Post Crescent Interview - April 9th, 2008

By Sarah Owen
Source

You can just picture him. Milling about his So-Cal kitchen or running afternoon errands, oblivious to things like the dog barking or traffic as he throws his head back to laugh in mock-rebellion, declaring that “they” — producers, managers, anyone — don’t have him at all today.


“I got me,” said Jack’s Mannequin lead singer Andrew McMahon.

A day off from non-stop studio work on “The Glass Passenger,” the followup to 2005’s debut “Everything in Transit,” his voice is eager and brimming with energy. Just ask him whether he’s looking forward to opening for Ben Folds when the two perform Thursday, April 17 in Oshkosh.

“I’m freaking out!” McMahon blurts. “I am such a fan! … I was the googily eyed fan at Ben Folds concerts for years.”

With a tour and album release slated for summer and a personal film project, “Dear Jack,” in its final stages, McMahon, also known as the frontman for pop-punkers Something Corporate, feels a bit freer these days, ready to close the door on a tumultuous last few years. From videotaping his 2005 battle with leukemia to the dawn of new music, the singer/songwriter opens up to Weekend.

Q: Your trip to Oshkosh is coming up fast, and you’re sharing the lineup with Ben Folds.

A: Ahh, yes! I’m freaking out!

Q: Big fan, huh?

A: I am such a fan! It’s funny. There weren’t many piano-playing icons for piano players when I was a young kid into rock music, so seeing him come out … I was hanging out as a freshman in high school after a show when I got a copy of his first record. I’ve got pictures of me and him with my buddies when we were kids, meeting him outside club gigs. It was pretty cool.

Q: And this is the only show on the tour you get a chance to share a lineup with him?
A: Yeah, just this one. I’m really excited but also kind of terrified, because he’s eight million times the piano player I am.

Q: What’s the experience like for you, in general, when you’re sort of looking out into a crowd of your peers in a college atmosphere?

A: It’s great. I mean, for me. We obviously started in Something Corporate … coming up in the punk-rock scene it was much more typically a high-school fan base. Then toward the later years with Something Corporate and the transition to Jack (in 2004), it became a hybrid of high school and college kids. It’s nice playing a gig where they’re there to listen to the band and dig the musicianship and want to wrap their head around what we’re trying to do on stage.

Q: And did we hear something about “The Glass Passenger” being released this month, or was that just rumor?

A: (laughs) We put that date out there when we thought I would make a record quickly, and I did anything but that. It’s taken a lot of time for me to pin down completely what I want it to be. We are pretty much in the final stages, wrapping it up, so sometime mid-summer. We’ll be out on tour, so hopefully it’ll be out by late July.

Q: You’ve obviously been touring and playing a lot the last few years between releases; have you debuted some songs that might make it on the album?

A: We’ve sort of been throwing one or two in every gig. As time’s gone on there’ve been a couple songs we were throwing in we thought would make the record that (laughs) aren’t anywhere near to making the record. So some stuff found itself out into the world that probably won’t make the record, but I’m pretty protective of (the material). We’ll throw one or two into the Oshkosh show, probably, depending how much time they give us for the set.

Q: It’s been a long road getting to this album. I’m sure there were a lot of directions you could’ve taken with it.

A: I look at it as time you actually get to dig in, take this job I have — which is so awesome — and make art with it. I take time when I make records. Most people get down on me occasionally because there’s been three-year lapses between records I’ve made, but I’m sort of an autobiographical writer, and when life throws a lot of different things at you there’s a lot of directions you can take.

Q: What ultimately steered you, and where do you see it winding up?

A: Obviously the past few years have been pretty eventful in my life. The cancer was an interesting thing, kind of a tough subject to broach in the form of a pop album (laughs). So that was a little bit of a stumbling block for me, but I feel I got some good material (from) it, yet I didn’t want it to be just a record about that either. And I got married in the last couple years, and that’s an interesting subject, too, especially when a lot of your fans might not know what that’s all about.

Q: What sort of insight will fans get this time around?

A: The last record very much had a theme, a definitive subject matter — coming back to Southern California, losing love and finding love and everything that happened along the way. This record, if there’s any constant theme it’s just about how you can get sort of knocked down, get back up again and find the hope in similar difficult situations. It’s really taken a long time. I’ve been working on this album the better part of a year now; even some of the songs I worked on in the year before that, as well. Finally in the past few weeks it’s started to shape up and started to sound like an album for me.

Q: You’ve also got a film nearing completion, “Dear Jack,” which is pretty personal for you. What’s the status with that project?

A: Like the record, it’s a constant adventure. I’m not a filmmaker, so I’ve been dealing with a lot of great people trying to find a home for it. We thought about releasing it straight to DVD, but it’s not something I’d consider just a fan piece. It’s a pretty fascinating look, and personal look, into what happens to a person going through diagnosis and recovery and survival of a disease. It’s one of those things, to get that out to the larger public is important.

Q: Now that it’s near completion are you, I don’t want to say looking forward to closing the door on that chapter, but …

A: Yeah. (laughs) It’s been sort of this beautiful, this struggle of my last year. The chapter in my life where obviously it’s been a long road out of it and back to where — not to say where I started out, but being as healthy as I was. I look at the release of this record, the release of this film as my closure to what was a trying but very important chapter in my life.

Q: What is it like, now, going back and watching the footage?

A: It’s pretty intense. At this point, I would say I’ve been slightly desensitized to it, having to see it several times over the course of several months. I start to learn to accept what it was, and that’s been an exceptional healing tool to me. The first handful of times I came face to face with the footage … I shot most of the footage myself just on my camera, not with any intention of it coming out, in sort of a period of time where I had videotaped almost all of my life up to that point so I just kind of continued. So seeing it sort of essentially from my own eyes the second time around, definitely the first time I watched the movie I woke up the next day basically feeling as sick as I did the first day in the hospital. You find when you’re in that situation, there’s an intense connection between the mind and body. For a while I put my body right back to where I was.

Q: What’s the hope you have in showing it publicly?

A: Like anything, I think my goal has been since the day I got that … sickness … I felt like somehow instinctually the goal was to bring some amount of hope to people … to try and find something positive in any hard situation. I started playing piano when I was nine years old. It was a direct reaction to losing an uncle to melanoma, and his sort of motto through life and as he was passing, he wanted everyone to be positive. It was the connection to him where I found my heart. It seems like it’s only an extension of that motto, to pass this message of positivity to people even in the face of difficult. It’s to hope, to tap that hope and make it something to live by. I think in a lot of ways getting sick, for me, and everything in this aftermath is something to validate that point.

Q: With everything we go through in life, we hope it makes us stronger. Do you feel like you more know your place in life or have more a sense of direction and future?

A: There were times in the past couple years I’ve been more lost than I’ve ever been, and I say that with a smile on my face. I assumed I’d get to the other side, have this wisdom, and it’s (bull). I think there are some things I have a better grasp on, but I truthfully feel we’re all wandering around just trying to figure out what … we’re here for. And I enjoy the journey and accept it. It’s not like I’ve come out some sort of sage or something (laughs).