When Andrew McMahon decided to get the band back together for a one-off career retrospective at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, the task he faced was daunting.
McMahon’s career took off with the band Something Corporate at the end of the ’90s. His mid-2000s side project Jack’s Mannequin lasted eight years in its initial run. A third act, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, has been his main gig for the last 12 or so years.
Searching for a way to bring all three chapters of his musical life together, McMahon says he turned to his 2021 book “Three Pianos: A Memoir.”
“It’s loosely based on my book and the three different pianos that really carried me through each different project,” McMahon says on a recent video call from his home in Orange County, where he and three friends formed Something Corporate while still high school students in Dana Point.
“I deviate a little bit here,” he says, referring to the three pianos in the memoir and those he’ll play at F&M Bank Amphitheater in Long Beach on Saturday, Aug. 22.
“Piano one in the book is largely based on the piano that I grew up with in my house,” McMahon says. “In the context of the show, it’s really focused on the Something Corporate piano that started touring with us at Warped Tours. Really, as things kind of clicked into place for Something Corporate and we started getting some notoriety and building a story for ourselves on the road.
“There was this black upright piano which traveled with us through the first couple of years we toured. And then it retired to my living room at my house and is the piano I wrote ‘Everything in Transit’ [Jack’s Mannequin’s 2005 debut] on.”
As that band took over, a different piano became McMahon’s main instrument for the road.
“The Jack’s Mannequin piano is this brown grand piano that we got from Baldwin that has just been beaten up in ways that you couldn’t imagine,” he says. “It has a pair of metal legs instead of wood legs and has been sort of modded out and is a bit of a Transformer in that sense.
“And then there was a black piano that joined me around the time of Jack’s Mannequin but was largely what I started touring with in the Wilderness,” McMahon says. “And they all are in a rotation still to this day.
“All three of those pianos will be on stage with us sort of front and center during these shows,” he says. “And you’ll see me sort of bouncing from one to the other based on whatever incarnation I’m playing in at that moment. What songs were written on it, traveled with it.”
Saturday’s show in Long Beach is the last of a trio of “Three Pianos” shows he decided to play this year as a sort of encore to the Red Rocks concert, which McMahon initially intended to be a one-off performance.
As with the earlier shows in Colorado, Chicago and Philadelphia, the concert is structured as individual sets from McMahon and the different musicians who played in each of the bands, followed by a fourth set with all of the players swapping in and out on the bands’ biggest hits.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, McMahon talked about why he created new bands instead of sticking with one, how he understands the fandom he’s earned with each, and what he’s got planned for his next few chapters.
Q: I’ve often wondered this about musicians whose primary instrument is acoustic piano: Do you travel with a piano tuner?
A: We don’t. There’s a network of piano tuners across the country that we know very well at this point, and that’s built into my deal when we contract with a promoter and a venue. They’ll provide us with a piano tuner that comes in before soundcheck and makes sure it’s in pretty good standing.
And then I also travel with a technician that is super familiar with the piano and knows how to take it apart when calamities happen, which inevitably they do. Even before the Red Rocks show, I had every key off of the upright piano up until about 10 minutes before the set started as we were trying to calibrate some of the electronics that we have built into the acoustic piano.
They do give you a heart attack from time to time, that’s for sure.
Q: So what was the original inspiration for the “Three Pianos” show?
A: Honestly, the idea started forming around probably my 40th birthday. I’m about to turn 44, so it’s been a minute. The initial thought came for my 40th birthday party, which was at House of Blues Anaheim. I was on tour with the Wilderness at the time and called the SoCo [Something Corporate] guys and was like, “Hey, what would you think about doing a surprise set in the encore?”
They were very sweet and obliged, and it was just this magical moment where I think people were so excited to see the lineup fully back together. So we sort of slowly marched towards what ended up being Red Rocks.
I set up a year of Something Corporate reunions, which happened a few summers ago, and then a year of Jack’s Mannequin reunions, which happened last year. Just seeing the fervor and the excitement around the projects getting back together kind of teased out this idea of what if we put everybody together on one stage. Which became an enormous amount of work, but what a beautiful night.
Q: I want to ask you about switching band names and musicians instead of sticking with one consistently.
A: I think most of that is a personal thing, right? I feel like I’m sort of a deconstructionist by nature. I mean, even from record to record within each project, there’s pretty distinctive shifts in the sound and the approach to recording, and even to the writing. And I think the three major name changes have usually aligned with my personal life.
Also my professional life, but they’ve all come in moments where I’ve said to myself, “Are you, if you continue on this road, are you retreading your path? Or is it time to refocus, recenter, and choose a new path?”
With Something Corporate, we’d all been in that band since we were in high school. Even when I started Jack’s Mannequin, it wasn’t with the intention of Something Corporate breaking up. Everybody was going off and doing their own little side projects. I was like, well, I guess I’ll go do mine.
All that shifted so fundamentally around my cancer diagnosis and treatment, that when I kind of came back to the world of the living and was plugged back in and starting to feel better, Jack’s Mannequin had taken on a life of its own and the record had blown up. I was sort of forced in that moment to make a decision based on just my energy level and where I wanted to spend time.
