Airbourne
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“You don’t have to have all the posters of your favourite bands or you don’t have to grow up always liking rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s a general thing that people love rock ‘n’ roll and then they go work being an accountant or whatever,” states Ryan O’Keeffe of Australian rockers Airbourne.
Rock ‘n’ roll, it’s fun, it’s good, it’s something you just get. It’s in your life. You go to the show, you let loose for a few hours, have some beers, enjoy the tunes and then you go back to your normal everyday life, your kids, your job. It’s these people who get Airbourne, probably one of the fastest rising bands on the planet right now. But don’t let the ‘out of nowhere’ thing throw you off. These boys have been working hard for years, building a solid reputation and absorbing as much AC/DC as they can in between times off in their homeland. As the saying goes, it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ‘n’ roll and Airbourne are more than familiar with it.
It’s been quite a ride for these Ozzie rockers so far. Signed to Roadrunner in the middle of 2007 towards the end of last year they starting appearing on the cable music channels, the bastard children of AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. It was everything you’d expect from a rock band from decades past, ballsy swagger and booze. They released their debut Runnin’ Wild and they haven’t taken their foot off the accelerator since.
Last night they found themselves the winners of a prestigious Golden God award, for “Best Debut Album,” at the Metal Hammer Magazine awards in London and now tonight they’re ready to make their debut performance on Irish soil to a sold-out crowd in Whelan’s, Dublin. Tickets are already on sale for their next Dublin show, which isn’t until November and is in the much larger Vicar Street. Well it was. It’s actually been upgraded to the Ambassador, where big name bands like Down, Korn and Machine Head fill to capacity and play when they come over to these emerald shores.
Later in the week they’ll be the second band of the Saturday at France’s Hellfest where their AC/DC style tunes will go down a storm, shaking many a hungover head out of its tent and into the glorious sunshine. But now back to today and Blistering’s managed to grab a half an hour and a pint of Bulmers cider with sticksman Ryan O’Keeffe, who alongside his brother (singer/guitarist) Joel, David Roads (guitar) and Justin Street (bass) make up this, are Airbourne.
And oddly enough he’s already in love with Ireland despite having only seen from the airport to the venue. What makes this more surprising is that it’s raining heavily outside and has been since summer started, but that doesn’t seem to be putting him off moving here.
Blistering.com: So you guys were at the Golden Gods last night. Good times?
Ryan: Yeah good times, a lot of fun. A lot of Scottish whiskey got drank.
Blistering.com: Cool, so is this you’re first time over this side of the world?
Ryan: We came over earlier this year but it was only to the UK and then Germany for one day. It was only a couple of weeks. But this our first real tour and stuff, it’s been a lot of fun. We love it over here. Joel and I were laughing. Being O’Keeffe’s, we’ve always wanted to come to Ireland so when we got off the plane at the airport we noticed as soon as we walked out they had a description of like the old races, everyone’s in suits running around, but people were smoking everywhere and drinking out the front of the terminal. Which is funny, seeing as it’s Ireland. We were happy. First impressions were good. Actually we were in the cab talking about moving over here.
But a little more on the reasoning behind that later. For now though, it’s enough to know that Ryan and Joel’s dad, Mr O’Keeffe, his family originally from County Kerry, is a folk musician and music in the home is always good when you’re growing up.
Blistering.com: Is that why you guys started playing, ‘cause your Dad’s a musician?
Ryan: Yeah, well he always had a guitar around and Joel used to always pick up Dad’s guitar and play rock ‘n’ roll, as opposed to folk, but yeah that helped a lot.
Blistering.com: How about yourself?
Ryan: Because Joel needed someone to play with, that was pretty much it. I just find myself playing drums.
Blistering.com: So at what point did Airbourne as it is today come about?
Ryan: Well, ever since Joel and I started playing we knew that was what we wanted to do, that’s where we felt comfortable and we just from then went "we’re going to take this to the world and hopefully make a living out of it." When we first started [Airbourne] Joel already had riffs because he was playing for four years before I played. As soon as I started playing, his riffs, we put drums behind them and we had something, then we just started making stuff. We had a cabin, like a two-room cabin down the back of the house where we used to play. That was our jam room. The cops used to come down all the time.
Airbourne are from Warrnambool, a town in Victoria about three and a half hours outside of Melbourne on the coast with a population of about 30,000 people. As Ryan says of it “every once a year the big attraction is the Humpback Whales come and everyone goes look at big blobs in the ocean. That’s about it.”
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