At the beginning of our conversation Andrew W.K. seemed glum, which stood in contrast to the king of partying and beacon of positivity the world knows him as. His reasons were cryptic at times, but perhaps he is feeling something we all feel, a collective consequence of living in a seemingly constant state of tumult and uncertainty. Nonetheless, at the heart of the party that Andrew W.K. has championed for nearly twenty years is the universal ideals of doing right and maintaining an optimistic outlook on life. His first new album in eight years – You’re Not Alone – is a sprawling rock and roll statement aimed transcending the feelings of loneliness and sadness that plague so many of us. Partying and all of its deeper meanings in W.K.’s world is a vehicle for overcoming the mental hardships of life. The messages are delivered via euphoric and endlessly triumphant, piano-driven anthems, and the feeling of positivity is delivered as much through the lyrics as it is through epic guitar solos and upbeat piano and synthesizer. You’re Not Alone is easily Andrew W.K.’s most ambitious work to date as he experiments with new sounds and new emotions that go beyond his righteous quest to create the ultimate party, although there is still plenty of that.
As he prepared for another leg of the tour, Andrew W.K. recently took the time to candidly share some of the struggles and challenges he has been facing as of late while also getting downright philosophical on piano rock, healing the divide, and the larger meaning of partying.
You’ve been on tour since the album came out in April. How is everything going?
It’s been the best of times and it’s also been unusually challenging, but I have a feeling that’s probably how life always has been and always will be. I think there used to be more contrast where the areas of this work that are going really well stand out and are at the best they’ve ever been. For example, the people I get to work with as part of this band, I’ve never felt more gratitude and appreciation. I’ve never worked with a more excellent set of musicians and people. At the same time, there are other challenges and frustrations that stand in stark contrast to those, but we try to be encouraged and fueled by the great areas of this work and use that fuel to face the parts that have been frustrating.
Can you speak to some of the challenges?
It has very little to do with the technical side, that’s the part that goes better and better. I think it’s just the standard challenges that I imagine face every performer that is looking at nearly two decades. You just try to keep going. Again, I’m really thankful for our physical power, the focus and dedication that my team and I have. But the magical X factor that is at the core of entertainment is other people you can’t control, and you’re at the mercy of other people, the audience essentially. That’s the best part of this very unique business but it’s also the most confounding. There’s a very mysterious aspect to it. This is a long-term commitment and the main goal is to continue. Winston Churchill once defined success as the ability to move from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. That’s definitely the mindset you have to adhere to in any project with any long-term mission because that’s how it begins to feel. What’s equally interesting is how the aspect of the work that you wouldn’t consider as successful really begins to stand out as the most meaningful part of the work. For example, I always thought of my band as a means to an end, that we were a group of people who were here to achieve something, to perform, to see our ambitions through. But it almost seems reversed now, where the motivation behind becoming a band that we thought was the main focus of our efforts was just an excuse to develop these relationships and that the relationships that we’ve built with each other through this work are the greatest pay-off of this entire effort. Those are things I never would’ve been able to anticipate years and years earlier, let alone appreciate.
Do you think your relationship with your audience have changed or evolved over all this time?
I don’t know, I’m not sure. I guess you’d have to ask them. That’s the X factor where you can’t really know what other people are thinking. Maybe it’s with all commerce, all business, there’s this effort made by the sales person to manipulate the customer to bend to their will and do what they want, think what they want, act as they want. Maybe there are elements of that in some areas of show business. But it seems like a much different relationship because the product that’s being [sold] is so ethereal and experiential, and it seems much more that the performer is at the mercy and the will – in a really beautiful way, perhaps a more fair and honest way than other realms of business – but I’m thankful that anyone has ever spent any time at all and given their precious time to me, to this music and this party mission. There are those who I’ve seen stay with us and join this mission as full-fledged members, [and they are] really as important and as integral as myself or my band members. To have this handful of people stick with me over two decades is extraordinary and that’s something I’ve really grown to appreciate more. I was always extremely excited and amazed when anyone would show up in the early days, and to see people who have changed so much, to have someone come to this when they were 13 years old and now be 33 that’s an extraordinary transformation that occurs in that period of time no matter who you are.
At its core your music is really piano rock to the extreme, and good piano rockers are hard to come by these days. Do you see piano rock as an enduring style of music?
I really appreciate you recognizing that. I think you may be the only person who has ever said that
I love piano rock and every time I’ve seen you live you throw it down on the piano, which seems to be under appreciated.
