shows. For just one show, like a Starbucks show, they would spend $5,000 or $10,000 dollars… to play in Starbucks for just 50 people!
Genko: That must have been one hell of a show…
AWK: Light machines, incredible costumes and costume changes, their own PA that they would bring in, all these hired dancers that they would bring in, I mean it was really inspiring… I was just blown away, and I said to myself that these are the kind of people I want to be around. So one of the things that I noticed about them was that all of their photos, for flyers or cds or anything, were always amazing. When I met Roe Ethridge, who is really nice and lived near me, I asked him if he would take photos for me. He didn’t charge me, I only payed for the equipment [film] that was something like $200. So we took a whole bunch of photos, and the last photo he took was that one with the bloody nose. It was such a fluke. What I like about a bloody nose is that it’s a lot of blood but it’s a fairly common situation. I think almost everybody at some point in their lives, even your grandmother, has probably had a bloody nose and it can happen without any violence at all! It can happen from the weather being dry, from blowing your nose, you know… I liked that it was very very gory, but also very very mild.
Genko: You are correct, sir. I also heard that you have gotten into motivational speaking?
AWK: Yes.
Genko: I’m probably not gonna catch any of the lectures from here. What do you speak about?
AWK: I’ve been lecturing all over the place, mostly colleges, since 2005. I talk about partying and I talk about partying.
Genko: Interesting… just partying?
AWK: Well, partying includes everything. It’s a pretty broad topic, fortunately.
Genko: What do you mean it includes everything? Like a party party? Or a party view of life?
AWK: Both.
Genko: So what advice do you have for people with severe systemic issues? What advice do you have for people that don’t have the resources to… well, party?
AWK: Well, the beauty of partying and the beauty of many cultures and civilizations throughout the world and throughout time has been the ability to, out of all different shortcomings, to have there be no shortage of joy or happiness or celebration. Often times we’ve seen that cultures or societies, where there’s the most poverty or oppression or lack of material wealth or even social wealth, have no shortage of wealth in joy. Perhaps even have more.
Genko: That is correct, sir. I see this type of society every day.
AWK: You can hear it reflected in music of different lands. There are whole regions of the world, and Peru i believe is one of them, where music itself is pretty focused on a kind of really up excited high energy happiness.
Genko: I’m probably gonna send you some of that music.
AWK: I’d love to listen to it.
Genko: I wanted to tell you, one of my favorite songs from Andrew WK is actually “I Came For You.”
AWK: WOW!
Genko: It’s the first song on ‘Close Calls With Brick Walls‘, right?
AWK: Yeah! Thank you.
Genko: I also enjoyed 55 Cadillac very much. It’s all piano which is something I didn’t expect from you. Both of those are so different, but similar at the same time.
AWK: I don’t know how I feel about it, it’s hard for me to talk about. It’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever tried to make myself on a recording. This was during the whole opposites thing and it was the exact opposite of my entire approach for recording ever, which was… I’ve always put a lot of time and care and play things over and over and over again and overdubbed and changed this and edit that and do the whole thing over and just months and months and months of work on the recordings ’cause that’s how i think about recordings… like, “Here’s your chance to play it right.” But with that one I just did everything in one take, as fast as possible, without any care or concern even to whether I thought it was good or not. The goal of this was not to try to impress anybody or myself, it was like “I’m just gonna play piano for two hours and take the best of that stuff.” It was very weird, but I hope at the end of the day that feels in some way like “Party Hard” or the bloody nose. I hope it all fits in, I don’t want it to feel like a billion different things.
Genko: Well I think it fits rather nicely. So Andrew, you’re a musician that’s been in every scenario. From ‘indie’ to corporate labels, diy, everything. What advice do you have for up and coming musicians?
AWK: That’s a great question… I don’t know if I have any advice except to figure out exactly what it is that you want to do and then to do that. But the figuring out is, for many people, the most challenging thing. Even thinking about what your goal is as a musician. Is it trying to play your instrument well or to be a business person that uses music as a way to make a living? Because someone who says, “I want to be a successful musician,” that’s just playing your instrument well so you have to practice to be really good. If you wanna be a successful working musician or a successful business person or work in show business, that’s a whole different thing. From my experience, if you don’t like business and you don’t like money and you don’t like the whole idea of that kind of work you might not have very much fun.
Genko: So that’s about all the time we have, right?
AWK: Yeah, is that alright for you?
Genko: Yeah, it’s been great! I’ve had a ball.
AWK: Likewise. Thank you for your excellent questions, your very kind words, and everything else.
Genko: I’m really looking forward to the album.
AWK: Me too! I’m excited, It’s the best stuff I feel like I’ve ever done.
Genko: I’m sure it is, you keep surprising me.
AWK: Thank you so much, you’re really kind.
Genko: Keep making great music!
AWK: Thank you! And keep doing great interviews and thanks for all your research.
Genko: Bye-o
AWK: Bye Bye.
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