Over the course of a decade, Andrew W.K. has carved out a place in pop culture for headbanging, piano-heavy maximalist rock and seized on the word “party” as his own, morphing it into both a personal brand and a life philosophy—one that runs far deeper that it might appear on the surface.

But while music is where Andrew W.K. made his first impact, over the past few years he’s broadened his reach, dabbling in everything from writing (the “Ask Andrew W.K” advice column for the Village Voice) to talk radio (the weekly America W.K. program on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze network). He’s even become a motivational speaker (check out his keynote speech from a 2012 My Little Pony convention. No, really).

Myspace tracked down Andrew W.K. during a break in his ongoing solo tour to find out just how he juggles it all and, more importantly, why.

Your tour schedule has had you jumping directly from full-band festival sets into solo shows in small rooms. Does it take a different mindset to make the show work in such different circumstances?

It’s all challenging in a good way, as any worthwhile thing tends to be. But no, not in particular. The whole focus of whatever it is I’m doing has never been about music as an end in itself. What I’m trying to do is to use music to conjure up a type of energized excitement. The means themselves are very noble and worthy pursuits, but for my own situation, they are just a mechanism, a tool, a road that is leading to a very specific place. [...] My music is like a hammer. It’s supposed to be used to build something. To build a feeling. And [a hammer is] not sacred. It’s a means to an end.

One of many means. You write an advice column. You host a radio show. You do motivational speaking gigs. Did it all start with music because that was the only way you knew to get to those ends at first?

Music is the most instantaneous for me personally. It changes the way it feels to be you. It changes your body. It changes the physical feeling about being alive. The first thing I really learned how to do, before I learned many other things in life, was piano, so that’s just sort of the thing that was most familiar to me.

What’s the appeal for you of branching out into all these other media?

All the best things about music, all the best things about language, communication, they’re all just glancing for brief moments at this thing that you can only experience. Nothing can equal it other than itself, other than the experience of it. Whether you call that truth, or pure happiness, or joy, [there’s] just some essential moment that you are always going after. The effort to describe it, and to connect, has a real value as well. And finding that reinforced and accepted and encouraged [in other media] was thrilling to me, especially considering there were plenty of people out there who didn’t like my music at all, who didn’t like rock music in general. I could still have something to relate to them in this whole other, similar way.

What about for you personally? Which one of your platforms is connecting with you the most right now?

It all feels like one vehicle, really, just this one work. It’s like, a car is a vehicle, but within that are many different parts that all allow it to work as a whole. So I try not to pick it apart too much. For whatever reason, I find it quite stressful personally to think about what I’m doing as a bunch of different things. It’s all one thing, which is called “being alive and trying to make it count for something.”

You’re at a point in your career where your fan base may be smaller than in the days “Party Hard” was all over radio and MTV, but it’s full of super vocal, dedicated folks. Do you enjoy having fans that have that share the same obsessions as you?

The longer that I do this, the more that it builds. Because I’m not building alone and I never was building it alone. It’s not about me owning the feeling myself, or that I’m the only way to make it, or that I’m the only way to get there. I’m just another person standing side-by-side, shoulder to shoulder with all these other people that are interested in life being about this feeling. About this feeling that life is worth living.

With everything else you have going on, it’s been a while since we’ve heard some new music from you. Any updates on what’s happening with that right now?

I’d very much like to make a new album as soon as possible. I guess that’s all I can really say. I don’t know exactly when or where or how, but hopefully someday soon.

One final question. Obviously you do a lot of different things, and you seem very dedicated to each of them. Do you ever sleep?

Oh yeah! There’s plenty of time for all sorts of recuperation. Absorbing the lessons, letting it sink in. But I really must say, with all due respect, I really barely do any work compared to countless people—in all various fields, not just entertainment. This is all one pretty tight effort. I don’t feel like it’s that all-over-the-board, I don’t feel like it’s that multitasked. It’s just Andrew W.K..