Andrew McMahon Interview
Andrew McMahon at Pier 17 in NYC
Cassidy Rose: First things first, what music is currently in your heavy rotation - anything new you’re excited for?
Andrew McMahon: Um, let me open my Spotify for you. I mean it’s not anything new but I recently have gotten super into Sufjan Steven’s Carrie & Lowell album so that’s been like on heavy rotation for me. The new Sylvan Esso has been in heavy rotation, pretty much anything Sylvan Esso is like – I’m obsessed - so that’s been big. I’ve sort of just made my way through the new Beyonce record recently and I’m loving that. There’s a band called Hovvdy – that seems to be spelled with two “v”s on Spotify but I’m pretty sure it’s “Howdy” or meant to be. What else - the new Rayland Baxter – I don’t know if the who thing is out, but I just heard like the first song off of there last week and it’s unbelievable, I love Rayland. So those are probably like the most recent. Like last year I got really into the new Kacey Musgraves record, took Cecilia and Kelly to see Kacey at The Staples Center which was pretty cool as well.
CR: And in addition to music, you also have a love for television - what are you watching, what are you looking forward to?
AM: Okay so the darkest of the additions is - I’m making my way through Dahmer on Netflix, which is like A LOT, it’s a *lot*, it’s a lot… But I’m also super into the Laker’s documentary that just came out called Legacy, so I’ve been doing that every week. Another dark one, The Patient, this new Steve Carell, which I’ve been loving. On the lighter side, Reboot, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, so good, so good. Loving that. I make it through the whole day without watching TV and then I just stay up all night watching TV. It’s kind of pathetic but those are sort of the big ones for me at the moment.
CR: At this point I think everyone knows you’re a cancer survivor but what they may not know is you also champion a great charity for AYA cancer patients and survivors. What are your big picture goals with the Dear Jack Foundation?
AM: Well, we just brought on a new Executive Director because Andrea who has been, well I mean, effectively Dear Jack has had two phases, there was the first phase which was where I was fundraising and then effectively, we would take those funds and distribute them to other charities that we felt like were doing good work. I brought Andrea on eight years ago and that was sort of the second phase of Dear Jack, where we started building all of our own programs and slowly hiring staff to facilitate more and more patients and survivors into those programs. So, Andrea recently had a baby and decided to move on so we’re entering the next phase which is hopefully a big growth phase. Right now, we have our wish granting program which is called Lifelist. We’ve been fulfilling over a hundred Lifelist participants a year so that’s like walking them through multiple wishes and various different things they want to check off during treatment. I’d like to see that program expand over the next few years hopefully more than fifty percent if not a hundred percent and then the same thing with our retreat program. So right now, the retreat program that we host is called Breath Now, we are doing somewhere between four and six retreats a year. All of those retreats at this point have been for survivors that are entering survivorship with their partners, their spouses, the advocates that kind of walked them through treatment. A lot of times those relationships become imbalanced over the course of someone having to fulfill the role of caretaker when, you know, in our real lives obviously our relationships should be sort of taking care of each other not just one person taking care of the other. Obviously, those scales shift when somebody becomes sick, and you have to look after them. So right now, we have four to six of those retreats a year, I’d like to see those double over the next five years too. A huge part of that is bringing in this new Executive Director who’s worked in another organization where they’ve overseen a lot of growth and our goal is to grow the foundation, but you know that means more fundraising and bringing in larger donors and also the staff to facilitate the growth of the programs so it’s a tall order. The beauty is that the foundation runs so well, and we have such an amazing staff that have sort of seen these programs grow to their capacity so now the next phase is to slowly and very consciously move towards expanding that. Also, I think diversity has been a big thing for us, you know it’s a difficult thing to find people in hospitals that are underserved so a big part of what we’re trying to do in the next phase as well is to find partners in hospitals that don’t have the same sort of economics that I think a lot of our hospitals do now, and trying to really reach underserved communities as well.
CR: You have a super loyal fanbase that formed a community of their own and you kind of gave them an online home in the form of your Camp Wilderness Pillar campaign. What kind of content do you share there that maybe you wouldn’t on typical social media?
AM: Well, I think that yeah, it’s a little, for me, you probably know because you know me, like social media has not always been my forte or my strong suit I think there’s like a level of access that I think younger artists are really comfortable giving people but even when I was young, I wasn’t really comfortable giving people that level of access. You know I think that changed when I got sick and there was sort of a door that was opened where a much more private part of my life was on display. I think with Camp Wilderness there are things like my home demos and things that, you know that I’m not gonna go throw out the first version of a song that I cut sitting at a piano necessarily to the whole world. Like I feel that’s the kind of thing I like to save for diehards and the people that I think want to know that side of me a little bit more. And I think with Camp Wilderness there’s just you know photographs, family pictures, things that I hold a little bit closer to my vest that you know frankly so many of the people that are in Camp Wilderness I’ve come to know over the years. You know whether it’s at meet and greets or you know hanging out after the show or whatever it is, it feels a little more like family, so I feel a little bit safer. You know whether its audio or video stuff or unmixed songs and things like that, it’s just, it’s a space where even conversationally speaking I feel a little freer to just do my thing and not feel so *exposed*
CR: You did a handful of Drive-in shows during the pandemic, did you see value in that format of show beyond the pandemic or do you prefer to be strictly back to performing regularly?
