Overated Mag Interview - July 28th, 2006

By Victoria C
Source

Jack's Mannequin - Andrew McMahon (vocals/piano)
Tweeter Center - Mansfield, MA
07/28/06

Overated Mag/Tori: Tell us a little bit about Jack’s Mannequin..

Andrew: Jack’s Mannequin is a project I started in my time off from something Corporate; it wasn’t really something I started as a project as much as it just sort of developed. I had some free time ad was finally home for the first time in several years. I spent a lot of time at my piano writing as many songs as I possibly could and sure enough I ended up having enough songs to write a record. I finished it, brought in some musicians to sort of crudely record it initially. It came out last summer and we are just now starting to promote it.


So what do you think you get out of Jack’s Mannequin vs. being in Something Corporate?

Andrew: It’s definitely a lot less stress, not in a negative way about Something Corporate because I love being in something corporate, but I mean just at this point because I’m obviously a pretty controlling dude. I write most of the music for Something Corporate and I write all of the music for Jack’s Mannequin and just in a sense of being able to produce things from my head to the speakers..

Tori: it’s kind of your brain child anyway..

Andrew: Yea, and in that sense it’s a little bit easier and the decision making process in general. And when you work in a band, the benefit of working in a band is that you have filters, and you have 4 or 5 other people around you that help make decisions. So in that sense it can be a little more work but on this side of things but it’s also the difference between feeling confident in all the decisions that you make. For people with trust issues a solo career is the way to go! But no, I mean they are both rewarding. Especially now just getting out of the sickness it definitely has made things a little bit easier not having to juggle a bunch of people’s schedules, and all the other things that go with being in a band.


What about Something Corporate? Did the other guys want to take a break? You did tour a lot..

Andrew: Yeah, we did tour a lot. It got to the point where I was kind of the one who said something about it, but I think everybody was sort of on the verge themselves. We were in Australia with the Offspring early summer 2004, and I just had gotten to the point where I was tired of being on tour and we were all exhausted, and there were talks of making a new record, but I don’t think anybody was really all that ready or prepared. Logically even wanting to be there. So I said why don’t we just kinda take a break, we’ve worked long and hard and we deserve it, let’s go work on some other things and clear our heads. Granted I didn’t expect to get cancer in the middle of it, so it obviously changed the path of things but that’s what life is really all about. You can’t really predict it, so I think it dragged it out a little bit longer than I had originally anticipated. But everybody is doing their own thing at this point. Clutch is down working at a studio, working with some young bands, Brian and William. who used to be with us; Brian has been playing drums with Will, and Josh has been finishing school and working with his band, so everybody is still in it and doing their own things. We still see each other when everybody is home, and we’ll all go out to one another’s gigs. Everybody is still doing really good..

Tori: You still want to be supportive

Andrew: Of course! And like I said I think the plan is eventually we’ll do a tour sometime in 2007 with Something Corporate..we’ll keep our fingers crossed that it goes through..

Tori: Yeah, when everybody has had a chance to relax and get back into it.

Andrew: Yea exactly!

Tori: And you can’t sit still anyway! You come home to relax and you come up with a new band!

Andrew: Yea exactly, I definitely have a tendency to work myself into the ground..but I like what I do..

Tori: Yea but whatever keeps you going, whatever keeps you healthy! Obviously it helps keep you motivated.

Andrew: That’s true, it kept me alive in a lot of senses.


Everybody has something that affects their life, what do you think overcoming cancer has done to change your life that you didn’t perceive before?

Andrew: I think it’s sort of hammered home points that I knew to always be true. But I think it illustrated them in a more perfect way. I sort of have always grown up with the idea in mind that living for the day is the best way to live and trying not to focus too much emphasis on the future, which is an uncertain future anyway.. I grew up reading philosophy books that kind of lead themselves to that ideology, and fundamentally I believed it but I think until you are in a position that you might not even live another day, it puts that into perspective in a larger scale. And I think in that sense I benefited from that a lot, and from being able to sort of really connect a lot of the philosophies that I have grown up with, it kind of pushed me in that direction, which I think is a good direction to be in, to be honest.

