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Not too long ago an album was put into my hand, one that I was interested in hearing. I put it on my computer and started listening and from the first song I was hooked and addicted. The music was inspiring in so many ways. It made me sit there and think and wonder about life on a whole other level. That music was the music of Jack’s Mannequin with the voice of Andrew McMahon. There is something about the way his voice comes through the speakers that makes you stop and listen.

When I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Andrew about what inspires his music and where his lyrics actually come from it was a moment I will forever cherish. I want you all to sit back and enjoy the words of Andrew and hopefully, like I did, you can draw some inspiration from him.

"Writing lines like ‘swim for your families, your lovers, your sisters’, you know things like that like in some ways can be taken as cliché and it almost made me nervous, because it was too easy to wrap your head about, but when I was writing it I remember feeling so engrossed and it feeling so honest and so true."
– Andrew McMahon: Jack’s Mannequin

For our readers who don't know, who are you?

My name is Andrew McMahon and I play in the band Jack’s Mannequin and some people know me from Something Corporate.

Where did the inspiration for The Glass Passenger actually come from?

I mean like any of my records, everyday living. You know what I mean? The easiest way for me to continue to make music , with the idea of making music in the long term, is just to kind of try bring it back to home and bring it back to what my daily experiences are, it’s really just about that. I’ve found inspiration from the recovery process from when I was sick, I’ve found a lot of inspiration from my personal relationships in my life as I have throughout history. The everyday struggles of trying to get by, to make it work you know?

And how did the album title come about?

It came from a lyric from a song that I wrote early in the writing process for the glass passenger, it didn’t end up making the record. It was sort of like a tongue-in cheek kind of a front to the idea; a lot of people were very much expecting me to write this morose I almost died album kind of thing. So I wrote this song called ‘hey hey hey, we’re all going to die’. I didn’t actually obviously end up recording it or putting it on the album but the first verse of the song was sort of a descriptor of the weeks leading up to when I found out that I was diagnosed with Leukemia. So, the line was sort of ‘keep your eyes on the road, I’m a glass passenger and I sing in a travelling band’, it was kind of a troubadour sort of song about me being on the road with Jack’s on our first tour and getting sick and the glass passenger, I remember when I hit that little section of three words, I Immediately scrolled them down. I was like whether I keep the song or not, there’s something in that title and it’s stuck with me through the whole album.

You started writing songs that you knew didn't fit into Something Corporate's sound, where did you get the inspiration to veer out onto a different vein of song writing?

I think that’s kind of almost what came first the chicken or the egg sort of thing. I don’t think my decision to do Jacks was as much prompted by the idea that I was writing so much different songs as it was myself and the band, our relationships had become so strained. We had worked so hard for so many years, you know, trying to break something corporate that I think that we got to that point of burn out. That kind of burnout that doesn’t make it easy to be creative with people, we had just gone to that place where you almost couldn’t share an honest creative thought with somebody because the reaction was going to be based upon some petty shit you got into the night before, rather then it being ‘well that’s a good idea’. It would be like ‘well I don’t like your idea, because I don’t like you right now’. I mean that’s how all relationships are, but it also made me become accountable to myself as a song writer, saying I have to make sure that I protect these songs that I write and make sure that I can present them in a honest form. When you start realizing that the way you are creating is based upon some bizarre set of tangled kind of lines of how people relate to each other. I wanted to take that aspect out of it and kind of boil it down to the purely creative and purely inspired.

Organic sort of style?

Yeah. Then I started writing and I think knowing that I was going to write for something else it of course creative this freedom and maybe boldness and the ability to say some things that I normally wouldn’t say because I would be worried.

That someone would take offense?

That maybe the guys in the band wouldn’t dig it. I mean not to paint a bad picture of the Something Corporate guys, I mean we’re all still the dearest of friends and they would all admit the same thing. I mean we just got into a place where we were living in a bus like this for three years.

And it takes its toll on you.

We were kids; we started the band when I was 16 years old. You take a lot of that with you. You are all of a sudden growing up and becoming men and you’re on the road together and you’re doing business together and all of a sudden your lives are so comingled and you almost even didn’t notice that it happened. Then one day you’re married to four other dudes. It took its toll. Obviously is someway Jack’s was my attempt to get back to ground zero and start the process over with what I had learned and taking what I had learned.

Like a new chapter?

Yeah, just trying to start fresh.

I've been listening to the new album non-stop and it greatly inspires me on so many levels.

