AIRBOURNE Drummer Is 'Proud' To Be Compared To AC/DC

Jonni Starr of DirtyRock.net recently conducted an interview with AIRBOURNE drummer Ryan O'Keeffe. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

DirtyRock.net: Why did you guys choose New Jersey to be your U.S. base?

Ryan: As we've discovered, a lot of bands have a U.S. market or UK market. And it's not very often that an act will be going well on both markets and it happens to be that we are. So we need to be positioning ourselves in between the UK and L.A. and that's New York. That way we're six hours from L.A., six hours from London so if we've got to jump on a plane and tour or do a last minute show or even an interview we're able to do it with ease. Plus Roadrunner are in New York anyway, all the other labels are in L.A., Roadrunner are in New York, so we're able to be close to them. It's just a center point where we can go everywhere in America and everywhere in the UK at a cheaper rate (laughs).

DirtyRock.net: You've built up a fairly strong following in Australia. Are you worried you might lose some of the momentum relocating indefinitely overseas or have people been supportive?

Ryan: Oh mate, it's only until Ev, our mixer, really said it and he sometimes gets mistaken for being in the band, but he goes, "One of the things you really realize from crowd members is how supportive they are about us going overseas. Everyone, everyone who even mentions about USA it's always positive." "You guys rip it up overseas," "Good luck, we'll be here thinking about you," "Do it for Australia." You know, everyone, I think they're all sort of on our side in that respect and know it's got to happen, we've got to take that step and get out there.

DirtyRock.net: You mentioned about going to the UK. How has the support been over there?

Ryan: Really good, really good. It's one of those things when we've been talking to them, all of us — band, crew and label — feel that we shouldn't fail. Or we don't want to be the ones to fail because there aren't that many people out there doing rock 'n' roll and if we fuck it up, we're going to look like dickheads! Because there are a lot of people out there who want this sound back who grew up with it or a lot of kids who like discovering it because they've spent their earlier years listening to emo or nothing Australian, as far as I'm concerned. There's a lot of passion going around the AIRBOURNE camp about this. They're all really supportive — it's great.

DirtyRock.net: A lot of people when they talk about AIRBOURNE always compare your sound to AC/DC. Obviously they're a fantastic band but do you ever get sick of the comparisons or embrace it?

Ryan: Embrace it. Every band is going to get compared to something. Any band you think of is going to get compared to something otherwise how are you going to describe them? And geez, I'm proud of someone to go "What are they like?" "‘They're like AC/DC." Oh, they're like one of the best rock bands in the world? That's flattering. It's one of those things that I don't feel I even deserve to be compared to band such as AC/DC.

Read the entire interview at www.dirtyrock.net.