The original party boy himself – Andrew W.K. is coming back to Australia for a tour and he couldn’t be in a better place. The last few months have been kind to Andrew. We last spoke to him earlier this year and he was excited about the release of his brand new album You Are Not Alone which he felt was the most personal album that he had written to date.
Now the album is out, the fans are loving it and Andrew can’t wait to head out onto the road to bring the music to Australia live…a country he feels he doesn’t visit anywhere as often as he should. “I am so excited,” he says when we begin talking about what fans can expect to see on the tour. “I am very excited because I haven’t been to Australia for a few years. And it is a few years even more than that when you think about the live band playing because my last tour to Australia was more of a solo tour, and we were really, really hoping, in fact counting on the fact that we would be able to come to Australia with the new album but then it started to fall apart and it begun to look like it wouldn’t happen and I was extremely disappointed, as was the band, so when the opportunity came up for these two shows to come together we were ecstatic.”
Andrew laughs when I ask whether this is another case of Australia getting over-looked because we are so far away. “I can’t use that for an excuse,” he says the laughter there in his voice. “Maybe as a subconscious decision on my behalf to never acknowledge how long the flight is until we are already on the plane, but I actually don’t find the travel to be that daunting. Yeah it is a longer flight then to other places but that has never been a reason for me not to go, I think it has always been the expense associated with those flights and the remote location in other ways making it difficult to connect with what may be otherwise a world tour but as you are probably aware a lot of people will connect it to a New Zealand trip or Japan… and of course once you are in Japan you can go to other places in Asia and so on. So in my mind there is no really good excuse – location is hardly a reason to avoid it, it is worth the trip every single time. Our biggest difficulty has always been with Australia, among other places of actually having the invitation extended even when we have reached out and tried to set up shows it has been more difficult than I would have liked. IT is always up to the decision of the promoters whether you get to play and we take our hats off to Destroy All Lines for making these two shows happen.”
Andrew W.K hits our shores this month.
