Andrew WK: Warped Tour performer charging up the world with his sound

PT Photo by Robin Kavanagh

By Robin Kavanagh
Consulting Editor

Those who love him, you’re in for a reward. Those who don’t, he’ll keep trying until you do.

But love him, hate him (or never heard of him) Andrew WK is masterminding a way to charge up the world with is sound, starting the April 25th Skate and Surf Festival show, scheduled dates for this summer’s Warped Tour, and a new album set to hit the stores in August or September.

“What we do as a band is really simple, which is excitement and energy and fun and pleasure and all those things,” he said. “What we did with the first album is…to state that this is what we do. And now with the second album, I’m not going to say that we’re going to not do that anymore, we’re just going to try to do it better. And that’s what every other album will do, is just find more ways and use more things and just become better and better at making exciting music. The goal is to just continue to find as many different ways to communicate that feeling to make that feeling to manufacture that feeling in the most big way possible. ”

Andrew WK came into focus last year with is debut album, “I Get Wet,” sporting his own blood-stained mug on the CD cover. He’s been locked in a New York City studio for months, working on the follow-up to the enormously successful album, which has landed Andrew the notoriety to be featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and even some hosting gigs on MTV.

Despite the success of “I Get Wet,” Andrew still keeps the same unassuming attitudes that he had when he was working a punch-the clock-job in Florida, cut off from most people. Instead of letting attention bolster his ego, he learns from it, and puts it into himself and his music.

“This last year meeting so many people has made me better. Just from meeting and getting to talk to other people and being around people that are good and cool and smarter than me or lived longer than me and their experience, I get to absorb some of that stuff. So the biggest, most exciting thing that’s happened to be is that someone who kinda was lonely, not lonely, maybe isolated or alone a few years ago now feels really, really the opposite, and I really have everyone else to thank for that.”

Andrew’s new album, which he describes as “the sound of triumph, of human glory and euphoria,” won’t be out until late summer, perhaps even early fall, so fans will have to wait until then before their appetites for new Andrew are satisfied.
“Playing new songs is fun and its kind of cool to hear them, but I wouldn’t want to take any time away from the songs people already know,” he said. “At least me, personally, I don’t like going to a concert and not knowing the songs at all. Listening to new songs is very cool and exciting, but I would rather slam though the songs that everyone already knows, and then once the new album’s out, we’ll put some of the new songs in.”

But, he said, the summer shows should still be rockin’.

“They’ve (the shows) been made the way they are by consistent efforts by not only me and the band, but by everyone that attends. I wouldn’t have been able to say this a year ago, but they are always insane. Last year things just got crazier and crazier at every concert…now, if everything goes well, every show is the best show we’ve had, and then we do it again the next day. It’s amazing. People just go bananas, but they go bananas in a way that lets everyone else go bananas too, and that’s what’s so amazing.”

But until Andrew hits the road again, fans will just have to spin old CDs and chew on Andrew’s humble thanks for their support and inspiration.

“People came away with things from the first album that I felt, very obviously, very easily, it was very clear and obvious to me what the music was all about and I never expected or imagined or assumed that people would feel those same things exactly as I was. But, then I found out people were feeling many things that I never imagined, it really made me proud, not of myself or of them, but in people in general that they could see all that there was to see with that. And now, I’ve been inspired by them very much and have been moved at how loving people have been about the songs and about the whole thing and just want to reward them, and maybe try to bring in other people, who, for whatever reason, not by their own fault, didn’t get any pleasure out of the last one.”

May 8 , 2003 Issue