I can’t tell you how much that means to me, especially going back to the very early days. I got a huge amount of pushback from my peers, from close associates of mine, who focused on the presence of keyboard, the piano, in this music, as the number one problem with it. I was hurt by that but also puzzled by it because, as I saw it, rock music emerged out of the piano specifically more than the guitar, drums, even vocals. I don’t really know when that confusion about the piano’s prominence in rock music got overlooked. It’s always thought of as the guitar, and of course I love the guitar really as much as piano. I don’t play it very well so I don’t have as deep of a relationship with it personally, but I appreciate it. In fact, I might appreciate it even more than the piano because I’m not able to play it. I’m in awe of the guitar, it’s expressive in a way that the piano simply cannot be. Synthesizers can get there and approximate the level of expression, but guitars have unique powers.
Nevertheless, the feeling I got from music and wanted to create specifically really matched well with what the piano specializes in. My experience as a piano player is absolutely what informs the musical texture of this music. People who aren’t piano players probably don’t notice it or they don’t hear these chords that are in there, and that’s fine. That’s why I guess I don’t really push this a lot but the fact that you brought it up is really so satisfying. It wouldn’t sound like the way it sounds and I wouldn’t even be able to write it if it wasn’t dominated from its first moments of inception by the character of the piano. I do hear a lot of keyboards out there and a lot of piano and synthesizer. I’m actually really encouraged by electronic and dance music, it’s just so bound up in its relationship to keyboards and synthesizers, but as far as prolific piano players – I see people using keyboards but I am not convinced they really know how to play them that well. Even people who write songs on piano in rock music, they’re out there, Alicia Keys is an incredible pianist and I think she plays with the intensity of rock music, but I don’t know if she would call her [stuff] rock music. Jerry Lee Lewis is still playing, which is incredible. I saw him play a few years ago and I think back then he had a different approach to his stage presence but the integrity of his piano playing was probably one of the most intimidating things I’ve ever seen. If you closed your eyes he sounded as good or better – that’s what happens, with practice comes this kind of mastery and people forget that just because someone’s older they’re going to decay in their musical abilities – and he’s actually better now than he was 40 years ago. That’s encouraging and inspiring. That piano sound is out there but I don’t know if it was ever that prominent. There’s a certain musical emotional spirit that a certain faction of people are interested in and it seems that the keyboard and the piano are integral to that spirit. It seems like for the people looking for it, it will always exist. I don’t know that it’s always dominated or ever did but it’s always there. I’ve never really thought of myself as tradition, or continuing that spirit alive – I think of it as kind of perpetual – but of course it could die out.
Jerry Lee Lewis is definitely an inspiration in that sense.
Yeah. It’s a sensibility, and as long as there are a small handful of people specifically focused on that sensibility, it will remain. I’ve talked to people who make what I consider to be this same style of music and they feel very passionate about it but [they’re] also frustrated because to them this spirit dominates their life so much that when they look out at the world they’re constantly searching for this spirit and hoping to have it recognized in other areas. All you want is that connection with someone else, to be able to say, yes this is what I am looking for too, and you can share that excitement in knowing you’re not the only person on the face of the earth who wants this feeling from music. Otherwise it is very alienating. It can be alienating in two ways: on one side it can feel like you’re the only one who is looking for this certain feeling in life. On the other hand it can feel like maybe you’re wrong, and rather than everyone else missing out on it, maybe you’re the on missing out on what they’re finding seemingly in abundance. It’s an isolating predicament but the best way to deal with it is just to make the music.
It gives your album title a whole new meaning.
I suppose so, that is in there. Definitely in the last stages of the recording as the album was shaping up and I was looking at what they pieces of music were, I on the one hand felt as though I had fulfilled some promises I had made to myself and music by finally making these particular songs the way they are, and on the other hand I felt that maybe no one would relate to this at all. It was a really awful feeling and it still lingers. In that sense of wanting so desperately to connect and relate to someone else and have a shared enthusiasm for an emotional texture, and not only be able to have that connection but not be able to even have an understanding of why you can’t have that connection. It’s intense.
You’re known for the party, and the party is really this idea of staying positive. What is your secret to keeping your mindset and attitude so positive?
