PopWreckoning Interview - July 2nd, 2008

By Bethany Marie and Joshua Neal
Source

Andrew McMahon, Jack’s Mannequin/Something Corporate: How are you doing? I’m Andrew.
PopWreckoning, Bethany: I’m Bethany.
AM: Bethany, pleasure to meet you. Is this us here?
PW: Yeah, I think so. I saw your set today. Sounding good.
AM: Oh, thank you, you know it’s the first couple of days–working out the kinks, but we’re having a good time.
PW: You guys have a new album coming out pretty soon?
AM: September; the middle of September.
PW: The Glass Passenger?
AM: That’s correct.
PW: How does it differ from Everything in Transit?
AM: God, you know, there’s a million different things. That would probably be a better question to ask somebody other than myself because I’m probably the least objective.
We did Everything in Transit as sort of a jam. It was us playing all the instruments and it was us programming drums–kind of building tracks from the inside out. But with this I had all the musicians there when I would work on a track. I would have my guitar player, my drum player, so you know we really developed the parts. The parts and the music were just a little bit more evolved.
Then as years go on you listen to different music and I think Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were a huge inspiration to me. I got a huge drive off of listening to their catalog.
PW: You covered “American Girl.”
AM: Yeah, I covered “American Girl.” A lot of people know that. So I like bands like that and I started listening to different styles of music as well. So, I don’t know, we’ll see what people think.

PW: What were some of the artists you listened to while making this one?
AM: God, I mean, I think my last record was like a big Beach Boys record and this record was a lot more varied–I think a lot more Beatles, more Heartbreakers, Rolling Stones and a lot of pop stuff. I was listening to old 80s pop–Madonna stuff. I really dug into the Madonna catalog, of all things. Even her newer stuff.
I’m trying to think of some other big influences that I could give credit to throughout this record. I mean there’s tons of stuff, and I think back, I used to listen to Billy Joel a lot. There’s some Pink Floyd influences and stuff. You definitely dug into a couple different areas with the band in mind when trying to make a great band record.
PW: Now this is Jack’s Mannequin’s second album, but with Something Corporate you had several albums. Is sophomore slump something you’d be worried about or not since you’ve done it before and made it through the second album?
AM: It is one of those things I sort of consider. Some people would consider this my sophomore album or second with Jack’s Mannequin, but I kind of consider it my fifth album. You know what I mean?
I think I’ve been making records for awhile that I think everything along the way has been part of the process. Of course, there’s always the idea that you bring something new to people and they haven’t heard it and they’re hearing it for the first time. There’s something that’s really going to excite people about that and attach them to it, you know? So sometimes, the second time you have to really win them over again.
The truth is, this is a really different sounding record. I try to evolve almost to the point where it sounds like a different band every time I put out a record, even with Something Corporate with Audioboxer to Leaving Through Window to North. It was a different band, really. So this is no different.
We’re kind of teeing up a real different sound. All I can say is I hope people give it a shot. I think there will be songs on the record that everyone can relate to, though.
PW: Was it hard to transition from Something Corporate to Jack’s Mannequin?
AM: It was easier than I thought it would be. I mean it happened, it definitely happened at a very turbulent time in my life. There’s no question that it was sort of blissfully turbulent, you know what I mean? It was just like, ‘I’m doing this.’ I just had this confidence and this thing where I was ready to move on. And I felt justified in moving on and everybody I think felt that was what was best for everybody. And I went for it.
I sort of never looked back. So by the time I got sick and the train had already been rolling, luckily all that confidence carried me through a tougher time.
PW: Yeah, I’m really glad that you’re doing well.
AM: Thank you. Me, too.
With the first Jack’s Mannequin, you had to deal with your sickness a lot at the beginning when you were getting ready to release that and go on the road, and it kind of messed up your touring. But you didn’t really have to deal with that for this new album. How did that effect the process?
AM: Yeah, right. You know this process…and that’s a really good question… Everything is sort of really attached, I feel like, too. Every one of these experiences is linked to itself, you know?
From Something Corporate to now to my getting sick to the way these records have come out, I think everything is so attached. So like in the making of this record, I sort of had to dig back. I had to dig back a few years and put those things together. So this process was in a lot of ways harder. With the first Jack’s record, I was living it and writing it and recording it and just moving. You know what I mean? I was living in that moment and always writing in that moment.
With this record, because I think I was sick when we started working the last record, I wasn’t really well enough to write about a lot of these experience that were so impactful on my life and took such a huge impact on me. Those are the moments that I’m usually sitting at a piano and I didn’t have that because I just couldn’t do it physically. I just wasn’t well enough and so I had this commitment in a lot of ways and sort of this block when I was doing this record that I had to keep trying to dive back to reconcile the past with the present. Does that make sense?
PW: Yeah, that makes sense to me.
AM: I think for a guy who wants to be in the moment and living in the moment, that’s sort of my philosophy to try to stay right here in the present moment. It was almost unnecessary for me to try to dig back into this past that I haven’t totally resolved and that was really the challenge of the record from start to finish. The first song I recorded for this record, I recorded two summers ago. I’ve been working on this on and off for two years. It was a harder process, but now that I’m well and we’re out there and we’re playing, it feels great. It feels amazing.
PW: The new songs that you guys played today are sounding really good.
AM: Thank you.
PW: On Everything in Transit, like in the title, you talk a lot about moving, you’re kind of in a tumultuous time, your real life is kind of in turmoil. Now The Glass Passenger is the title of the new album, where do you get that from?
AM: You know, almost pretty much the exact same thing. Just a different year. I think I have this confidence about me at the point that I was starting this project that it was just go, go, go, go, go and don’t look back. And I think the way I got sidelined and all that stuff, I think, is pretty much the theme for this record and the thing I kept on touching back on.
The idea that really we don’t have that control, you know what I mean? And the moments when you think you have the most control and you’re the most empowered, to push your own destiny forward, tend to be the moments where all of a sudden it’s like, “No, sorry, I don’t think so.”
I think The Glass Passenger is sort of the way to describe it. That some things can sort of be fragile and you might not have control, but it isn’t necessarily meant to conjure up a negative image as much as it’s just I was really conscious of my place while I made the record.
PW: Stacy Clark recently sang backing vocals on the new album.
AM: Yeah, Stacy. I love her to death. She’s amazing. She’s brilliant.
PopWreckoning, Josh: Yeah, I’m really good friends with her. (Whoa, sneaky. Josh just appeared out of nowhere. Actually, he kept wandering in and out of this interview as he ran off to take more Warped tour photos. He talks a little bit more in the second part.)
AM: Yeah, one of my closest musical friends I have out there.
PW: How did you guys meet up?
AM: Actually, through a charity that we both were doing work for. She works for Music Saves Lives with Russel Hornbeek, who was managing her at the time, and they came to me. They host blood drives and connect it to music, alternative music and kind of the younger music because that’s where the blood supply really comes from in America: the youth during blood drives.
So, he created this great charity, she was working for it and I got her CD. And I was just like, “Whoa. This is like done. These are hits. These songs sound amazing. I love this music.” I just played it for everybody and I still do. Now that she is getting closer to having a deal coming and everything, it seemed like the right time to put her on some tracks and start introducing the rest of the world to her. She’s really special, really talented.
PW: That’s awesome.