How do you want to spend your time if it’s not guaranteed? And at that moment it was Jack’s Mannequin. Then, by the time I had gotten to that third Jack’s Mannequin record, I think I was done living inside of that cancer experience, which was so closely linked to the Jack’s Mannequin project.
Hence, I wound it down and like walked into the metaphorical wilderness of trying to figure out how to do this a third time over, but this time in my 30s, starting a family, and I think a lot more aware of how tricky those kinds of transitions can be.
Q: I meant to ask a minute ago if you still have the piano you grew up with as a kid?
A: That piano lives with my agent, who passed away several years ago but was with me from the very beginning. He signed Something Corporate before we even had a record deal, so he’s a part of our story even though he’s no longer here. That piano lives with his family and his daughters so that they could learn piano on it.
Q: That’s sweet. Your daughter Cecilia came out with you at Red Rocks to sing “Cecilia and The Satellite” with you. Has she done that before?
A: That night was especially magical. She’s been with me now [on stage for it] since she could sing. The first time she did it, she literally slipped her mother’s grasp and ran on stage and grabbed the microphone. You can imagine, as a father, that it’s a little bit of a scary thing to have your young one show up on stage in front of a lot of people.
But she’s so confident. She’s a great singer. She loves musical theater. She’s 12 now, so she’s been doing this since she was probably five or six. And we’ll probably continue to do so until she decides that I’m not cool enough to warrant her presence on stage. [He laughs] It’s a gift that keeps on going for me, that’s for sure.
Q: I’ve noticed a depth of feeling fans have for all of your different bands. For you. What is about you and the songs you sing that makes that kind of connection?
A: Well, look, I grew up being the first kid in line at the show, right? I was the one who, when my favorite bands came to the El Rey, I was there at noon and waiting. So I grew up with a really strong sense of fandom for the artists that I love. Even as I’ve gotten older and get to meet a lot of those people in a more professional capacity, I still am that guy.
So I always had that in me, and the music that I connected to made me feel that sort of loyalty to an artist when I felt like they were telling their story in a way that connected us. And if I write a song, and somebody falls in love with it, they’re seeing me, right? I know that might sound kind of corny, but that’s really how I feel about the songs that I write. I also feel like if somebody really connects with a song of mine, I’m seeing them in a way.
I’ve always had a lot of reverence for that relationship, and I take it really seriously. You know, with Something Corporate it was young kids and teenagers, and we were still kind of young kids and teenagers telling that story. As the music and as I matured, those stories took on a different life. It was marriage and illness and all those things that we go through as human beings.
I think they understand that what I’m trying to do is use this music to move through my life. It’s my version of art therapy, and I think for some of them it’s the same. I mean, I’ve sat in hospital rooms with people who are going through it. I’ve played at weddings of fans that met at shows of mine. I’ve had people get engaged in the audience at these gigs.
I take it really seriously that it is something foundational for them, and it is for me, too. It’s helped me build a community of people who understand me and who understand each other.
Q: After these three “Three Pianos” shows, I know you’ve got some solo shows in the fall as well as some in Denver with the Colorado Symphony. And you’ve re-recorded a record with strings?
A: That’s right. We’re going to do three volumes as a starting-off point. I’ve just finished sort of the early years with a handful of Something Corporate songs. I’m in the studio working on string arrangements of the catalog and then kicking those over to an arranger to sort of big up for the larger symphony dates.
I think as I get further down the path, and obviously wanting to tour and be out there, what I’ve learned has been a part of my creativity can be filtered into how we present this music. I’ve had a great time playing these gigantic shows over the last two years, but I’d be lying to say that I didn’t get off stage at the end of the Jack’s Mannequin tour just craving [playing solo], having to run the show from my piano, figuring out how to navigate that.
It’s a rush in itself, trying to author a show in real time and make it land when there’s not other musicians, and still making it dynamic and exciting. And the symphony’s just one more way of presenting the music in a new light and giving fans a reason to want to come out to the shows.
Q: Have you played symphony shows before or is Denver the first?
A: Jack’s Mannequin did one back in like 2011 or ’12 with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, but this will be the first time I’ve done a solo symphony show. We’re doing it to benefit the Dear Jack Foundation, which is my cancer charity, so it’ll be a cool way to sort of bring it out into the world as a way to raise money for the foundation. And then we’ll jump into a few more in the new year.
Q: And after all of this, new music maybe?
A: Yes. So a big part of going back in time and reliving some of these songs and albums and relationships was the hope that by taking the time away from making [new] music I’d arrive back fresh. And I really am feeling that way. I’ve been writing tons and tons of music. I’ve been in the studio with a handful of my favorite producers and friends and musicians, and I’m starting to circle some ideas that I’m excited about.
As I get off the road from this, I’ll go straight to Nashville and be in Nashville for a couple of weeks working on producing a handful of songs that are written so far, in the hopes that they start combining in a way that it says, OK, this feels like the next body of work.
I’m hopeful for 2027, that there will turn out to be a whole new chapter of this journey.