Having a mission, a purpose, having made a promise, having a cause that is more important than my bad mood, that gives me reason to do something even if I don’t feel like doing it at the moment. That I am obligated and committed beyond my own weakness. That’s been the entire answer for me. That’s what this whole party mission was built on, having something to focus on that was specifically about the good feelings. If I worked on something, even if I didn’t feel good, if it was at least about feeling good, that was the best shot I had of not only pulling myself out of it but doing something that was maybe useful in some way or beneficial to possibly even someone else. But I don’t think I could do it if there wasn’t this sense of purpose and meaning behind it. Of course, there’s plenty of times, and maybe even all the time, where I’m very skeptical of the meaning and it seems like I’m just fooling myself and everyone else to think this even has purpose, that I’m just inventing the idea to create the impression, to give myself the illusion and deceive myself into thinking that I’m doing something meaningful. But that’s okay because the beauty of it is that once you’re committed and you’ve made the promise, it doesn’t matter if you even think the promise is stupid. A promise is a promise, and sometimes it comes down to simply taking action, going through the motions in those moments when you don’t have the mental and emotional power. You can still generate the physical power out of necessity, just like breathing. There might be times when you don’t feel like your heart should beat but your body does it anyway because your body is bound up in some kind of commitment that transcends all that. Sometimes I try to think of myself as an automatic process in those moments when finding some kind of conscious motivation feels impossible. Like when everything feels futile or pointless, it doesn’t matter because I have a commitment and people counting on me and I can’t let my own weakness or nihilism let that thing down.
The party is counting on you.
Yeah, exactly, the party spirit. This ethereal, amorphous spirit. There are many ways to do it. Sometimes we care about another person more than we do ourselves and that’s quite noble because that will allow you to become more than you are for someone else. I agree with the sentiment that you have to love yourself before you love someone else. It is through loving someone else that you often times learn to love yourself. The noble effort to become of one’s own life, of this chance to exist, is to me the most incredible feeling. I can get lost with a back and forth debate with myself over whether there’s any point to doing anything but that doesn’t change the fact that I do exist, so I might as well make the most of it. The debate in all of that questioning, all of those doubts and the moments of breakthrough and confusion, all of that is part of the party. I think that’s what’s helped me with that mindset. Rather than a specific activity or worldview, it’s an attitude that attempts to stay as open-minded and enthusiastic about everything even when that feeling feels unnatural. Because you have a mission and you have to do whatever it takes to keep going and if you have to trick yourself, so be it.
From someone with such universally positive views, what do you think it will take to heal the divide in this country?
Well, I don’t know. There are times when I don’t think things are as divided as people believe. I see statements all the time that tell us we’re divided and yet I go out into the world and experience quite the opposite. Perhaps they’re both true. Trying to encapsulate something as complex as the world or a country or a nation with millions of people with some overriding condition seems difficult as best and completely foolish at worst. In most cases we can only take things one day, one person, one situation at a time in our day-to-day life. I personally have attempted to refuse to believe that half the world is at odds with another half, or half the people hate the other half of the people. I just don’t want to be divided with myself and the people around me. Maybe there will come a time when we absolutely have to pick sides on every single thing, but I don’t know that it’s necessary now and I don’t know that it’s possible even in the midst of the most severe and seemingly straightforward wars or battles.
One thing within all the confusion that I do know and everyone else knows is that we’re all alive. [Of] all the things to disagree on and find a conflict around, that fact remains the same. I don’t know that it provides an easy answer, but it is a fact, and I try to keep that undeniable truth in the front of my mind to see everything through that. With all these conflicting facts and alternative facts – just being alive is confusing enough – but it is a fact that we are alive and we’re surrounded by humanity. I don’t know if that clarifies every situation but it’s something I hold onto as a truth. Truths are difficult to interact with a lot of the time, this idea of an absolute truth. There are brief glimpses of clarity though, and when they descend I think it’s important to acknowledge them. If I can be clear on the fact, for example, that music makes me feel good, I hold onto that and protect and cherish that, especially when I can find no doubt in it. I can’t say oh yeah, music really isn’t that great. I can try to think that but then music defies that thought and then proves itself to be a truth. The fact that I’m a human being and so is this other person is a truth, and I can try to say, well they’re not quite as human as me or some other absurd line of thinking that seeks to accentuate the superficial differences, but then the truth will assert itself once again.
And maybe one day you can revive the Party Party.
Well, its spirit lives on. The spirit existed before I attempted to do that and it was just another mode of delivering the same party power.
I saw you perform last year and at the end of the show you did a countdown that I think was the number 93. Is there a significance to this number?
It’s a number, that’s for sure. We have to pick some number to start from. I think originally we did a 1,000 second countdown but it took too long. So we cut to the chase a little bit and started closer to zero.
Andrew W.K. Tour Dates:
Sept 04 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
Sept 05 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
Sept 06 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Sept 07 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Sept 08 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox at The Market
Sept 09 – Vancouver, CAN @ Imperial
Sept 11 – Calgary, CAN @ Dickens Pub
Sept 13 – Winnipeg, CAN @ The Park Theatre
Sept 14 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theatre
Sept 15 – Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
Sept 18 – Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s
Sept 19 – Kansas City, MO @ RecordBar
Sept 21 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
Sept 22 – Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
Sept 23 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Downstairs
Sept 25 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East
Sept 26 – Durham, NC @ Motorco
Sept 27 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
Sept 28 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham
