Andrew McMahon: Behind The Wilderness

California-based singer, songwriter, and musician Andrew Mc- Mahon has had a whirlwind of a year— from embarking on a nationwide tour to releasing his third album under his own name to gearing up to going back on the road, the 36 year-old has been going seemingly nonstop. Yet that seems to be the norm for McMahon; his career, spanning nearly 20 years, has been a whirlwind of albums, tours, and artistic growth nearly unparalleled. In February, before taking the stage at the House of Blues Boston as a stop on his Upside Down Flowers Tour, McMahon took the time to talk to Suburban Rose about brutal honesty, survivorship, and what it takes to up the ante on months-long tours. The latest album under his Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness moniker, Upside Down Flowers is his quickest release in years— coming less than two years after Zombies on Broadway—but it is nonetheless a personal effort. Speaking to the at-times seemingly anxious energy tracks like “Blue Vacation” carry, McMahon laughed, explaining how “Upside Down Flowers was actually the least anxious I’ve been when writing an album.” McMahon then described how it was written at his California home during “a time off the road,” a period of rest that seems hard to come by now with a hectic tour and promotional schedule. “It was part of a greater writing practice. [...] I built writing blocks into my day.” These blocks fit the rhythm that dropping his 4 year-old daughter off at school created. That sense of rhythm and stability, he says, created “a more reflective lens for the album.”

Across his career— from the angst-ridden Something Corporate in the early 2000s to his first solo project, Jack’s Mannequin, to now — McMahon has always been transparent and openly honest, something not lost on this new record. When asked about finding a balance between personal privacy and honest artistry, he was equally open: “you really can’t separate [the two]. The reality is that you have to put yourself out there, which can be tough, especially with people close to you, but there’s always an understanding.” He described his narrative songwriting style as a means of creating “intentional poetry” out of life, but “as a person, you fail, and having to expose the worst side of yourself is hard. But it’s how I cope [...] you just do it. It’s a form of therapy.” At the end of the day, McMahon views his music as a means of connecting with people.

This mantra, it seems, goes well beyond the music. Following treatment for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia in 2005 and a successful bone marrow transplant that’s left him in remission for 13 years, McMahon founded the Dear Jack Foundation, a charity focusing on supporting adolescents and young adults with cancer. When it comes to discussing his experience with cancer treatment, McMahon said, “There was a time where I had to address being sick. Immediately afterwards, a lot of people asked about it. [...] It’s easy now because it’s far enough in my rearview. I don’t look at [the illness] and get jealous of my life before it because I’ve had such a rich post-cancer life.”

As McMahon explained, the organization’s focus comes from the fact that “young people aged fifteen to thirty-nine, they’re facing a diagnosis but have the least support and research. We’re proud to be one of the few organizations focused on them, but there needs to be more.”

Speaking more to the work Dear Jack Foundation does, he talked about how “we host retreats four times a year for young adult survivors and their spouses.” These retreats offer the opportunity “to focus on the idea of getting to healthy living post-cancer [...] We want to let people know that there’s a life after [treatment]. Most young adults survive, and the battle is with survivorship.” The impact the organization has is evident, and Mc- Mahon spoke to the importance of it. “I hear people say that the best days of their lives are because of services Dear Jack provided, and that’s what ends up mattering.”

One of Dear Jack’s biggest events is their annual November 11th benefit concert, which this past year was hosted in Boston at The Royale. When it comes to the event, McMahon explained how he “want[s] to make the Dear Jack Benefit about charity” and “how to make a difference,” not just celebrating music. Even beyond the Benefit, Dear Jack Foundation still plays heavily into the set; at every show, McMahon makes note of the foundation, the work it does, and the importance of AYA cancer research. But when heading into this current tour, McMahon had an entirely different viewpoint. For much of 2018, he was on the road with his bandmates on The Pen and The Piano Tour, a behemoth of an acoustic 3-hour performance that featured a Mr. Rogers-style living room and plenty of banter. Discussing the approach to that tour, McMahon said, “It wasn’t a run around. We had to actually keep the crowd attentive. [...] We had to get people excited but ready to listen to these stories or the jokes.” Coming out of it, and moving into this fully electric tour, McMahon admitted that he wanted to “up the theatrics. We had a lot of fun with the Mr. Rogers set up for [last tour], so we wanted this tour to be whimsical and theatrical, but less of a rambling style.”

Where The Pen and The Piano Tour was more relaxed, with plenty of intermissions, this current Upside Down Flowers Tour is high-energy. Describing the setlist, McMahon said it’s difficult to curate, but credited his background for aiding in the process. “It’s not easy, [but] the fact I started as a fan, as someone who loves to see shows, that’s a huge part of me. So it wouldn’t feel right to just do one and a half or two hours of just new stuff.” Instead, he’s “fortunate fans have been plugged in for two or more bands [...] You’ll always hear [Something Corporate’s] ‘I Woke Up in a Car,’ you’ll always hear ‘Dark Blue’ [from Jack’s Mannequin], ‘Cecilia and the Satellite,’ we always like to play ‘em.” This tour set is notably longer than previous ones, clocking in at 2 hours. McMahon realized that he’d have to lengthen the set to accommodate the new record, and “made a point with the set to change it from last tours.” This meant cycling out some old songs, and introducing tracks that hadn’t been played for a while, such as the power ballad “MFEO” from 2006’s Everything in Transit. “You can’t please everyone, but if you know 2 of my bands, you’ll enjoy the show [and] if you’ve come to see one or more shows, you’ll hear something new. It’s not all b-sides.”

Upside Down Flowers is now available via Fantasy Records. To support the Dear Jack Foundation, visit dearjackfoundation.org. Suburban Rose Magazine is proud to donate half of the profits from the sale of this issue to Dear Jack Foundation.

Photo: Audrey Battis