That’s so cool, that’s the greatest news. That’s awesome.

How are you inspired to make music?

I mean, I think because it’s such a mystery. Music and the power of music and the mystery of song writing and all the wild cards and the variables that go into making a song have just kept me on the edge of my seat since I was nine years old and starting to do it for the first time. You don’t know where the inspiration comes from, you don’t know why it is all of a sudden something clicks and you have to sit down at the piano and furiously write something out. You don’t know why some days you wake up and want to write and just can’t do it. I think that that element and the mystery and that curiosity is just always been such a motivating thing for me. It’s like this beast you want to wrestle, and it’s just like every time you write a new song it’s like ‘aw I won that time’. It keeps me my toes, there is an availibilty to become complacent in life and it’s easy to sink into situations and allow things to just be. Song writing never allows me to just be, the fact that I write music for a living forces me to always being searching for new inspiration, and finding muse. It could be anything, I could be reading through that magazine and a set of words could jump out at me. I mean I could be sleeping in the middle of the night and a melody will come to me and just so chase it down.

Writing is seen as a great release, how does writing affect you on a more personal level?

That’s the first level it affects me on. If what I’m writing doesn’t’ affect me personally, I don’t put it out, I don’t even record it usually. The first part of the process is making the connection to you, I mean it’s not for everybody, but for me that’s the kind of writer I’ve been. My first writing experience was a coping experience, I had lost a family member and I had used the piano and wrote a song to help me get through that. I think that set a tone for what my writing would be for the rest of my life, which was just this tool that was part of me sort of figuring out my every day.

To get things out?

Yeah, I mean it helps clear out the subconscious.

The clutter?

Clear out the clutter, that’s a good way to put it.

Is there one particular song on the new album that means the most to you?

There’s definitely a few. I would argue that Swim, because it really was a song, I mean all the songs on the record are important to me and mean a ton to me; you know Swim was a song that I felt in a lot of ways accessed the best of my craft and my ability to be the most universal in my appeal while being the most truthful to myself. Does that make sense? I think that song was a moment where it was like; I mean there are moments where you write songs for yourself, or where you write something for yourself and you do your best to make it so that people can relate to it, and that was a song where it was so simple, it was almost too simple. It almost came too easy. Writing lines like ‘swim for your families, your lovers, your sisters’, you know things like that like in some ways can be taken as cliché and it almost made me nervous, because it was too easy to wrap your head about, but when I was writing it I remember feeling so engrossed and it feeling so honest and so true. I think in that sense it’s definitely one of the more well received songs on the record and I was glad to see that happen. I think that song in some ways will always mean the most to me off this album.

You made an appearance on the new The Academy Is... CD, how do you decide whom you want to collaborate with?

They usually decide for me. The Academy is are dear dear friends of mine, and we’ve known each other for years and they were recording in Los Angles where I live. I think that’s a lot of why I end up playing on a lot of people’s records, because bands from here there and everywhere else that I’ve toured with often times usually end up in Los Angles recording. I’ll get the phone call, ‘hey you know there’s a piano in the studio, we have this ballad you want to come play?’ That was definitely one of the favourite collaborations that I’ve done, I think that track is a really really cool track. I mean it’s defiantly my favourite track on that album, so I was honoured to get o play on it. I did one with Spill Canvas recently on their new single that’s coming out now, called ‘Saved’, which was fun as well, those guys are great dudes. So, you know a little bit of that here and there, you know if I’m in town and I got friends in town and someone wants me to come and sit in, I’m always happy to do so.

You have overcome so much in the past few years, how has this affected you as a musician and how you approach your career?

Well I think, obviously facing any life and death sort of thing is going to alter your perspective on living. For me I think there is this mechanism that I’ve developed that I didn’t have before, that says slow down its time to stop. I mean it’s even funny if you look at everything in transit, dark blue, which is the last song I wrote for everything in transit and probably the most eerily in some ways foreshadowing of the events to come. That idea that the universe was telling me to slow down and it as not a call that I was really heeding at any stretch of the imagination and rode myself into the ground and ended up being sick. I think now while I still have, I’m all full of energy it’s just the way I wake up kinetic and sizzling and ready, but in light the way the past few years have shook out there is a little more caution in my step I would argue. Just a little. It’s also something I struggle to find a balance in, because I think being a little reckless is good for your art form, so I try to ride the line to some extent.

You have inspired a lot of people with your strength to overcome obstacles, how do you feel about being an inspiration to so many?

