In almost every article or interview of Jack’s Mannequin, two details about Andrew McMahon — Jack’s front man — are always mentioned: (1) he was in Something Corporate and (2) he has lymphoblastic leukemia. But with Jack’s Mannequin now on their third full length album and his leukemia in remission for the past six years, it is safe to say Andrew McMahon is now in a different headspace.

“People and Things” — an all-encompassing title — is Jack’s Mannequin’s third album, which was released back in October of 2011.  It debuted at number one on Billboard’s alternative rock album chart and has received warm reviews from critics. The songs on the album range from the radio-friendly “My Racing Thoughts” to the anthemic “Release Me” to the piano ballad “Platform Fire.” Andrew has stated that the album in many ways is about love, relationships, and his marriage: his goal to write songs that offered less flowery language exposing the more honest underbelly of relationships. The song, “Television,” exemplifies this idea about Andrew’s literal inability to fall asleep without a television on; but the idea is extended to explain the intimate state of uneasiness in his relationship. Jack’s Mannequin is currently on tour in support of “People and Things.”

BLAST: How is the tour going so far?

ANDREW MCMAHON:The tour has been excellent. We’re on our fifth or six show. All the shows have been, truthfully, better than I expected. It has been a fun run. I’m in Chicago tonight actually, just pacing around the House of Blues.

BLAST: How is it there?

AM: It’s great. I love Chicago. I actually spent a little bit of time growing up here when I was a kid. I certainly feel at home when I make my way out here.

BLAST: You moved around a lot as a kid?

AM: Yeah. I actually lived outside of Boston too. (Andrew chuckles)

BLAST: Are you excited to return? Do you ever feel nostalgic for the east coast?

AM: I do. A lot of my nostalgia probably comes from my early travels with Something Corporate just because I was so young when I lived out there. I was in Massachusetts for my first few years of life and then Jersey for the following three. So I don’t have tons of memories from the east coast. But I think there is a sort of feeling of home when you go to places that you’re from and have lived. I definitely feel a kinship to the east coast. No doubt.

BLAST: Are you still doing yoga on tour?

AM: Oh yes, yeah, it is a big part of my life on and off the road now. When I’m on the road, I get a good three or four days of yoga per week. But it got a little tricky with all the show days and the record coming out and doing press and things like that. So I do it every other day, including my days off. It keeps me feeling pretty good.

BLAST: What else do you do to fill your time on the road?

AM: There is not a ton of free time on the road when you’re promoting a record. A lot of it will be sneaking around to radio stations or doing phone interviews. When I do have time, I try and read. And when I am on the bus, I try and put on a good movie and get myself to sleep. But I’m pretty busy out here.

BLAST: You have said before that you are a fan of Billy Joel, so does your song “Television” have any relationship to Joel’s “Sleeping with the Television On”?

AM: It’s so funny that you should say that because truthfully there was no relationship to it. Actually, as I was finishing that song, I was going through a bunch of old vinyl and I came across the Joel album. I forgot what record it was on. So I saw on the back of it and I was like, ‘Oh my God are you kidding me?’ So it is hard to say whether or not it had any subconscious influence on me. As a kid, I don’t remember ever listening to the song. I remember listening to his Greatest Hits volume one, while I was growing up as a Joel fan.  But yeah, I was definitely surprised to see the song title when I came across it.

BLAST: What television show do you usually fall asleep to?

AM: Truthfully for me, it is usually movies. I try to put in movies that I’ve seen like a million times, so that I can kind of zone out. It is usually The Big Lebowski, Super Troopers, usually a funny movie. But that tends to be my prescription before bed.

BLAST: Jack’s Mannequin’s bio by Warner Brothers Records says that People and Things “delves into the joys and conflicts of the first years of marriage” and you have stated that the album is about love and relationships. What does your significant other think of the album?

AM: (He chuckles) I think she likes it.  Yeah I hope so. I don’t think she would tell me otherwise. But I think in a lot of ways it’s kind of our album as well. I think it’s tricky for anybody in my life who ends up being the subject of the songs that I write. In my wife’s case, we’ve been together for the better part of ten years and [she] knows that it kind of comes with the territory. But as far as I understand, this is her favorite of the Jack’s records. I think I did alright by her.

BLAST: What music do you listen to that you wouldn’t normally tell anyone about? What’s your guilty pleasure music?