Tell me about the “Dear Jack Foundation” that you are doing?

Andrew: It’s something we just started, I think the website just went up today, a little page with some information on it, a sign up page.. the idea was just to create a foundation that made it possible for us to identify a handful of charities rather than just one, that are making a positive impact on research for cancer and leukemia. It gives us a chance to collect money as a foundation and then disperse it to many charities, rather than just one charity. There are definitely a lot of charities that do good work, not just one..

Tori: It’s hard to pick just one..

Andrew: Yea, so as we grow my hope is to internalize a little bit more and be able to use the money for projects we do ourselves; but in the initial sense when we start collecting, every quarter or two quarters we’ll be doling out checks to different charities from the foundation.

Tori: That’s a good idea.


What kind of feelings do you expect to provoke in your fans when they go to a show?

Andrew: You know that’s sort of more for them to decide. The hope is just to have a strong connection between the audience in the band. I feel a rock show’s always best when you somehow break down some of those barriers between performer and audience and can sort of share in the energy. And for me, as long as I look into the crowd and feel they are into it, that they are listening and enjoy it, that’s all I can ask for any gig. Especially opening for bands, you want to win the audience enough that they’ll get into the music with you. And you can usually tell that, but you know the hope is that whatever and wherever they are at the time that if nothing else, listening to the tunes can kind of put them into a head space that they kind of forget what’s going on, or at least puts it on hold so that they can enjoy and be entertained.

Tori: At least for that night, yea. Last time I saw you someone threw up a pair of bunny ears on stage and you put them on!

Andrew: That’s great! That wasn’t on Warped Tour, that was at a show right?

Tori: No, that was in Worcester..Palladium..

Andrew: Was that with Yellowcard, maybe?

Tori: No I don’t think it was Yellowcard.

Andrew: Ohh.. no, no, that was with probably the Rx Bandits.. was it Rx Bandits?

Tori: Hmm.. that was a while ago..

Andrew: Yea, that was probably with the Rx Bandits!

Tori: That was pretty funny though! They were on for a while…

Andrew: We headlined the Palladium in Worcester that time, isn’t that right?

Tori: Yeah, I haven’t been there in a while..

Andrew: Yeah that was funny, I think I remember that actually, vaguely! Ha ha!

Tori: I ended up not having a photo pass for that though, I forgot what happened.. so no pictures..

Andrew: Oh no! No bunny ears..

Tori: Yea I know, right! It’s in my mind though..

Andrew: Now a days it’d end up on YouTube! Good, as long as the memories are strong.


On your blog you had mentioned something about being very into space.. what thoughts does that provoke for you? And does that influence your music do you think?

Andrew: Yea it’s a weird thing, I sort of .. for whatever reason it’s something I latch onto very quickly..

Tori: It sort of comes up once in a while..

Andrew: Yea absolutely. Yeah I don’t know I think there is something very compelling and interesting about the sky for me, I don’t know what it is you know what I mean?

Tori: No, I know. They know a lot, but at the same time they only know it to a certain point, you know?

Andrew: Right I don’t know there’s something to me.. you know, to know there is something so much bigger out there..

Tori: It makes you feel kind of like a little speck!

Andrew: It puts things, the largeness of everything into perspective.

Tori: Small, but in an okay way.

Andrew: Yea, it’s easy to sort of drift off staring at it..

Tori: You think about everything people worry about in the day and then you’re like.. Wow, if you think about it not only are you one person in your city, but then you have the whole state, the whole country and the rest of the world beyond that..and you’re thinking about what, a flat tire? Well, think about it, does it really matter all that much? Not really..

Andrew: True, absolutely.

Tori: And it’s just kinda neat. I wanna know. Does it keep going forever? Could it? But how could it not keep going forever? But how could it? If it didn’t, what would be after that, you know?