AM: For me I think the Drive-in was a pandemic specific gig. I found incredible value there in the sense that you know we weren’t at that point in a position, you know, I think even as an artist, you don’t ever want to do anything that’s going to put the people that support you in any danger. You know and at the same time, one, you don’t wanna deprive people of entertainment in a time when I think we all needed it the most, and two, for me you know it’s like I wanted to keep my band working. I needed to keep the lights on in my house and I needed to connect to people. So, it was like - How do we do that? And I saw the Drive-ins pop up first in Europe because they locked down before us and I was like – wow - there is a way that we can do this, that we can play and fulfill, you know selfishly, fulfill myself artistically and be on a stage which is you know my life blood but also give people something to look forward to and get them out of their house in a way that was safe. I found them incredibly fulfilling especially in the context of what was going on but of course being able to reach out and touch people and to be in a crowd with people. Obviously, you know my show you know I like to be in the crowd with the people when I play and so I can’t imagine a Drive-in making so much sense when that’s available, but should it not be available in the future the closer sort of version of what we do then certainly I would do it again.
CR: You wrote and released your first book in the wake of the shutdown, would you ever consider tackling another book, maybe nonfiction next time?
AM: I would, I mean- nonfiction scares me. I think if you look at my catalogue it’s like I am just an autobiographical writer, like I draw so much of what I create from my own life experience. I think certainly if I were to go into that, enter that space, it would probably still be a story that was modeled closely after my life or some version thereof, you know. And I would consider writing more, I mean there were a lot of stories I left off of the table because I think the goal for me and the memoir- just like anything when I’m writing music or whatever it’s sort of a therapy first modality for me. It’s like I create because I’m trying to sort out whatever’s going on. And at the time in the pandemic, I think there was just a lot of stuff left on the table with you know my family story, things that I hadn’t really exercised on paper or even in music on some level that I felt that I had to tell those stories and string those stories together in a coherent way. But there’s a lot of great road stories and funny moments and things like the stories that I tell when I talk to my friends or when I meet other bands for the first time that didn’t really make it onto the page that I think there is room for like a whole other book of just like the comedy of being on tour and being in the studio at all stages of life and career that I think could make for you know a series of pretty great short stories if I find the time and the fortitude to sit down for another year and write another book.
CR: This Hello Gone Days Tour you just did felt like a long time coming in terms of perfect contemporary pairings - are there any other bands you’ve been eager to tour with that you haven’t hit the road with yet?
AM: I mean look the beauty of what Chris and I did this summer is like- we’re friends and we had these overlapping fan bases that I think really were like a multiplier right. It’s like because we were out together, I think there are people who maybe wouldn’t have gone to one of our shows but because we were together it was like we created this sort of little mini circus that everybody showed up to. You know there are certainly other bands that I’m close with that I think would be fun to do that with. You know guys like Switchfoot or the Relient K guys or even, like, Hanson, like I love Taylor and the boys like I think we randomly have this huge overlap of fans. You know those are the first ones that come to mind for me, and I would certainly be open to doing that. Like I think we learned a valuable lesson this summer which is, and I learned it in a way when we went out with the Atlas Genius guys too, like when you find that right pairing that mobilizes two fan bases it really becomes sort of a magical bigger event. I think certainly looking toward next year and putting together a new record we’ll be on the hunt for another pairing that does something similar.
CR: You just reunited with the original line up of Something Corporate for your birthday- is there any further life to that or was that strictly a birthday special!?
AM: I mean it was really meant to be like - The Birthday Show. Sort of like it was low hanging fruit in the sense that those guys all live close, other than Brian who - like I am always happy to throw Brian on a plane so I can go hang out with him too. Like I am still friends with all of the guys in that band. I think because Brian is always on the move he was living in Denver and now he’s in Austin and he surfs and like we have just stayed really close, he and I, so any time the band comes through town he usually hops on stage with me. It was cool to kind of amp that up and have everybody out there and get to play a set together. Look I’m not trying to let any cats out of the bag because there is no cat to let out - like we won’t go back on tour; I don’t think it really makes sense for us. But if we can find a festival or a space where we can get together for a weekend and do a show or two, I think we would, and so now it’s really just a matter of floating that out into the universe and seeing if anybody bites and if we can make it make sense with all of our crazy schedules. But, it really was super fulfilling and it was fun to see people, one, so surprised by the fact that we did it because I didn’t tell anybody and, two, just the vibe of being on stage with the dudes that I built the foundation of everything I’m doing now. To be out there with them again was really fun and there was a lot of nostalgia and a lot of good vibes. And after, what, the twenty-year anniversary of our first big record coming and passing- to get to do that with them on stage was really cool. I think for me, because obviously, we did the reunion shows and we did one set at Dear Jack but being at the end of a tour I just didn’t want any undue pressure on anybody. And like I wasn’t trying to like *sell that ticket* or anything. I think that if we did that, I’d want to do a proper announce and make it possible for everybody to come out. But I knew we were only going to do five or six songs, like I was on the road, they like practiced at home for the day or two before. So, I didn’t want it to turn into a thing where we sold it as a Something Corporate reunion and then people only got five or six songs or whatever. So, it was kind of nice to do it with zero pressure and just as a gift to the crowd that bought a ticket rather than an expectation, if that makes sense.