AM: I don’t know. I don’t normally subscribe to like the guilty pleasures thing. I like lots of different types of music and I tend to be pretty okay with that. I can’t really think of the type of example that I wouldn’t be so proud to share. You got me stumped on that one.

BLAST: That’s okay. You have said before that you love to explore other mediums of art. What kind of other art are you working on?

AM: Personally, in a hobby sort of way, I have been taking a lot of pictures. I got a new camera over the summer that I have been experimenting with and have a lot of fun with that. I used to do that a lot with my Polaroid, but it is a little bit more difficult to get the kind of film that I need for my old camera. I also do quite a bit of writing on the side, none of which has really come out, other than in the forms of blogs.

BLAST: How many tattoos do you have? Do you have a favorite?

AM: Let me count here: one, two, three, four, five. Five! So five. You know, I am pretty close to all of them. The cool thing about my tattoos is that they all represent a different time in my life. There’s the Starry Night on my left arm, which I am very close to. So I will go with that for now.

BLAST: Who would your perfect collaboration project be with?

AM: I’ve definitely been digging Danger Mouse. I like a lot of what he has been up to, something in that vein. I like the thing he did with Broken Bells; I thought that was really cool. There is certainly a lot of great stuff that he has been attached to.

BLAST: What’s the Dear Jack Foundation?

AM: It’s something that I started after my own experience with cancer. We do our best to raise money for organizations that are fighting leukemia and young adult cancer. It’s what we have been up to for the better part of six years. We help raise money for research. We try things with initiatives for young adults like sending kids to camp who are sick.

BLAST: Anything else you want to tell the Blast Magazine readers?

AM: Thanks for listening. And I hope to see you at one of the shows in the next few weeks.

Jack’s Mannequin will be in Boston on February 3 at House of Blues. The list of tour dates can be seen here.

The 12th Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, focusing on an expanded commitment to art, culture and community, will be held on April 15-17 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. The 2011 line-up was revealed, including headlining performances from Arcade Fire, Kanye West, and Kings of Leon.

The full line-up (alphabetical order):

!!!

12th Planet

Afrojack, Alf Alpha, Andy C, Angus and Julia Stone, Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, A-Trak, Axwell

Beardyman, Best Coast, Big Audio Dynamite, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Bloody Beetroots Death Crew 77, Bomba Estereo, Boys Noize, Brandon Flowers, Brandt Brauer Frick, Breakage, Bright Eyes, Broken Social Scene

Cage the Elephant, Caifanes, Caspa, Cee Lo Green, Chromeo, Chuckie, City and Colour, Clare Maguire, Cold Cave, Cold War Kids, Crystal Castles, CSS, Cults, Cut Copy

Daedelus, Death From Above 1979, Delorean, Delta Sprirt, DJ Hype, DJ Kentaro, DJ Marky, DJ Zinc, Duck Sauce, Duran Duran

EE, Elbow, Electric Touch, Eliza Doolittle, Ellie Goulding, Emicida, Empire of the Sun, Erick Morillo, Erykah Badu, Excision

Fat Freddy’s Drop, Fedde Le Grand, Fistful of Mercy, Flogging Molly, Foals, Foster the People, Francis and the Lights, Freelance Whales, fun.

G.Q., Gayngs, Glasser, Gogol Bordello, Good Old War, Gord Downie, Goth Trad, Green Velvet, Gypsy and the Cat

HEALTH, Here We Go Magic, High Contrast, Hurts

Interpol

Jack Beats, Jack’s Mannequin, Jakes, Jenny and Johnny, Jimmy Eat World, Joachim Garraud, Joy Orbison

Kanye West, Kele, Kings of Leon, Klaxons, Kode9, Kyle Hall

Laidback Luke, Leftfield, Lightning Bolt, Lil’ B, Lorn, Los Bunkers

Magnetic Man, , Mariachi El Bronx, Marina and the Diamonds, Mary Anne Hobbs, MEN, Menomena, Monarchy, Mount Kimbie, Moving Units, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Mumford & Sons

Nas & Damian Marley, Neon Trees, New Pants, Nosaj Thing

OFF!, OFWGKTA, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, One Day as a Lion, Ozomatli

Paul van Dyk, Phantogram, Phosphorescent, PJ Harvey, Plan B,

Ramadanman, Raphael Saadiq, Ras G, Ratatat, Riva Starr, Robyn, Roska, Rye Rye

Sander Kleinenberg, Sasha, SBTRKT, Scala & Kolacny Bros., Scissor Sisters, She Wants Revenge, Shpongle, Skrillex, Sleigh Bells, Steve Angello, Sven?Vath

