Andrew WK Interview

The first time I heard Andrew WK was at Will Johnson’s house. He’d just shown me his share of stock in the Green Bay Packers when he said, “I know someone you’d like.” He played “Girls Own Juice” for me. Holy shit was it awesome. I imagined some guy in his basement in Jersey recording all these tracks. I took it even further when I did a job in Toms River, NJ and saw a White Castle. I took the hate of the cars behind me as I took a left turn (I was living in TX where there aren’t any jughandles nor White Castles). I ordered clam strips and a coke and turned up AWKGOJ and cruised Toms River. Alone. It was a bad ass night.

Please forgive me as you read this interview as it was done by a fan.
andrew wk
Dear Jon,

First of all, thank you for doing this interview with me. Second, thank you for your patience. And third, thank you for what I consider excellent questions and your obvious preparation and familiarity with this music. I truly appreciate your support and it means a lot to me that you’ve spent time with my output.

Here are my answers:

Is Smokeshow going to be similar to Your Friend, Andrew W.K.?

I think Smokeshow and “Your Friend” may similar in terms of their overall emotional intent. We had conceived of “Your Friend” as being a T.V. show with inspiring and joyous content. I think that was achieved, and for that I’m grateful. I’m also grateful to have been given so many great opportunities working with the wonderful people at MTV, who made “Your Friend” and Viacom for their ongoing support. I feel even more fortunate to have ongoing creative relationships with the co-creators of “Your Friend”, who are involved in producing Smokeshow. The primary producer is named Jesse Ignjatovic. He and I’ve worked together since my very first music television experience in 1999. In addition, my long time friend, Evan Prager, is also producing the show with Jesse, out of their new production company. I recently met with them at their offices in LA and since then we’ve begun making the Smokeshow.

If you had complete control of YFAWK what would you have done different?

I wouldn’t change anything about the show now – however, at the time, I certainly felt like we could’ve included more footage from the actual show and less videos and advertising. At the same time, I liked the way the show was informal and part of a larger programming concept. At the time I felt that the show would be more powerful if more of it could be seen. Fortunately, we’ve designed Smokeshow to be an uninterrupted and complete half hour, plus their is total freedom in content and theme. In fact, in keeping with the best paradoxes, the “concept” is that there is no “concept”. Smokeshow is whatever you want it to be.

In relation to your live movie, “Who Knows?”, what is sync-stacking?

Sync-stacking is a simple technique used in mixing, where multiple tracks of performance are stacked on top of each other, so multiple versions of the same song are all being heard at once. Kind of like recording an entire band, and then, having the band overdub every part and every instrument a second time. Sometimes in “Who Knows?” we had three different stereo performances going together – we called that the Triple Stack. Most of the other songs are Double Stacked, and a few are actually just single stereo mixes. It’s interesting to see how they enfold together.

This process is similar to the recording process on the first album, “I Get Wet”, and even more so with the second album, “The Wolf”. On “The Wolf”, any part that was played, and most of the songs had four instrumental melody parts (bass line, melody line, high chord line, and lead melody line) and each of those would be doubled up on itself around a dozen times. I’m not sure of exactly what it was intended to do, but it was some kind of attempt at the sonic equivalent of a hall of mirrors, where there is no single source. It was the most severe example of one’s commitment to a process, and my own personal climax with that approach. But either way, there’s always been lots and lots of doubling and doubling and doubling of the music. It seemed obvious that the live recordings should also be doubled with other live recordings.

Is there any inspiration from the Kiss Alive Albums or any Queen album?

Perhaps in that they all feature some form of audio manipulation. Sometimes in a potentially subversive way. But that’s difficult to say and most likely incredibly unimportant.

How did you hook up with Hanson?

For many years, my publisher, Gary Helsinger, has been encouraging me to co-write more music with other people. Initially, I was very opposed to this idea. I had various reasons, including wanting some sort of creative control, or having a particular focus that was meant to be singular. It’s possible that all along I was simply scared of the idea, because I had never written a song with a stranger before. I don’t regret those years of self-imposed musical isolation, for it had a charm of its own, and it seems necessary along the chain of personal contradictions.

Recently, when Gary asked me if I’d consider co-writing again, along with encouragement from my manager, Pete Galli, I decided to just try it, almost purely out of the need to break out of that old shell… or as a way to escape from the confines of a quickly closing set of brick walls. Once we find ourselves in holding patterns, it only seems natural to make a crop rotation and to specifically do the opposite of what you did before.

Soon after I had started co-writing with various people for various different songs, Hanson invited me to participate in their song writing project called “Fool’s Banquet”. I loved the name right out of the gate, as I had been feeling very foolish about an assortment of absurdities. The Banquet invited me and about 6 other songwriters to their estate in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They matched up different people into groups of two or three and each group was to write and record a song in one day. Then the groups would switch and we’d write another song. I loved how intense the focus was – all the lyrics had to be finished, all the instrumentation, and then they had two top-of-the-line studios set up for recording. So by the end of it, there were 17 well recorded brand new songs. I co-wrote on 5 of them. By doing these types of collaborations, a songwriter develops a collection of songs that can be recorded by other performers. This catalogue of course can also be recorded by the writer personally. I enjoyed this experience very much.

I’ve never met them but they seem very goodhearted. What are your plans with them?

