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Andrew McMahon takes Jack's Mannequin out with The Fray
Cancer-free for four years, Jack's Mannequin singer/pianist Andrew McMahon is feeling relaxed while on tour with The Fray .
"We've only done three shows so far but this is my favorite kind of tour--playing outside in the summer time," said McMahon, calling LiveDaily from Washington, DC. "I've been doing a lot of sitting outside in a chair, reading a book. That's pretty much the story of my life for the last four or five days. It's a nice, low-pressure way to spend the summer. We're not headlining. We go out and do our support set and end the night early. It's kind of a treat."
Jack's Mannequin is touring in support of its second album, "The Glass Passenger," which spawned the single "The Resolution." Formed in 2004, the band--which also includes Bobby "Raw" Anderson (guitar, backup vocals), Jay McMillan (drums) and Jon "Dr. J" Sullivan (bass)--faced critical moments in June 2005 when McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). He named the album "The Glass Passenger" to reflect the headspace he was in following "this big ordeal of cancer."
"I think there was a certain frailty that I felt, maybe in general, just to life," McMahon said. "'The Glass Passenger' was a phrase that popped up in a song lyric for a song that I didn't actually end up putting on the record. But it followed me throughout the process."
McMahon explained the album tells mostly the story of the aftermath of having ALL.
"I waited until I was fairly well recovered before I started writing, not because I wanted to avoid it, or not be telling that story, per se; more than anything, it became largely detail of the aftermath and post-recovery kind of thing, and what it was like to resituate myself in the world with this fresh perspective, I suppose," McMahon said. "There were certainly songs that I think the effects or the actual experience of what I've gone through popped up, songs like 'Caves,' [which] was a really big one that spoke to that experience, not just the aftermath."
"The Glass Passenger" marks the first time that McMahon has recorded in the studio with his band. But some of the recording process was familiar: He rehired his production team of Jim Wirt and C.J. Eiriksson, both of whom worked on Jack's Mannequin's 2005 debut "Everything in Transit."
"It was like old hat in a lot of respects, McMahon said. "We worked together for a long time. We sort of had a flow and had a chemistry. The biggest change from the first Jack's record to this record was I brought the band that I play with on tour. They spent a good amount of the time in the studio with us. I think the dynamic shifted a little bit. For the most part, it was a familiar feeling. It made it easier in the process for as long as we were. We spent almost a year if not a little bit more to kind of produce all the songs."