Take, Tame Impala, Terror Danjah, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, The Aquabats, The Black Keys, The Chemical Brothers, The Drums, The Felice Brothers, The Henry Clay People, The Joy Formidable, The Kills, The London Suede, The Love Language, The Morning Benders, The National, The New Pornographers, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Presets, The Radio Dept., The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Strokes, The Swell Season, The Tallest Man on Earth, The Twelves, Thunderball, Tinie Tempah, Titus Andronicus, Tokimonsta, Trampled by Turtles, Trentemoller, Twin Shadow, Two Door Cinema Club

Warpaint, Wire, Wiz Khalifa

Yacht, Yelle

Zed Bias

It sounds like it may be too good to be true, but California piano rockers Something Corporate have announced that they will be re-uniting for Bamboozle Left which takes place in Anaheim, California on March 27 and 28, 2010. The band has been on hiatus since 2006 so they could focus on separate side projects, including lead singer Andrew McMahon’s Jack’s Mannequin. Something Corporate posted a youtube today to announce the re-union.

Looks like it’s time to start memorizing all nine minutes of Konstantine again…

Sire Records will be releasing “Dear Jack” today, a DVD documentary shot by Andrew McMahon of Jack’s Mannequin. The documentary tells the story of his personal battle with leukemia.

The documentary began as a means to capture the making of the band’s debut, “Everything in Transit”, when he was diagnosed with cancer at 22 years old in May 2005. The film is directed by filmmaker Corey Moss and Josh Morrisroe and narrated by Tommy Lee.

The film will be available in-stores, on the Jack’s Mannequin website www.jacksmannequin.com and via digital download through iTunes, and the Standard Edition Dear Jack DVD is available for pre-order at the website as well. On November 3rd, the Dear Jack EP will be available on iTunes with previously unreleased tracks, as well as a limited edition art book. The book, which includes artwork that became a part of the "Swim" music video, can be purchased exclusively at the band’s website. A portion of the proceeds will go to the non-profit charitable organization that McMahon founded in 2006, The Dear Jack Foundation.

Andrew McMahon will also participate in Stand Up To Cancer in December 2009. Stand Up To Cancer strives to accelerate cancer research and hopes to bring the best and the brightest individuals in the community together in order to do so. The group has raised over $100 million for cancer research thus far.

Blast got an opportunity to talk at length with Jack’s Mannequin front man Andrew McMahon about the group’s new album, working with Stephenie Meyer, the Dear Jack Foundation and the future of Something Corporate.

BLAST: Where did the content for The Glass Passenger come from?

ANDREW MCMAHON: Gosh, it was sort of this weird limbo period, to be honest. I was recording a lot of The Glass Passenger while I was touring everything in transit. Obviously it’s no secret that I had fallen ill around the time that Everything In Transit was finished and was coming out. So pretty much it took me several months to kind of recover from that and deal with all the things that went along with that. And then of course you know, I wanted to get back on the road and really make sure that people had heard Everything In Transit, so I started really working that record and touring tons of dates a year to support “Transit,” while kind of concurrently starting to write and record The Glass Passenger. So there was sort of this strange limbo period where I had my hands in a lot of things and was doing a lot and obviously still trying, while my body was bouncing back, I was still sort of dealing with some of the stress and trauma that goes along with, you know, having recovered and gone through what I had dealt with and getting sick, so, that’s where the content came from, in a lot of respects; that sort of inner-personal struggle of trying to find my place in the world after a pretty traumatic event and in a lot of ways trying to use the music to propel me forward and to get me past this.

BLAST: Are you going to continue writing more mature songs or do you prefer writing similar to your earlier, lighter songs?

AM: I was 17, 18 years old when I was in Something Corporate, you know. Obviously by the time we had put it on hiatus I was turning 21 and becoming an adult and all the things that go along with it. I guess mature is a word. I’ve always, since I was nine years old and started writing songs, have written songs about what I’m dealing with at that point in my life. When you’re 17, you’re writing songs about what it’s like to be in love at 17 and what’s really more relevant at 17 than love: getting into relationships and then breaking them off and the pain of that and all that stuff. Not to say that that stuff isn’t very relevant too, but obviously the approach, when you start getting older; now I’m 26, I’ll be 27 in the summer, it’s like … I write songs from the perspective of a 26 year old now, not a 16 year old. So yeah, I think I’ll continue to grow hopefully and continue to write songs that represent who I am, not songs that intentionally hearken back to some old sentiment, I guess.