PW: How is the Warped experience different than other tours?
AM: Oh God, it’s just…it couldn’t be more different than anything. It is like this moving festival that takes on this circus sort of thing where people are just…it’s very loose and nomadic and communal.
And the people! You are always saying hi to this person or that person and you’re out there with the fans and people really are integrated into the experience. They’re backstage. They’re loose with security, which is OK, for me. I don’t mind. You end up meeting a lot of people. You can’t go out and meet 10,000 people a day as much as you’d like to, but at Warped the kids make their way back and you can have real conversations with people regularly throughout the day about music and about what people are listening to.
It’s a much more integrated, connected, community kind of experience.
PW: What’s the most extreme, favorite memory of any tour, any show?
AM: Any tour, any show? You’re talking about the last 10 years?
PW: Warped or not. The show you’ll never forget.
AM: You know, I have a couple of these stories that I tell, that I try to tell at different times. You have those moments all the time, that’s why we do it. Because those moments are regular in a lot of ways.
I think that probably my most overwhelming moment that I had on the stage, I had after I had been cognizant. There’s like a year after you’ve been on stage when you were just totally new and you’re just like, “WHOOOOA!,” freaking out.
Eventually, it just settles down and you learn how to be a performer and you learn how to pull it around on your bad nights, you know what I mean? So in that period of time when I was with Something Corporate, we did a show at the Astoria in London and it was such a big deal because we were an American band. We never had hits — to this day I’ve never had a hit — but we made connections. And that was a really cool thing because it was a sold out show, 2,500 people, sold out in like a day, and it’s in London.
So we’re from California and we’re in London; people are losing their mind. We go out and we open, I think with “Konstantine.” I think it was a slow song. I just remember sitting there and having one of those out of body experiences where it was just like, almost like the movie where the fucking crane of the cameras is circling the stage. You’re just out of body.
I’m sitting there at the piano, I’m totally numb, watching this crowd, this huge 2,500 people, and I’m like 19 or 20 years old, playing. We’re opening with this most soulful, quiet moment that you wouldn’t want to open a set with because people like to freak out, but it’s like pin drop. But that was just from sitting in my chair. It wasn’t like anything amazing happened other than just feeling good, you know?
PW: That’s a cool story. Now, Warped is all about discovering new artists. Have you made any new discoveries being on Warped?
AM: You know, I mean to be honest, I got here yesterday. So, it’s been this period of acclamation and whatever. I did get to see my first Paramore set, a band that I’m about to go on tour with right after this. We all leave this and jump on tour together, so I got to see her, see Hayley and the band play for the first time and I was really fucking psyched.
It’s funny. I have the kind of fans who will be questioning if anything is too commercial, but I intentionally make commercial music. I like commercial. I make pop music. I’m into it. I grew up on the radio, even though I haven’t had anything there. I remember when I first heard one of those songs. I really dug it, but I have the fans who would be like, “The MTV thing and blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “Oh. P.S. I would like to be on MTV.” Her band is really good and it was cool to see that today. I’m psyched to go out on tour with them now. I saw them really kick out a sweet show.
PW: Well that’s awesome. [looks to Josh] Do you have any questions, Josh?
AM: Oh, I’m Andrew by the way (like he needs an introduction)
PopWreckoning, Josh: I’m Josh. I’m the editor. Is Something Corporate is completely done?
AM: I wouldn’t say completely, no. The thing about Something Corporate is, well, it’s hard to explain how each one of us has our own lives and the people in our lives. That is me and Something Corporate. We have our own lives and how we interact.
They’re really dear friends of mine. We see each other all the time and talk all the time. There’s definitely always discussions of when are we going to put something together. And when I say put something together, I don’t envision for me personally, that we’re going to come back and make a new full length record. At least not any time soon. And go on a world tour and be out for a year working on a Something Corporate record.
