Airbourne: Treat Every Show Like It’s Your Last

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

Airbourne, Australia’s premier rock and roll band, is part of the Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Tour that will be in Fargo on Sunday, October 3 at the FargoDome. And wow, can these boys rock.

Watching them is like watching MTV back when it meant something. Their show is true rock and roll. No fire, no video, just four guys playing heavy metal the way it was meant to be played. I caught up with brothers Joel and Ryan O’Keefe [lead singer/guitar, guitar/drummer respectively] on their tour bus at a recent show and learned that these guys do not just play rock and roll, they ARE rock and roll.

High Plains Reader: You put on a fabulous show. It’s not very often that I get to see a show before talking to a band and that was really good. Can you give me a little history of the band?
Joel O’Keefe: We’re four mates from Australia and we joined a band and we moved to Melbourne for three years and then hit the road. There’s not much to it, really.

HPR: I think there’s more to it than that. You’re brothers. How’d you find the other members [David Roads, rhythm guitar and Justin Street, bass]?
Joel: They’re our mates from school, jamming and all that.

HPR: High school?

Joel: Yeah, high school. That sort of thing. We don’t have that kind of history that you’re thinking, like something magical.

HPR: I’m not thinking anything, actually. How long have you guys been together?

Joel: About nine years.

HPR: That’s quite a long time. Now, your dad’s a musician?

Joel: Yeah, Dennis O’Keefe.

HPR: So you grew up with music?

Joel: Yeah, there was a guitar lying around, always something to play. Played in school. Don’t react to well to authority.

HPR: How about your writing process. I’m assuming you write your songs.

Joel: Yep, we do that on the road. The majority we write on this bus or on the stage if we get a sound check. Or just when we get back to Australia, whenever we get the chance we put down some ideas and then just record them down with a recorder like that.

HPR: Who writes them?

Ryan O’Keefe: I do most of it. Then the others give some ideas and then flesh them out. It’s pretty easy, what we do, but the hard part is getting it to be different from everything else, the four chords that everyone’s been using for the last fifty years.

HPR: So, how do you do that?

Ryan: Just keep f*cking around with the same shit in a different way.

HPR: Do you guys consider yourself more of a live band or a record band? Are you playing for the album or the live show, touring?

Joel: The funnest thing, I think for any band, is when you are first playing your guitar and you all look at each other and you start playing the sound that you make as a band. Making albums is a lot of fun too, but different thrills.

HPR: So, when you write or create your music are you thinking about your live performances?

Joel: Oh, yeah, yeah, you’re always thinking about that. That’s always first and foremost. Wondering how the crowd’s going to react.

HPR: Who are your influences?

Joel: Motorhead, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest, Rose Tattoo, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. I could probably go on, but that’s to name a few.

HPR: You’re still based in Australia? You haven’t moved to Los Angeles?

Joel: Oh, nah. We’re pretty much based on the road. We don’t really have a home, a place to go to that’s a home. Throw your bags on the ground, walk into the kitchen and cook up some steak and eggs or something, no, we don’t have that. Nowhere to go, just hotels or bus.

HPR: So you tour all the time.

Joel: Pretty much. That’s the way it’s been set up.

HPR: Another Australian band recently told me that if you’re not in Australia like one hundred percent of the time that you can’t make it there. Do you find the same thing for you?

Joel: What other band was that?

HPR: Sick Puppies.

Joel: We’re number one, our album.

HPR: Yours was? So the answer is no? They said it was fickle there.

Joel: Well, the first album did well.

HPR: Okay. So you are successful in Australia.

Joel: We have to wait and see. We have a tour coming up.

HPR: I was looking at the fan comments on your shows and they talked a lot about your old-school rock and roll, the shows, and like I said, I was so happy to actually see the show prior to talking to you. I’m way older than you guys and watching your show was like reliving every guy I dated in high school. How did you guys find that? What the hell?

Joel: Well, I guess we played in school, played everything that was on the radio all the time. You know, we were always told we can’t do what we want to do, like in school and stuff like that. The music class wasn’t to do what we wanted to do. It was more like classical, sit on a piano, no electric guitars, so we had to fight for every reason that we wanted to play. And the loudest rock and roll is Aussie rock and roll so that’s what we did. It’s just simple. Like the stuff that comes from England, like The Who, where it’s really just loud and energetic. The only things we used to watch on TV were the bands that interested us, Iron Maiden live, AC/DC live, but then you go back and see Woodstock and that kind of thing and it was always about giving the crowd a show. And for us it’s always been treat every show like your it’s your last. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, who wants to get up there and look at their shoes?

HPR: A lot of bands, actually.

Ryan: Yeah, it’s each to their own. I mean, when you’ve got a loud rock and roll band it’s just a lot of fun to get into it. So, that’s what you do. You’re taught in Australia how to get into it.

HPR: On ‘“No Guts No Glory,” you did the open sound thing, where there’s sound bleeding in. What made you guys decide to do that?

Joel: Live records just sound full. Live records sound better and that sound is hard to get so we really just wanted to chase that.

HPR: In other interviews you’ve referred to burning your house down. Do you want to elaborate?

Joel: Well, what am I going to say about this? Rock and roll, drinking, and gasoline, and mixing it all together, houses are going to get burned.

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If You Go

What: Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Tour
Where: FargoDome
When: Sun, Oct 3, 3:30pm
Info: 701-298-2690