BLAST: So what are the songs that you’re writing now about?

AM: The songs I’m writing now about … it’s kind of hard to say. I haven’t really gone in and recorded too much. I went into a recording session recently that was kind of groovy. We ran a bunch of old material we had an accumulated over the course of four or five years. Two of the songs very well may make a new record, but those are obviously older tracks. I think now a lot of these songs are sort of angled around love and about relationships, but I think from a very different perspective. I think that in a lot of ways about real love and what goes along with that and what goes along with you know really being committed to someone and something and sort of how that can be idealized, but sometimes that ideal isn’t always the reality and sort of trying to approach that and analyze it from that level which is sort of the first time I’ve really gotten to do that because obviously The Glass Passenger was about something very different.

BLAST: Are you experimenting with any new sounds?

AM: The sounds I find myself gravitating towards now more than ever are really rich, warm and natural sounds. I think the studio for me is always my second home if you consider I tour anywhere from six to 10 months a year. I’ll spend the remaining months in the studio, regardless of whether I’m recording for an album or just trying to work out some new material and stuff. I find myself sort of slowly gravitating away from the more rigid recording structure, not to say avoiding pro-tools all together or things like that, but I think pro-tools have created this safety net for a lot of bands and a lot of artists to not accomplish and not achieve the sounds on their own and I think my perspective, especially after having been on the road for so long, in these past few years playing with a really talented band, I think you’ll find me going into studio recording more live and recording with less effects and you know less processing and all of these things and really kind of focusing on nailing the sounds and nailing the take and really kind of making it about the magic of the take instead of spending months and months and months and month working on the song and working in the effects. I think I’m kind of getting away from that style.

BLAST: You must have had an interesting end to 2008 — you kind of got sucked into Twilight-mania.

AM: Yes I did sort of, didn’t I? (laughs)

BLAST: Tell me a little bit about working with Stephenie Meyer on the making of the “The Resolution” music video.

AM: It was one of these things where I had a friend of mine who had notified me, this is probably months before I got involved with Stephenie, that Stephenie was a fan of Jack’s Mannequin and that she had made reference to Jack’s either on her website or in the thank you’s in one of her books as being an inspiration for a character or whatever, we were on a play list or something like that. I heard this and at that point didn’t really know much about “Twilight” and while it was obviously a huge phenomenon throughout the country and probably the world and what-not, I don’t think it had quite broken the surface yet. As the months wore on, obviously I was sort of realizing how big a deal this whole thing was and about the same time we were searching for video treatments for “The Resolution” and frankly hadn’t really found one that we clicked with. It was sort of a frustrating process and I was trying to kind of sort it out and we started talking; myself and the label, we started talking about, “Is there anything we could do that would be different and cool and clever that might invigorate this process, and maybe it isn’t just going to video treatments, maybe we reach out to the musicians from another band we like or we reach out to film directors or actors or other people we know?,” that sort of thing. In that conversation, I was like, “Well you know, this woman who writes these books that have sold millions of copies is a purported fan of Jack’s Mannequin. Maybe we could reach out to her. She’s an author, I’m sure she could come up with something cool.” And then of course, it was sort of a pipe dream, I guess, in a sense. I mean I wasn’t really thinking of it on the grander scale of how huge she really was. Sure enough, we reached out, and she was like, “Sure, that sounds great,” and she sent in three treatments and we loved one of them and she ended up coming out and co-directing the video for us.

BLAST: How involved was Stephenie in the process of filming the video?

AM: It wasn’t like she was behind the camera, you know, she’s an author. There was this guy named Nobel Jones who is a director and she was on set the whole time, she obviously wrote the treatment, and she and Nobel collaborated quite a bit as far as the execution of her vision and how she wanted it to look. She was definitely there and approving shots and giving her opinion of certain shots as we went along, so she was definitely a part of the production and the directing of the video, sure.

The House of Blues crew wheeled the keyboard onto the stage, and the crowd went wild.

When the lights dimmed and the shadowy band members walked out onto the stage to their instruments. The crowd needed no introduction to be whipped into a frenzy, with the pit in front of the stage churning and men bending their bodies over the balcony to cheer closer to the band. The lights flashed on and the cheers almost drowned out the first lines of Jack’s Mannequin’s opening song, “Crashin.’”

“I want to hear some music.”

That’s what the audience got: an hour and a half full of music.

Opener Matt Nathanson said it best at the April 27 show in Boston when he told the audience he was the fluff to get them ready for Andrew McMahon and the rest of the band members of Jack’s Mannequin to make love to them.

“People kind of go apeshit during [the songs] and that’s always kind of fun to see people reacting on that level to anything” said singer and keyboardist Andrew McMahon in an interview with Blast.

McMahon’s crooning into the microphone and stroking the keyboard keys was as close to making love to his audience as he could in such circumstances. The heart of the pit below the stage beat along in tempo with the speed McMahon led his fingers across the keyboard as the audience danced along to the music, getting more excited with faster songs and more relaxed with ballads like “Hammers and Strings.”

This was Jack’s Mannequin’s first performance at the new Boston House of Blues. The original Cambridge House of Blues was the first Boston venue McMahon played at when he started touring with his Something Corporate in 2002.

Boston was the 19th stop on Jack’s Mannequin’s current headlining tour promoting a new album The Glass Passenger which was released last fall.

The Glass Passenger is the long-anticipated follow-up to 2005′s Everything In Transit. Back then, Jack’s Mannequin was just McMahon’s side-project to Something Corporate. But when he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005, McMahon said it was the music in Everything in Transit that helped pull him through illness into recovery.

“It was a pretty painful and hard time to do this but the underlining current was just: “ËœMusic will pull you through. This music is going to stay no matter what’” McMahon said. “Obviously everything that transpired during the finishing and release of that record with me getting sick and all the bizarre references throughout the album to hospitals and doctors and sort of this bizarre foreshadowing that existed throughout that record, it was hard not to feel like I was writing my death in that album.”

The Glass Passenger is markedly more mature than the previous music McMahon has written. McMahon started writing the music and lyrics for The Glass Passenger when he was on tour for Everything in Transit following his recovery. The songs speak about his illness but also about his recovery and his need to move on with his life. Lyrics from songs like “The Resolution” show his desire to enjoy his life since he regained it: “Yeah I’m alive/But I don’t need a witness/To know that I’ve survived/I’m not looking for forgiveness/Yeah I just need life/I’ll be lying in the dark/As I search for the resolution.”

It has been three years since Something Corporate’s Andrew McMahon has graced the charts with the first album from his solo project, Jack’s Mannequin. Touring and promotion of Everything in Transit was put on hold when McMahon was hospitalized for leukemia treatment shortly after recording it.

On September 30, he released his new album entitled The Glass Passenger, proving good things come to those who wait.

The Jack’s Mannequin staple is a catchy pop ballad driven by the force of McMahon on piano, but The Glass Passenger goes out of its way to emphasize the presence of a full band, with the occasional inclusion of a strings arrangement (“Bloodshot”). It’s obvious that McMahon was feeling musically ambitious with the album, but he didn’t stray far from his roots.

The album is still full of the same “Cali beach rock” anthems that gained original Mannequin fans and are sure to make new ones fall in love. “Crashing” and “Spinning” are the ultra pop kick anthems of the album, kicking it off as the kind of songs to add to your perfect summer playlist and blast from your car stereo as you drive down the highway, top down and arms up in the air.

McMahon extends his musical range with “Annie Use Your Telescope” and “Hammer and Strings (A Lullaby),” which take their place as the slow, somber pieces that give everyone a second just to slow down.

The important thing is not to go into The Glass Passenger expecting a concept album about fighting cancer. While the cocky “Resolution” boasts “I’m alive but I don’t need a witness to know that I survived,” “Caves” is the only song that attempts to shed direct light on McMahon’s hospital stay. “Passenger” is more about the bigger picture, a musical commentary on the battle to approach life with a sense of optimism.

There’s no self pity to be found on the Jack’s Mannequin sophomore effort and cancer isn’t a prerequisite to understanding, and loving, what McMahon is trying to do here.

The Glass Passenger is sure to delight old fans and give everyone else something they shouldn’t miss.

Clarification: Just to be clear, Everything in Transit was released in summer 2005 after Andrew McMahon was diagnosed with cancer in May 2005.