Interview: Ryan O’Keeffe from Airbourne

For over 13 years Ryan O’Keeffe has been the drummer for legendary Australian hard rock outfit Airbourne. Alongside his brother Joel (lead guitar & vocals), the band has consistently staked their claim as one of the biggest active rock bands with catchy, feel-good songs, and plenty or classic ol’ skool rock. We had a chat to O’Keeffe about the band’s upcoming album ‘Breakin’ Outta Hell’, the in’s and out’s of touring, and their imminent return to Australia!

First of all congratulations on your new album, it’s sounding great! Compared to your previous albums, ‘Breakin’ Outta Hell’ seems to be in a similar sounding vein, was there a definite aim by the band to really stick to your guns when making this record?

Absolutely, y’ know, the band is always been about a good time. Our favourite bands are the same, they stick to what they love, and we always will. Runnin’ Wild, Live It Up, Breakin’ Outta Hell they’re all on the same kind of thing, letting loose, getting into trouble, having a good time with mates, that kind of thing is what we’re about. When you come to an Airbourne show that’s what we want people to do!

On a first listen it sounds like this album is especially feel-good in tone and energy, was this a fun album to make?

Yeah, it was really a lot of fun! It was the first one we’ve ever done in Australia, which is really cool. It actually took the pressure off a little bit, we were just chilling at home and Bob Marlette and Mike Fraser flew out to Australia for two months and we just hung out, ate parmies every second night, had them both in the studio, we were just laughing the whole time. It was really good fun!

Was this recorded down in Melbourne near where you guys are from?

It was recorded in Sing Sing studios where I think The Living End did their first record, or some of their big stuff there. But unfortunately I think the studio’s getting torn down by the end of the year for apartments…

Do you have a personal favourite song on the new record?

Lately I’ve been liking It’s All For Rock n Roll, it was written about Lemmy. We noticed just recently when we were touring Europe that there was a gap in the posters where you always used to see them (Motörhead), or see them backstage so the fact he’s not there anymore feels weird.

Let’s talk your upcoming Australian tour. It’s been a while since you guys have toured here, are you excited to be coming back?

Yeah, it’s gonna be really good! It feels like forever since we’ve toured in Australia and hopefully this is just going to be the beginning of a few tours that we do, we can’t wait to play at home and have a few beers with mates!

Do you have a favourite place or venue to play in Australia?

We always love The Corner (Melbourne). It’ll be interesting to see how we go with TRAK (Melbourne), we chose TRAK because we know it has the loudest PA this side of the hemisphere and the ceiling’s high enough for us to do a big show.

That’s right I suppose you want Joel climbing over the scaffolding and all that…

(laughs) Yeah!

Just an observation, it seems as though in Europe you guys pull these big crowds to festivals and concert halls and such, but in Australia you generally play smaller venues. Is it good to play to more intimate crowds sometimes?

Yeah, I mean every show has its different kind of thing. Tall venues Joel might jump up on the bar and pour himself a beer or bigger venues we sometimes go and play out on the wheelchair platform, there’s always something different that’s gonna happen and that makes the show exciting!

From what I’ve seen of videos of the band’s concerts, you guys have amazing energy the whole time. So, is it safe to assume Australian fans can expect the same thing? A great show and great energy?

Yep, that’s what we’ll be doing. We’ll be bringing the whole show, and we’ll be bringing the energy that every show is played like it’s our last!

Do you have a favourite song to play live?

Lately it’s been Breakin’ Outta Hell because in Europe we had a big pyro set, so we had huge flames all around the stage when we played the song. So it felt really cool playing Breakin’ Outta Hell with half the stage on fire, it was really awesome!

It sort of seems like a couple songs on the album talk about Hell, Is that a theme you guys decided to run with?

Well we had I’m Going To Hell For This and we were like “oh cool, we hadn’t had a song with hell in the title yet”, but then we were still trying to figure out what we were gonna call the record. I had a bunch of papers that I’d saved from Thornberry when we’d lived in a band house together 13 or 14 years ago and it had some song titles written on it and Breakin’ Outta Hell was written on it. So I said to Joel that’s what we should call the record. At that time we felt we still didn’t have a good enough album title so the next day we just went in and made that song.

Was there anything different in the recording process for this one compared to other albums you’ve done?

It was still the usual, but we used what we’d learnt along the way mostly subconsciously. Once you’ve been in and out of a studio a few times you get more comfortable with it and things start moving a lot quicker. It’s still the same thing though, still the kit set up in the middle of the room, the guys sitting around all in the same room and stuff which is really cool.

It was a really good studio to do it in, and it was awesome that Mike decided to stay back and actually mix it in the studio as well, because he was initially going to do it in Vancouver but he was having so much fun in Australia he wanted to stay.

I read a while ago Angus Young actually said he liked you guys, how did you feel about that?

Yeah, we were pretty humbled when he said that! You can never imagine that one of your biggest idols will say that. We’re always very honoured and very humbled to hear that, it just gives you more reason to put on good shows and to make good albums, to really treat every line and every riff and every interchange and lyric, the artwork, the merchandise, it all has to be spot on!

From what I’ve seen you guys are starting to get pretty big, so in saying that is there a band you guys would ever like to share the stage with?

Probably AC/DC…yeah, AC/DC would be cool!

Lastly, do you have any advice for young musicians wanting to get into the same thing you guys are doing?

Just never change what you do for anybody. Always stay true to what you want to play, the kind of songs you want to play, and be as devoted as you can.

Airbourne’s new album ‘Breakin’ Outta Hell’ is set for release on Friday, 23rd of September, check out their Aussie tour dates below!

Airbourne 2017 National Tour

SAT 7 JAN
Summernats, Canberra
FRI 13 JAN
The Metro Theatre, Sydney
SAT 14 JAN
The Triffid, Brisbane
FRI 20 JAN
Trak, Melbourne

Get Tickets HERE