“In many ways, it feels like it only just started.” From his dressing room backstage at the Sound Academy in Toronto, Andrew Wilkes-Krier reflects on what he considers just the beginning. Wilkes-Krier, better known by his stage name Andrew WK, pounces up from his couch and approaches the curtain-clad sliding doors at the end of the room; he peers out through the window and gazes to the crowd below, consisting of hundreds assembled in front of a large concert stage, stretched from one side of the waterfront building to the other. While the performer overlooks many at a mighty height approaching six-and-a-half-feet, from atop his second floor balcony at the venue, his eyes easily glance down on everyone awaiting his performance on the floor. Just a stone’s throw from the shores of Lake Ontario, hoards have flocked to the venue tonight for what is yet one more notch etched in the on-going saga of the world-renowned career that WK views as being still in its infancy.
At the young age of just 29, Andrew WK has already toured the world over several times. As a singer of an internationally recognized rock band that bares his name, he has graced magazine covers and billboards across the globe. His acting resume boasts hosting gigs on MTV and VH-1, and even after the release of four full-length albums (and just as many DVDs), WK refuses to sit still. “I don’t ever want to get bored. I got to keep switching it up and keep pushing myself,” he pleads. Despite the calm, collective cool in his eyes and the soft-spoken delivery, it is clear that performing, in any regards, is a passion that is not going to be stifled.
WK made a name for himself with the release of his first album in 2001, I Get Wet, a rock ‘n’ roll opus decorated with heavy piano, layers upon layers of electric guitar, and several tunes devoted to celebrating the art of partying. His first single, “Party Hard,” became an immediate success, yet, to many critics, remained little more than a novelty number. Stints on the Warped Tour and frequent soundtrack contributions were noteworthy additions to his resume, but the initial success that surrounded his first release dwindled, and upon the release of 2003’s The Wolf, many that were sucked in by WK’s high-spirited party hits abandoned his efforts. Nonetheless, a cult following developed for the young rock star, as did the establishment of a tremendous fan base in East Asia, both of which are still rampant today.
Today, after countless tours, the chartering of a two-story Manhattan nightclub, and a handful of hits, Andrew WK is back on the road. But this time around, he is not playing gymnasiums and arenas with his touring band of yesteryear, but rather with nothing more than a microphone, a keyboard, and a few dozen fans on his side. In Toronto last Thursday, he raced on the stage in an aggressive frenzy, and after working up the crowd with a stringent soliloquy that resembled nothing short of a cult leader’s morning affirmation, he delved into a 40 minute set of hits as his new-found friends sang along arm-in-arm, and the PA blasted out the backbeats of some of his better known numbers. Not only does WK think that this is nowhere close to the end, but in a strange way, a return to what got him going in the first place.
“When I first started playing, I played by myself because I didn’t have a band and just had not met anyone,” recalls WK shortly before his set. “I tried to form a band several times, and it just didn’t work out, so instead of waiting until I had a band, I just decided to play shows,” he continued. WK composed all the tunes on his first album, and by the time it reached number one on Billboard’s “Heatseakers” list, he had compiled a touring band of professionals to take his show on the road. Though he reflects on his past performances with the group as being amazing, after nearly a decade of adventures, which are encompassed by world tours, symphonic performances and, even recently, motivational speaking lectures, WK began craving the rush that he got when he first took to the stage as just a solo performer. “I want it to feel like how it felt like to go out on stage and really have no idea what was going to happen…all that stuff that I didn’t like about playing by myself before suddenly became very exciting to me. The risk of going out there and having to carry the whole show, the danger of not having someone else there to fill in a space or a gap, and to go outside of the comfort zone was really appealing to me. And there is a creative flexibility and excitement that has required me to pull out abilities that I didn’t have before and it has made me a better performer,” he said.
Sprawled on the couch, the musician is donned in red plaid, and with his shoulder length hair flowing out of his matte black cap, resembles something not too far off from just another 20-something out on the town. In between humbly acknowledging the accomplishments of his career thus far and interjecting quick quips about his Iranian-born father-in-law into the conversation, WK interrupts himself to explore his surroundings backstage. It is more unexpected than unbecoming that the man who put “Party Til You Puke” and “It’s Time to Party” on the same album appears comfortably reclined in front of a glass table stocked with mineral water, and that the band on the other side of the sliding doors is, just, in his words, “too loud.” He inspects the sliding doors for a gap that he suspects is allowing an influx of music to obstructs our interview, and before launching into a scholarly diatribe on his current reading list, insists on eliminating the distraction.
When he runs on to the stage two hours later, the Andrew WK that leads a throng of fanatics is far from the professor’s son from Ann Arbor, Michigan who raved about evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and reggae to me earlier that night. While the transformation from a mild-mannered mid-Western kid to a stark-raving bandleader is obviously noticeable, the passion in his eyes and ear-to-ear smile remain. When he preaches to the crowd before launching into his first song, there is a sort of glimmer present in his eyes that was there earlier, humanizing more or less the ungodly passion for creating that he clearly ennobles.
