Andrew W.K.

Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier (born May 9, 1979), known professionally as Andrew W.K., is an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer and motivational speaker.

He is known for his combination of rock, metal and pop music and anthemic songs about partying.

Raised in Michigan, Wilkes-Krier began his musical career in the mid-1990s.

He performed in a number of local bands before eventually moving to New York, where he produced his first recordings under the Andrew W.K. moniker.

He later attended the private college preparatory Greenhills School for middle school before attending the alternative Community High School from 1993 to 1997, where he continued to study piano and keyboard.

In 1993, at the age of 14, he joined the band Slam, later to be called Reverse Polarity.

In 1996, a song recorded by W.K. entitled "Mr. Surprise" was included on Plant the Flower Seeds, a compilation by the Ypsilanti, Michigan-based record label Westside Audio Laboratories, marking his first publicly-released recording.

Over the next five years, W.K. would play in a number of Detroit-based punk rock and heavy metal bands, including The Pterodactyls; Lab Lobotomy; Music Band; Mr. Velocity Hopkins; playing drums in grindcore metal band, Kathode; in addition to forming the noise rock project Ancient Art of Boar, later known as AAB, which served as an outlet for his early solo material.

In 1998, W.K. moved from Michigan to New York City, where he worked a variety of short-lived jobs.

These included a bubblegum machine salesman, an opera ticket salesman, a fashion photographer, a window decorator at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and a waiter for a Mexican restaurant.

He also worked at the offices of the avant-garde fashion company Comme des Garçons.

He ended the AAB project and began recording new solo material under his full "Andrew Wilkes-Krier" name; the year saw the release of a cassette-only single entitled Room to Breathe on Hanson Records.

A follow-up release entitled You Are What You Eat was scrapped when the master recordings went missing.

W.K. also recorded the soundtrack for an independent film named Poltergeist made by Aaron Dilloway and himself, one track of which appeared on the Hanson Records compilation Labyrinths & Jokes.

In 1999, he moved to Seffner, Florida, to start building his live band with drummer Donald "D.T." Tardy, of death metal band Obituary.

After gaining initial attention with the 2000 EP Girls Own Juice, Wilkes-Krier rose to prominence with the release of his debut studio album I Get Wet in November 2001.

In the years following its release, he has undertaken a number of other musical and non-musical ventures including television and radio work, motivational speaking and writing.

Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier was born in Stanford, California, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

His father is professor James E. Krier, a legal scholar at the University of Michigan Law School and co-author of the widely used Dukeminier & Krier property casebook.

His mother is Wendy Wilkes.

His younger brother, Patrick, was a golf pro and is now a golf coach in Michigan.

At the age of four, Wilkes-Krier began learning piano at the University of Michigan School of Music.

He has recalled early family trips to midnight mass as having had an enormous impact on his love for music.

He was dubbed Andrew W.K. by an elementary school teacher to differentiate him from his classmates Andrew Cohen and Andrew Gilchrist.

In March 2000, Wilkes-Krier released his first EP, Girls Own Juice, also abbreviated as AWKGOJ, on Bulb Records, his first solo release under the moniker Andrew W.K. (he had first been credited as "Andrew W.K." on a remix entitled "Wolf Eyes Rules (What Kinda Band?)" for the noise rock band Wolf Eyes).

Girls Own Juice introduced his hard rock-influenced musical style and experimental tendencies, described as "Judas Priest mixed with Sparks" by Magas, a collaborator of W.K.'s.

Girls Own Juice was well received by critics, and was awarded a five-star rating by the British music magazine Kerrang!. The release increased buzz for W.K., centered around his "hedonistic, so-dumb-it's-smart rawk."

He continued to build his reputation by performing various solo gigs in the New York and other East Coast areas.

Wilkes-Krier and his then manager Matt Sweeney later shipped out a number of Andrew W.K. demo tapes, each accompanied by a handwritten letter.

One tape reached alternative rock musician Dave Grohl; impressed, Grohl offered Andrew W.K. a slot opening for his band Foo Fighters at a concert in San Francisco, which he accepted.

Another tape reached The Island Def Jam Music Group executive Lewis Largent, who liked the demos enough to attend an Andrew W.K. gig at the Mercury Lounge, where Largent was impressed by how W.K. "won over every last person in the audience."

Wilkes-Krier reacted with surprise to Island's interest in him, and despite his manager urging him not to accept his very first offer, W.K. was eager to begin work with Island.

Girls Own Juice was followed by another Bulb Records EP entitled Party Til You Puke in October 2000.

Following the release of Party Til You Puke, Andrew W.K. left Bulb Records amicably to sign with Island Records.

W.K.'s major-label debut studio album, I Get Wet, was released on November 13, 2001, on Island Records.

Continuing the sound established by his previous Bulb Records EPs, I Get Wet is characterized by its metal and punk rock influences and lyrical content revolving around partying.

The album is known for its cover art, a photograph by Roe Ethridge of Andrew W.K. with a stream of blood running from his nose onto his chin and neck, which generated minor controversy in Europe after it was seen to represent cocaine abuse; W.K. achieved the effect by striking himself in the face with a cinderblock during the photo shoot, and subsequently supplementing his own blood with some of an animal obtained from a butcher's shop.

I Get Wet earned positive press from publications such as NME and Kerrang! and featured two UK hit singles, "Party Hard" and "She Is Beautiful", also rising to the top spot on Billboard's Top Heatseekers albums chart.

At the same time, W.K. also developed a reputation for his highly energetic live shows.

Andrew W.K. joined Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest that summer, and a number of I Get Wet's tracks, such as "Party Hard", "It's Time to Party", and "Fun Night" were licensed for use in various video games, films, TV series, and commercials.