Article/Interview By: Lisa Occhino
Photo Credit: James Minchin
On October 4th, Jack’s Mannequin will be following up their highly successful 2008 record, The Glass Passenger, with their third studio release, People and Things. While The Glass Passenger dealt with lead singer/songwriter Andrew McMahon’s battle with leukemia, People and Things is more about relationships and binding love. “I really wanted to take on the idea of the first couple years of my marriage. It took a front and center position for the lyric on this record,” McMahon explains. “The goal for this album was to talk about love out of the traditional context, and what it’s like inside of a relationship.”
McMahon ensures us that when people listen to the new record, there will be a “similar approach to the lyrics and storytelling, and it’s very much the next step in the progression.” He hopes that listeners can connect with it and apply it back to their lives.
McMahon started songwriting when he was nine years old, and started his first band, Something Corporate, when he was 15. “It was a pretty organic thing,” he explains. “We would write songs, learn them in band practice, and go and find any place that would let us play, whether it be a church, or a community center, or a high school.” They continued to build a strong following, and soon enough record companies in L.A. started hearing about them. The band naturally snowballed from there, but McMahon began writing songs that didn’t quite fit with the feel of Something Corporate. As a result, he started Jack’s Mannequin as “a solo thing, but put the band together to go out and play live.” Jack’s Mannequin currently consists of McMahon, guitarist Bobby Anderson, bassist Mike Wagner, and drummer Jay McMillan.
At this point in his musical career, McMahon believes success is “being able to eat and live and not have to do another job.” He considers himself lucky to be paying his bills by working as a musician, and “just waking up and playing music and loving it.”
His piece of advice for aspiring musicians is to “play a lot, write a lot, practice a lot, and surround yourself with positive people who like to do the same.” He believes that going into music with the goal to be a professional musician is misguided, because you first need to “enjoy it and love it – at some point that love, if you cultivate it the right way, turns into a profession for you.”
He also cautions musicians about the perception that being in the music industry is easy. “It’s far from easy… Be ready to work your balls off. I don’t want to discourage anyone from it because it’s very rewarding… but especially in the modern music business where everything is changing on a dime, you have to really be willing to invest yourself in everything you have. There’s always someone to be ready to step in and take that spot from you.”
Although this upcoming album can be viewed as the final installment to a three-part story, there is still plenty more to come from Andrew McMahon and the crew. “We’re going to be out on the road for the better part of the year working this new record. I’m definitely not going to stop making music, but there is sort of this question mark over what’s next. I’m keeping it there so it inspires me to explore a lot of different forms of art, and so I can develop the idea that becomes the next thing. Right now it’s pretty much up in the air.”
People and Things is currently available for pre-order on jacksmannequin.com, and the iTunes deluxe version of the album will be released on October 4th. If you’d like to catch Jack’s Mannequin live, click here for tour dates.