CR: You’ve done some pretty prolific covers over the years - are there any other covers you might consider committing to record or maybe songs you’d love to hit one day?
AM: Well, there’s talk of properly recording that Cher cover that I did. There’s an upcoming album that my label is sort of partnering with Planned Parenthood on. And its artists kind of doing big songs from major artists mostly I think from the 90s I think is kind of the focus. I saw Believe on the list of songs that they were considering, and I was like- I have one, I can do it! So, I’m hopeful that it still works out and that I can contribute that. There’s a version of that floating around from like a Sirius XM session that we did way back, and I was kind of digging through the archive and I was like - Oh My Gosh! - I love this version of this song and I LOVED that song when it came out! So that one might get committed to record, like proper record at some point here in the near future. And then yea, like we had a lot of fun doing The Cure cover this summer. We did Cake’s The Distance which was a lot of fun and I’m trying to think, we did one other one this summer too that I’m trying to remember. Oh, a couple of shows we did It’s The End of The World as We Know It by REM which I had a good time with that one as well. But yea, in booting up the band for this summer for tour it became this thing, like - Oh shit - We’re pretty good at covering these song that we grew up with!” I could see kind of like the next round of touring going in and trying to fire up a few new ones as well.
CR: Speaking of covers - when you look up a setlist to one of your shows it often lists your songs from previous projects as “covers” - what’s your take on that?
AM: It’s comedy to me, I mean, I think it’s especially funny when they cite Wilderness covering Jack’s Mannequin when most of The Wilderness band is actually Jack’s Mannequin. You know I think it’s an artifact of this weird career that I’ve had where it’s like you know I’ve been writing the majority, if not all of, the songs for all of my bands since I was fourteen and so the idea of me covering my own music is funny, but I also pay the price for changing my name every few years.
CR: Well, you’ve been playing Hurricane which I know you didn’t write!
AM: I know! That’s a proper cover! But I was the singer, so you know, who knows! Yea, it’s just another sort of anomaly of the digital world having to find a genre or a place to set everything to make it make sense for people. And maybe that’s the good fortune of my career- is that a lot of it doesn’t make perfect sense. My favorite is when I go, and I open for a band, and I do songs from my whole catalogue and people are like - “Why did he cover so many Jack’s Mannequin songs!?” I remember when we went out with Weezer and Panic! - sort of within the first couple years of this reboot of this Wilderness phase of things and using my own name as a part of my moniker and just realizing how many people grew up with that music and were coming to those shows but had no idea that I was the same person that was in those bands.
CR: That’s funny, I remember the first big Panic! at the Disco tour - you opened for them as Jack’s Mannequin…
AM: Yea, and even back then if I played a Something Corporate song it was like- “Why is he covering Something Corporate!?” Ya know, so here we are…
CR: Well, you did dye your hair back then, so you *looked* like a different person!
AM: Yea, yea I’ve also been through multiple physical iterations over the course of my career as well. So, I’m not making it easy for anyone, that’s for sure! It’s sort of counter intuitive as a commercial recording artist to be constantly hiding in plain sight but you know, that’s fine too, I suppose.
CR: You’ve released a phenomenal first single - Stars - off your upcoming record. Any sense for when the new album might drop!?
AM: So, we don’t have an official release date yet. I mean I think it’s tentatively sort of penciled in for March of next year but there will be songs coming out all the way up until that point. So, we are actually going to drop a new song in October, like the twelfth of October, a song called Skywriting is coming out. And I’ll do a gig to support that in LA like an under play like just me and the piano somewhere. But yea the record in full will be- we have two more songs to mix and then once I hear them I gotta figure out how to assemble the whole thing. We just hooked up with this amazing visual artist who’s gonna help us with the cover and all the single art and everything like that so yea it’s gonna be a slow roll out. I think the way the world works these days it makes sense to kind of be teasing out songs as we go and sort of like revealing the record in pieces before the whole thing emerges in the new year.
CR: And along with that do you have plans to get back out and start touring in support of this upcoming new album!?
AM: Spring next year sounds about right. Yea, there will probably be some little dates that will pop up here and there, kind of one off like fun things as we release new songs. But I think that we’ll probably start sometime around March/April as the record comes out, we’ll plan on doing maybe some smaller shows as the record sort of makes its way into the bloodstream and then hopefully some sort of bigger summer tour in the vein of what we did this past summer!
Andrew McMahon at Pier 17 in NYC
Andrew McMahon and The Wilderness backstage at The Oakdale Theatre in CT [From Left: Jay McMillan, Zac Clark, Bobby “Raw” Anderson, Andrew McMahon, Mikey “The Kid” Wagner]