That’s like the dudes and friends I grew up with in high school and we had this amazing experience and this huge connectivity on stage and it was undeniable. It was really special, something I’ve never experienced on stage. But we were also all 16, 17 years old and as you grow up, you get older and you start liking different things and you start going different directions. It just made sense for me and everybody’s got their own things that they’re doing.
It’s like we’ll do something because love each other, we respect our fan base and we know that we have the ability to really make cool stuff together. There’s all these songs that never really got to see the light of the day that I would love to do a huge package of. And music, there’s a whole different world of music now.
Commerce and music are two totally different things. It’s not like you make a CD and it sells. So, I kind of believe in this idea of making other things that sell. Like if we collected all these amazing b-sides that we’ve done that nobody’s heard or stuff that’s been kind of scattered. “Konstantine” was never on a fucking record. It was never on a record. That song has its own area code and it has never been on a record. So to find a home for this and something that really shows people what the experience of being in Something Corporate was really like–there’s pictures of us being babies on stage, high school, it was really a cool thing. I want to do something to celebrate that and throw some new tracks on there and these handfuls of demos and songs that we had never put out that I’d love to finish that are really cool songs.
I think the biggest problem with Something Corporate was that there were so many people around with so many opinions outside of the band that some of our coolest shit that was really groovy would have to be put on the back burner because we’d been pigeonholed into this Drive-Thru punk rock thing. But I mean I loved everybody there and I loved everything about that. I wouldn’t trade that experience. Sometimes in our own head, I think that we didn’t let our selves be as free, we didn’t let ourselves put out these songs that maybe were a little more challenging and not just straight up the main vein, but were really cool adult communications that got lost along the way.
PW: You have your own label now, don’t you?
AM: Yeah, I do.
PW: Would you put that out through the label?
AM: Yeah, that would be possible, but truthfully we’re under contract with Universal and whatever version Universal decides to be. I mean, we got signed through Drive-Thru through MCA. MCA became Geffen. It’s my understanding that Geffen is now Interscope. So, there’s people in that system that I’m really close with that care a lot about our music that I think when it’s time, they’ll probably be the ones to put out the release.
PW (Josh): That’s the only other question I had.
AM: Well, that’s the most honest I’ve been about it since. So, you have your own little goldmine for you.
PW: Thank you so much.
AM: Yeah it was a pleasure. Great to meet you guys.
PW (Josh): Nice meeting you. I’ve seen you like three or four times and never gotten to meet you.
AM: Yeah, it’s nice to meet people.
PW: I actually got a chance to meet you one other time before, but you were in a sour mood.
PW (Josh): Don’t tell this story. (I have to tell this story, it is a good story.)
AM: No way, what? What happened?
PW: I don’t know if you remember the Lincoln, Neb., show where there was a decibel rule? You couldn’t go over a certain volume.
AM: How could I forget? Did you meet me before or after the show?
PW: It was right after the sound check.
AM: Oh, so you met me at the worst moment.
PW: You were actually really cool about it. Yeah, everybody was just sitting and we were like, “Oh my gosh, he’s not going to want to come over here and talk to us.”
AM: Yeah, with that, it was just about not giving a show. I mean when we do it, it’s for you guys.

PW: I thought it was amazing that you were like, “Fuck it, we’re going to pay the fine.”
AM: Well, you have a business choice. You either cop to the man and give less of a performance or you say, “Fuck the money tonight, let’s put on a show.” You know? It was cool and it was a good lesson to them because they didn’t tell us about that sound thing. You have 2,000 people ready to see a concert and they literally couldn’t. I mean our guitar amp was breaking the decibel. The guitar amp! Without even being in the speakers of the house. It was like, “Whoa.”
PW: I just thought what you did there was amazing.
AM: Yeah, well I’m glad you got to see me in a better mood. I appreciate it. Thanks for doing the interview.
PW: Yes, thank you.
AM: Take care of yourself. Have a good one.
PW: You, too.