"I didn't want Andrew W.K. to be just about music. That was never the point. The point was for Andrew W.K. to be more about a feeling."
Andrew W.K. seemed to be feeling pretty good about himself as he made that grand statement. He was in Austin, Texas, to play six shows -- including his first full-band rock gigs in five years -- launching a would-be comeback at South by Southwest.
Wearing his trademark white jeans, white T-shirt and long, greasy hair, the hyperactive and verbose but disarmingly polite and well-spoken singer/producer/TV host said his SXSW stint was a "reintroduction to rock" that includes his summer co-headlining dates on the Warped Tour, which returns to Canterbury Park in Shakopee Sunday.
"It's been a long time coming, but it feels like the right time," he said. Perhaps you don't remember Mr. W.K. (Andrew Wilkes-Krier, age 31). If not, then you must not be one of the college students who've attended his motivational lectures in droves in recent years. And you must not pay attention to music in movies and TV, since his brand of anthemic, chest-beating pop-metal has appeared in movies such as "Old School," a dozen-plus video games, and commercials for Target, Coors, Hotwire and more.
Even those who remember Andrew might have forgotten he came to the Twin Cities to record some of his breakthrough 2001 album for Island/Def Jam, "I Get Wet." The exuberant record earned a polarized reception, from a four-star review in Rolling Stone to a miserly .06 out of 10 rating on Pitchfork. (Pitchfork came around and ranked "Wet" among the best albums of the decade.)
At SXSW in March, crowds reacted with rapture to Andrew's live shows. They featured a backup singer in Jane Fonda-like aerobics mode, nonstop stage dives and air kicks from Andrew, plus banter such as, "If we're going to die tomorrow, what we do tonight really counts!" Love him or hate him, it was good to have him back.
"It wasn't about scaling back the rock shows, it was just about not wanting to tour full time," he said. "It's good to get out there, but it's easy to get caught up in it so that's all that you do: Record an album, tour, record, tour. I wanted to enlist different methods of entertainment to get across that feeling that is Andrew W.K., different projects that would tie in with my experiences touring, such as opening a nightclub with my friends. There's no way I could've done that if I was touring all the time.
"The beautiful part to me is I don't have to give anything up now. I can do this, and then try that, and then go back to this."