I mean obviously honoured, the fact that people would drive any level of inspiration from what I do or what I’ve been through is a powerful thing. It’s also a responsibility that you don’t want to be saddled with, to be perfectly honest. There are, I think people who idealize the person that I am to a level that’s maybe, not to say inappropriate, but just not on point? I’m very honest about the fact that I’m just a regular dude with the same kind of vices and troubles that everybody else has. I think sometimes when you get placed on that pedestal, in my case the survival and the idea that it’s tied to art and its always been a part of my art form, at least in the past couple albums to try and take struggle but find positivity in it, it’s sometimes a little bit of a loaded gun. Sometimes people look at you as if maybe you don’t live the same kind of life that they do and really the truth is I write songs for people because I feel like it’s what I meant to do. I want to give people hope but you want people to also be realistic.

You want people to realize that you put on one shoe at a time like the rest of us.

Yeah and then some days I mess up bad.

We all make our mistakes.

Absolutely.

There are a lot of up and coming artists out there who are struggling to get noticed, is there any advice that you could offer to them?

Just keep playing. Play play play. Play live. Play in your hometown. Find a hometown that you can play in that will let you play. We did it. Something Corporate started in a very different kind of age of music, us having a website was sort of like very forward thinking at that point, only the big bands have website. Now a lot of times people build their websites before they have their first practice. You have to be careful of getting caught in this cycle of like, well I have garage band or I have this recording program at home. I recommend to every band, playing with your band and practicing all the time and constantly working on your music not just you’re marketing is the best way.

That can always come later.

Yeah and well I think the idea, though it was a different time when I think my band was discovered, I don’t think people have fundamentally changed. What we did was we just played shows. We played any show we could get. We played churches; we played in the cafeteria of my high school. You know what I mean, we played in peoples backyard parties, and we played in my house and invited people to the house to see the show. We would play in my garage and invite people to the garage to tell us what they thought of the new songs. Building a fan base like that one person at a time really helps you understand what it is that people like about your music so that you can refine it and make it better. I think playing live, and constantly playing live is really, in my opinion, the best way to develop as a band because there is something tangible there, it’s real. I mean I’m a guy who’s never had a lot of radio or a lot of MTV, never had a lot of those things, and granted on this record a lot of those things have been coming together but this is ten years later. And the best thing that I did was focus on my live show and work with my band in the rehearsal studio.

Which I think that’s what a lot of bands today aren’t doing, they aren’t focusing on their live show.

There in a position, it’s very cool, I mean don’t get me wrong I didn’t have the luxury at a very young age to sit and record music at a young age. I mean a lot of young kids are getting really good at recording music, which is awesome. To be able to have that tool and having the tools to able to execute it in a live setting, because that’s really how you’re going to win fans, and that’s how you’re going to keep fans. I mean you can go make some sweet track and put it up on MySpace and maybe get a million people to go check it out but if you show up in another town and play your set and you’re not good or you haven’t at least refined your show enough that it makes somebody want to come back, they aren’t going to come back.

Now us here at the sound faction are probably the most random people you are ever going to meet. IN every interview No matter how serious we like to end it with five of the most random questions you’ve ever been asked. Are you up for it?

We’ll see if I answer two of five it will be a strong performance.

If you were a crayon what color would you be?

Green. I don’t know, I’m going stream of consciousness now I guess.

Green?

Yeah, sure.

What female fashion trend absolutely confuses you?

How would I explain it, this new trend of this formless dress? You know what I’m talking about? The dress that makes everyone look pregnant. I don’t get that exactly.

Which reality TV show is your guilty pleasure?

Project Runway. I love it. I love Heidi Klum. I think Heidi Klum is like you know, maybe the most beautiful human being that ever walked the planet, other than my wife, but I’ve said that to her many times.

If you could be any fictional character who would it be and why?

If I could be any fictional character who I be and why? Oh, that’s a good question. I’m trying really hard to wrap my head around that, ummm, and I can’t seem to come up with anything at this point. I’ll think about that one.

Pass on that one?

Pass!

If you were a scented candle what would you smell like?

I’m going to go with like pine scented. Just because for whatever reason right when you said that the visual of Chris Farley in Tommy Boy rubbing the cab air freshener all over himself. So, I’m going with pine scented.

I want to thank Andrew for taking the time to sit down and have this amazing interview with me. I still want to know that that fictional character is, and maybe someday I’ll find out. Want to know more about Jack’s Mannequin? Go to their or their .