by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“We’re incredibly lucky young men who have been given the world for no real reason, but we’re not gonna trash it, we’ll do the most with it and we’ll never forget how lucky we are.”

Limp Bizkit is dead. This is Andrew WK (Wilkes-Krier), the 23-year-old, Michigan-bred, classically trained pianist who parties ’til his face is bloody, always striving to be his best and to bring you good times. Marking the return of hard rock the good-guy way, his world-renowned debut disc, I Get Wet, offers the pop appeal of anthemic rock, the vocal ferocity of metal and the mechanic precision of high-energy dance music. Laugh if you want, but WK is so wholly, utterly serious that the Mirror’s interview feels more like a motivational seminar crossed with extreme sports.

Mirror: How’s the tour going?

Andrew WK: Aw man, I’ve never felt better, I’m just deliriously excited while these songs are going on. Like, last night in Calgary, we kicked into our second song, “Take It Off,” and the song starts, “TAKE... IT... OFF!” I usually sorta scream it like that, but last night I was just so psyched, I went “TAKE... IT... WAAAHHHHH!!!” I just screamed as high as I could and it surprised me, I was just, “Oooh-WOAH!” and I just, “WOA!” and, like, “GAH!” and just ran around and, oh man, I can’t wait to play tonight. So things are fantastic. We’ve been going to casinos, I’m real excited about going today. Yesterday, we tried this system we developed, and we bet very small, we’re very conservative, but we do need the possibility of higher bets in order to use this system we’ve devised. We don’t gamble, let me make that very clear. We don’t gamble, we go to make money. We’re not high rollers, we’re not going to strip clubs, we do not do that, you know why? ’Cause that, to me, is a promotion of sadness, and we don’t wanna promote sadness, there’s too much fun to be had. I think it’s time for human beings to step it up a notch, and just do a little more, give a little more than they take, have a little more patience, raise their expectations of themselves, lower their expectations of others, and make it happen.

M: Do you ever get tired?

AWK: Getting tired really isn’t an option. As far as I’m concerned, each show is the only show we’re ever gonna play, and each day is the only day we’re gonna get. It’s just more fun to live in the moment, to live like your life depends on it, and that’s a very hard thing to do. Someone once told me that was the definition of existentialism, but I’m not sure if that’s it. A lot of people are concerned with me, they say I’m working too hard and I’m not gonna be able to do this for the rest of my life, but I’m not gonna be able to do anything for the rest of my life, so why should that reality prevent me from doing this now? Like, if I give lollipops to 100 people and 99 of those people eat it and enjoy it, but one person takes the lollipop and pokes it in somebody’s eye, does that mean I shouldn’t have given out lollipops? Should I not give 100 per cent at a concert ’cause I’m on tour and I might get tired? I know that I have it in me to at least play a concert every night, and compared to what some people do in their lives, that’s nothing. We were watching boxing last night and the endurance those guys have is beyond belief. It’s like me doing my concert plus getting hit in the face the whole time, that’s how they must feel. Or what about someone who has a really hard job, like a coal miner or someone who’s buried in a coal mine, waiting to be saved, or a young person who’s abused by their family? This is nothing, this is a blessing, this is heaven on earth and to ever get tired or frustrated with it is outrageous and unacceptable.

Getting wet

M: Speaking of getting hit in the face, you’ve had a lot of show-related injuries.

AWK: Yeah, but I think I’ve gotten more durable lately. I sometimes chip my teeth or get cuts, but nothing real serious. The biggest injuries I’ve sustained on stage were caused by myself, one where I head-banged right into the top of someone’s head—that put me in the hospital, that was severe—and another bloody one where I did a high kick and kicked so hard that I swung my leg right into my face and smashed my nose real bad. But I’m not thinking about violence when we’re playing, I’m thinking about dancing, so dancing is usually what happens.

M: So you played Ozzfest! Are you into Black Sabbath?

AWK: It was very new to me, to be quite honest, Ozzy was a little before my time, but I’ve got such a great amount of respect for him as someone who’s done this and done it well for a very long time. No one sings like that guy, nobody looks like that dude and he’s just cool, he’s one of those dudes that is cool. Doing Ozzfest really didn’t enter our minds, but Kelly had come to our concerts so Sharon Osbourne called and asked if we wanted to play, and we were so honoured that we accepted unconditionally, of course, please, yes, let us, we’d love to play. We loved it, we fought it, we worked hard and we left it saying, “That was awesome.” But you only get to play for 15, 20 minutes, so I would talk to hundreds of people for a good 10 hours every day. To waste that opportunity would be crazy ’cause they were all people who were excited about being at Ozzfest, like we were.

M: Yeah, I heard you spend hours talking to fans. What makes you so devoted?

AWK: It’s weird, right? Well, I’ve had my feelings hurt many times by people I really looked up to, whether it was at a concert or even just a friend or an older kid in my school, and that wasn’t right, so this just seems like the thing to do. I’m not making this music to listen to in my little world in my room, this is music made for people and it doesn’t mean anything if people don’t care about it. I want everyone to know that I exist to make them happy. I have all I could ever want in the world and the least I can do is be with them whenever they need me and be as much as I can for them. It’s also another way for me to know that I gave all I could, ’cause when I’m not living up to my own expectations, it’s a problem.

Staying strong

M: I read that you carry a card around with motivational messages for yourself.

AWK: Like anybody, I have little problems, little stupid stuff that constantly comes up, day after day, and this way I’ll have a solution to instantly kill it before it becomes something to worry about. That card actually got stolen one day in Paris. I lost lots of my stuff but, once again, that reminds me that I will never take things that are not mine. I stole a lot when I was younger, so I definitely had it coming to me. Anyway, I was feeling real down one day, real stupid, I was in a dark place, really, really out of touch with reality, so I sat down and I typed all these messages, and then, of course, I felt much better. All I have to do is think of a couple of them and they’ll set me straight. The classic one is, “Don’t be an f-ing wimp”—but now I say, “Stay strong,” that’s more friendly—that will get me through a lot of stuff. Then there’s, “What would my mom do?” I kinda have conversations with her in my head—she’s around, I call her too—and before you know it, problem solved.

M: I read that you love the songs on your album, but you’re not satisfied. What can we expect from the next album?

AWK: Hatebreed said it best, they said, “Satisfaction is the death of desire,” so I will never be satisfied. This goal, this dream, this vision, is simply to get up every day and work and if I can do that then it’s mission accomplished, but the minute I stop doing that, I’m failing. So the next album is ready to go, it’ll be recorded this winter, and it’s just more, that’s all I can say. We’re never gonna turn our backs on what we’ve done, to not do it again would be ridiculous, it would be an abomination. This is everything to me, doing something other than this is not even possible, so it will simply be more, just more, and more, and more, you can count on that. You don’t have to worry about it failing you, this will be here for now and forever, long after I’m dead, and until that point, I’ll be making it the best I can, you can believe in it. In a world of fly-by-night operations, this is a long-term investment. :

With Danko Jones and the Getaway at
Foufounes électriques on Saturday, Oct. 12, 8pm, $20

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