Andrew: That’s true, I find it really fascinating as well.

Tori: Anytime they have those MSNBC ‘Space Photos of the Week!’..

Andrew: Yea you go check that out? For sure..

Tori: Yea I do!

Andrew: It’s wild, it blows my mind!

Tori: The Air and Space Museum in D.C… I spent a whole day there myself once!

Andrew: Yeah I was bummed, when I was out that way, they were closed the day I wanted to go, so I was really bummed out!

Tori: What? They never close except for maybe a holiday!

Andrew: It might have been a holiday maybe, only one of them was open and it was like.. it was a bad one… it was not the one to go to!

Tori: What? There aren’t any bad ones!

Andrew: No there is.. there was, it was just like a very boring one!

Tori: That and the Natural History Museums are the ones to go to. Air and Space one is better though..

Andrew: Yea? I’ll have to check that out, I’ve gotta see the Air and Space one for sure.

Tori: I can’t believe you haven’t been there..so I was also going to ask…


What are some of your favorite places that you’ve been? What are some of your favorite things about them? Do you like certain seasons best?

Andrew: Traveling pretty much any time except winter is usually good. We tend to do that a lot..

Tori: Yea don’t come here in the winter!

Andrew: We’ve done that many times, but yeah I mean I think especially right now, this time of year is great. Granted it’s a little hotter, but being outside in the summertime doing summer concerts, playing outdoors for people, there’s just something cool about playing outside. It’s a good summer vibe..

Tori: Yeah! I like to be outside. Not when it’s cold out though.

Andrew: Yeah!

Tori: Really I’m from New England but my heart’s out over out west where a lot of my family lives.

Andrew: Yea I grew up out this way but I moved out there and I can’t seem to come back..

Tori: Oh where did you grow up?

Andrew: I was born in Massachusetts, I was born in Concord.

Tori: Oh, really?

Andrew: I’ve lived in New Jersey, Ohio, Chicago,..

Tori: So you slowly moved out there..

Andrew: I migrated, yeah.

Tori: That’s the way to do it. Yeah California’s good.


Being in California a lot of your songs have that type of feel.. Do you think that’s a universal feel, that the people on the east coast can still get into it?

Andrew: Well ironically I think we’re bigger on the East coast than we are on the West coast so apparently it’s working, you know? Haha! But yea, who knows what the reason to that is. You figure, the Beach Boys did pretty good for themselves, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have done pretty good for themselves.. those are all very dramatically West Coast bands.. And I like that, I mean you know it’s something I feel like, after living there 12 or 13 years I feel I understand it. For me to write about it makes sense, or at least to use it as the setting, it is the setting for most of what I lived through, so I tend to gravitate towards the visual of it all. I think it helped illustrate more of what was going on in the record to give it a setting and a backdrop for all the stories.

Tori: Example like what we are hearing, Billy Joel in the background, who grew up in Long Island..

Andrew: Exactly!

Tori: A lot of his songs are very New York, when you listen to it you feel like, hey, I’d like to listen to this in a loft somewhere!

Andrew: It’s like a good book, if you do a good job of illustrating the emotions of what’s behind it, the fact that if you used a setting it doesn’t really alienate people, if nothing else it sort of can transport them.

Tori: I think that’s one of the things I really like about your music, I can listen to it the whole way through first of all..

Andrew: Thank you, I appreciate that..

Tori: Some cds, you know, ‘skip’..

Andrew: Of course

Tori: But you know, from the first song you want to hear the next song, because they’re different but the whole thing has kind of a feel to it, you know what I mean?

Andrew: Yeah absolutely!

Tori: I remember when I got “North” for Christmas I think, that was the only thing I listened to for a while!

Andrew: Aww! That’s awesome.

Tori: You have a way of.. very.. almost addictive..the lyrics are catchy but the music is really good too.

Andrew: I appreciate that! I always want to make a record that people want to hear as a whole record..