I found them and the rest of the Hanson family to all be incredibly kind and generous and articulate people. I think they’re incredibly talented as musicians and performers, and being around all the different people they welcomed into their world was amazing. They gave everyone complete creative freedom and I didn’t experience a single bad vibe the entire time. I also spent time with them in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I’ve been filming a great deal of different material over the past two years. I went there with Hanson to do some filming with them, including an interview with Taylor Hanson for Smokeshow.

A couple days ago, Hanson played in New York City, and they invited me to play piano on a couple of their songs. I really enjoyed the experience and there fans were really amazing. So intense and passionate and beautiful. I loved the whole show.

You played at my house, once – The Good/Bad Art Collective in Brooklyn. I was on the road and missed it, but I heard you did a lot of shredding. How has your performance evolved over the years?

I remember the Good/Bad Art Collective, but at this moment I can’t recall I thing about my performance or shredding. As far as performance, I think there’s been a relative consistency that’s been somewhat unintentional – meaning, there certainly were times when I made efforts to evolve my performance or aspects of it, but overall, it seems essentially the same feeling has been there, at least for me. Maybe the consistency has to always push towards evolution in life and in personal experience, and maybe that very type of change becomes a consistency in itself – there’s another paradox. I’d like to think there’s a push towards further levels of exposure, openness, connection, and vulnerability – those seem to be accomplished by some amount of concealment.

Your rock soul is 10-20 years older than you are. What did you listen to prior to your Bulb release of Girl’s Own Juice?

10 to 20 years older? That’s what you say. Maybe I’m 40 to 50 years younger! For the several years prior to Girl’s Own Juice, I was recording heavily and making an attempt to isolate myself from music outside of that which I produced. I don’t necessarily feel that’s a “good” or “bad” (Good/Bad) approach to recording, but it is a valid head-space to be in, and the vacuum like qualities achieved when “tuning out” seem to create some greater amount of “tuning in”. Of course I listened to all kinds of other music too, I just don’t feel like talking about it right now. I trust people – whatever they think, is right.

Speaking of Girl’s Own Juice, why was the song changed to Girl’s Own Love for “I Get Wet”? I like that there are two versions.

I’m glad you like it. It was just for fun. For some reason, I used to really not like the idea of more than one version of a song. I thought one definitive version was idea – and I still think that has a lot of power. By the time I was recording for “I Get Wet” I decided to intentionally contradict that idea and make another version. I had thought I could somehow improve upon the original – I don’t think Girls Own Love is better than Girls Own Juice – they became two different songs, at least to me.

Ann Arbor appears to be a good location to tour from. Did you take advantage of that?

Not really. The only “tour” I ever did while living in Michigan was a two trip to Chicago to play at a crust punk festival with my Detroit based band, Kathode. We somehow screwed up and got there late – missed our set time and everything. I think we got yelled at too. We end up staying at Martin from Los Crudos that night, and drove back to Michigan the next day. I was living in Ypsilanti at the time. I love Ypsilanti.

What brought you to NYC?

It seemed like the most intense place I could possibly go. Whether that was true then or now, I’m not sure, but it certainly seemed intense, and actually seems more intense to me now. I wanted to become that intensity and allow it to define me and my experiences. The less I’ve tried to do that, the more it’s happened, or maybe it’s just gotten easier to live here. Either way, I’m grateful for every aspect of every experience I’ve had and continue to have in New York City.

Have you ever collaborated with Mr. Quintron?

No, but I’ve always loved and admired Robert and Panacea. He used to be in a band called Math that really blew me away too. That was at least 13 years ago. I love them both very much and have always deeply enjoyed seeing Robert in New Orleans. There was a show we played together in Detroit at a place called The Gold Dollar – I was performing keyboard with The Beast People. That was about 10 years ago, I think.

Is there someplace you want to play that you haven’t?

Sure, there’s lots of places: South Africa, Poland, mainland China, Dubai, New Zealand, Alaska. That’s probably the main list for now. Fortunately, we’ve had the opportunity to go to a large number of countries and continents. I’m grateful for all the travel.

Tell me about The Joy Trilogy. Your music is full of joy. There seems to be a tone of fighting for joy and not taking shit and not having your spirit broken. What inspired this idea of a show?

We are made of love, and have nothing but the potential for love. Joy is the human experience of that love. Some have said that God is love, and therefor experiencing love is to experience God. I used to think that the statement “God is love” didn’t pack much of a punch. However, just reconsidering it as “Love is God”, it seems to reveal itself more clearly to me. The feeling of total love is the equivalent of God – the highest feeling. Maybe love is the active definition of God – the highest possible form. I used to get real hung up on God and thought of it as sort of a made-up idea or story. I still consider it possible that God might just be made up by our own minds, but that doesn’t lessen the power of the idea, in fact, our capacity to imagine the unimaginable is the essence of God.

Once I began to think of God as a word used to signify all that I can imagine and everything else I can’t. God is the unknown. God is a word to use when we talk of everything, but know nothing. God is consciousness and God is to each person, there own choice. If I choose to say, “There is no God. God does not exist,” this has no bearing on whether it does or does now, or on whether or not I experience what others would say was “experiencing God.”

I want to feel good. I want to experience joy. I do feel good. My life is joyous. This is what the Joy Trilogy is about. I was inspired to do it because I’ve never done it before and because it’s been feeling good to debate less and take action more often.

Thanks to Ben Kharakh for setting this up.