“The whole idea is that whatever we do is going to be intense!”
WK addresses the crowd, but their roar practically cuts him off. If it was possible to create a chaos that still adhered to an ordering leader, he was championing it. He was trying to get more out, but the rumble from the crowd cut him short. He tried again:
“Powerful!”
They’re ready.
Over the years, WK’s performances have garnished critical acclaim, sometimes outshining the music itself. On stage, the singer is always decked out in his trademark white denim and matching t-shirt, and his infectious dance of rhythmic fist pumps and arm swings comes close to mimicking an epileptic tarsier. If not evident from the visual aesthetic of the performance or the lyrical content of the party anthems themselves, having a good time is clearly the message behind the music, as showcased in a few of the night’s numbers, “We Want Fun” and “Ready to Die,” for example. When asked about the meaning of some of his songs, WK gets quiet, and for the only time during the interview, actually pauses, as if he is not ready to just divulge an answer. “I was just letting the words come out and not worrying too much if that made sense or if they fit with the concept,” he said about the triumphant rock epic “I Get Wet” from his album of the same name. “Sometimes I would find that there was some kind of subconscious meaning there, and I sort of formulize that and bring that out more, but with that song, it was just like ‘This feels good to say. These words feel good to say.’ And that’s all that my music really is about. It’s about feeling good.”
While feeling good and having a blast are undoubtedly the core motivators in WK’s professional life, he goes on to credit his legion of fans for the inspiration to keep going. In regards to the series of motivational lectures he performed across the United States in recent years, WK said the interaction he had with those who attended the events further provoked him to keep his dream alive. “I like talking about ideas that I have and that other people have, and it’s exciting because most of the ideas that I’ve been thinking about-about life and happiness and perusing what your dreams are-it turns out that everyone else is thinking about these things personally, so creating a time where it is okay to talk about that and have a very loving discussion about those things has been really valuable to me, and I hope to other people too,” he said.
WK extends the fraternal appreciation for his fans through every step of his live show. From the moment he graces the stage, he lets them know that not only is the night going to be both “powerful” and “intense,” but one that won’t be forgotten. “We’ll remember this night as being fantastic,” he tells the crowd, as the house PA pumps out a 4/4 dance beat that reverberates through the ribs. Cautiously, he tells the crowd, close to one thousand, that every person in attendance must creep down to the floor before the song kicks in. “We’re gonna really create a memorable moment if we all do this together,” he says. As the song increases with intensity, the instructions to the crowd continue:
“The minute I say the word ‘party,’ everyone’s gonna jump up and go completely ballistic!”
When the bass line and kick drum cut out, the singer grips the mic betwixt his paws, hunches over, and dwarfs the microphone with his sweaty locks. He delivers:
“It’s time to parrrrrrrrty.” Before a single person can get back on their toes, the strobe lights are triggered, and every inch of the Sound Academy is transformed to a dance hall.
At his young age, the handful of albums, numerous world tours, speaking engagements and public appearances are understandably a lot to gauge for the musician, who was relatively unknown, trying to break it big on the streets of New York ten years ago. Within the last year, the singer has not only released an acclaimed collection of covers of Japanese pop songs (“The strangest music I’ve ever heard in my life,” remarked WK) but was recently honored with a greatest hits album on Universal Music, a remarkable feat for someone so young, and strikingly still as productive as ever. On his life thus far, the singer commented, “I feel like there is a lot of people that have done a lot more than I have before they turned 30, so I still have them to look at in terms of success and achievement at a young age, but I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunities to do as much as I have at such a young age, and more and more I am aware of it and realize ‘Wow, this is amazing that I get to do this stuff.’ It is a combination of gratitude and hard work that enabled all of this to happen, but mostly just believing that it would.”
Aware of his own achievements, WK shows no sign of giving up. If asked to predict the outcome of their endeavors ten years into the future, most will cast aside any allegations of super stardom, let alone suggest that down the road they will be recording renditions of tunes like “Gakuen Tengoku,” or delivering pep talks at Yale University. When questioned about what collaborations he would like to work on in the future (past enterprises have incorporated partnerships with The Boredoms, Ted Leo, and Lee “Scratch” Perry, to name a few), WK is hesitant to suggest anyone, for as he puts it, “if they are outside of my immediate grasp, I feel like they will come forward…I feel like it’ll happen anyway, and happen more magically.”
Before changing into his signature white jeans and leading the crowd through a cluster of tunes, closing with what started it all, “Party Hard,” WK suggested just a few words of advice:
“I would advise us to continue to spend most of our energies, if not all of it, thinking about what we really like and what we really love doing and what were happy about…Basically the idea is to fight for what you love and work for what you enjoy doing, instead of fighting against what you don’t like and having to work against what you don’t like. Just focus on what you love and we’ll be doing very well.”