Tori: And I am a fan of piano too, I like that in music.

Andrew: Well thank you. Yeah I like it too, I grew up with it.

Tori: I do too but I can’t play anything at all. I’m a visuals person. I can’t remember the notes.. that and numbers..

Andrew: We all have our things.. I got lucky having piano around when I was a kid. It’s something that’s grown on me since I was just a little boy.

Tori: Did you have one of those tiny pianos?

Andrew: Oh, no, we had an upright when I was younger and right around the time I turned 7 or 8 my parents got a grand piano, and I started playing that when I was 9.

Tori: Most kids have to take piano lessons and they don’t want to!

Andrew: Yea, my parents did that when I was a kid but I didn’t like them. Then I started playing when I was 9 and actually got them to get me lessons when I was 10!

Tori: I bet that was a shock.

Andrew: I liked it a lot though!

Tori: ‘He actually WANTS to play the piano?’ Most kids want to play the drums or guitar..those though mini drum sets are pretty cute..

Andrew: I actually had one of those when I was little.


What’s next for Jack’s Mannequin?

Andrew: Well we’re going to come home from this tour, get a little vacation time for a week or two..and then head out for a charity tour that will go on through September through early October..

Tori: And you said that’s the headlining tour?

Andrew: That will be a headlining tour and we’ll be on the road doing that for about a month, and hopefully raise a good amount of money for the foundation, which is kind of my goal with that tour. Then home for another month, and then we’ll head back out on the road inevitably before the New Year, and then come home for the New Year and then we’ll regroup.. I think we’re going to Japan in January which will be cool, and hopefully by that point we have a big ‘ol smash hit somewhere in the world, and we’ll be able to come out and play these gigs on our own next summer!


Do you get to choose from the places you go to, do you have any say on where you tour?

Andrew: Yeah absolutely! Yes and no.. it tends to be bred out of more necessity.. when you do tours like this one, for about 3 or 4 months before the tour you can’t play in the same area because it will detract from ticket sales.. there are rules, promoter’s rules, things like that. For the headlining tour, granted we’re going to go out on the support slot in November, so we probably won’t be able to play many of the cities that we play on the November dates during our tour in September, so we’ll pick the other markets besides the ones we’re doing on the November tour. We’ll probably see a fair amount of the country before the year’s up just based on the fact that we have to route around on the tours.

Tori: Well that’s good, you’ll get to see a little bit of everything.

Andrew: Yea exactly! Ideally I’d like to be able to do the headliner and play in every major market, but it just sort of, really the thing is with this record is we’re still trying to make new fans and reach new people with it.

Tori: Yea, and there’s still people in other areas who haven’t seen you yet..

Andrew: Oh yeah absolutely. Well regardless whether it be a 45 minute set they see or a headlining set you know we’ll probably come through town at some point.

Tori: So you already have the dates for the headline?

Andrew: Yup, most of them are already hitting the website.


How do you feel your blog helps the fan base? Have you noticed a positive reaction to that?

Andrew: The reaction has been great to the blog. Yea, people like to be connected, the kids who care. It’s hard to say to what extent it gets viewed but I do it for the die hards, to try to keep the most important information accessible.

Tori: I think it’s a good idea cause when you write things about your day or the good things like what happened, fan interaction, it seems to be pretty good feedback so far based on the comments.

Andrew: I think the idea is that there are people who are passionate, about the band at that level, then obviously I’m happy about it..

Tori: Plus you have thousands of people concerned about your well-being.

Andrew: Yeah for sure. I’m happy to check-in and make sure they get theirs.

Tori: You’ve got the die-hards…

Andrew: …they care, they’re awesome, my fans are incredible.

Tori: You’ve had them for years!

Andrew: They’ve been great, I’m glad they’ve stuck with me so long for sure.
Well that’s about it..

Andrew: Thanks, I appreciate it! Thanks for taking the time out.

Tori: No problem- thank you!