March 20, 2006, started like any other Monday: got up, got ready, go to class, meet up with friends. But this Monday did have an extra buzz of excitement. After class, a few of my friends and I were planning on heading to Lawrence, Kan. from our school in Omaha, Neb. to see Andrew McMahon’s new band, Jack’s Mannequin perform. Even the blizzard that started forming in the early afternoon wasn’t going to hold us back. 
Snow was constantly beating against the window, but we just held our coffees close and spent the car singing along with songs from “Konstantine” to “Bruised.” We talked about our crushes on McMahon. His hair, his eyes…that voice! We knew he had suffered some struggles the past year, but in the car, It hadn’t really hit us…
Our excitement only grew as we stood at the front of the packed venue and the backdrop with the JM scribble and white stars was revealed. This was it. We were going to see our beloved pianist at last.
The a Capella recording of “Holiday from Real” blasted over the speakers. First the guitarist, then the drummer and finally Andrew appeared and in unison, they switched the recording out for the real thing and began strumming chords and hitting keys.
This is when it hit me that this concert could have been stopped by a force more powerful than the blizzard we drove through. The lush hair of McMahon we had seen in pictures was gone. A shorter, thinner brown was scattered on his head. He was always thin, but now even more so, his cheeks more hollowed. And, since I was front row, what hit me the hardest was seeing his beautiful, long fingers on the keyboards. Cracked and creased nails were making contact with the ivory keys, bent from sessions upon sessions of chemo. This show could have not happened, and that sent a shiver down my spine. This was his first show outside of California since he had been diagnosed with leukemia. Looking at him then, it was evident that since his days in Something Corporate, a lot had changed.
What hadn’t changed was his energy. When he reached the line, “Fuck yeah,” it practically shook the venue with how long and loud McMahon and the crowd shouted it. It wasn’t just a line in the song. It was a “Fuck yeah, I beat this cancer. Fuck yeah, this show is happening. And fuck yeah, you can bet there will be more. So yeah, fuck yeah, we can live like this. We can find hope.”
That hope is something McMahon is hoping to pass on. Three years later, McMahon is doing a solo tour and releasing a documentary of that dark period in his life called “Dear Jack.”
“As far as the documentary, I hope there is a strong element of truth and relatability, as far as the people who have struggled through a similar circumstance, feel like it is an honest portrayal of what happens in those rooms and in the life of somebody dealing with [cancer],” says McMahon. “From there, obviously, it is to instill hope in people and let them know that even though it is a sickness they are dealing with, and altogether different, that a very hard situation can yield a positive result. I guess part of me hopes just that people find hope in the film.”
The film is officially released on DVD on Nov. 3. Three special screenings will take place at the Landmark Theater in Chicago on Oct. 8, the IFC Theater in NYC on Oct. 22, and a TBA theater in Los Angeles Oct. 28.
McMahon says he is a little nervous for people to see the film for the first time, “I have mixed feelings about it. For me, putting out records, a lot of times the feelings that are attached to an album, you put them to bed. With this documentary, the intention was to release it well over a year ago and even before Passenger. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the position to be incredibly objective about the film at that point. We kept going through edits and not really getting all the way there. I think the fact that it is sort of behind me at this point, I can finally feel like this is my past and it was a part of my life, but not the life I’m living anymore. It was almost essential that I got past that before we could put it out and I could look at it objectively and say what I liked and didn’t like about the movie. With that said, it never really drummed up old feelings for me as much as it has let me say goodbye to them. I’m trying to look at this as a way to close a chapter in my life. Nothing else.”
Even his family is joining the public in seeing it for the first time. McMahon wanted to protect them from having to watch it over and over because it is a hard thing for them to watch.
“Dear Jack” is directed by Corey Moss and John Morrisoe. McMahon and his family shot most of the footage from the start of his getting sick and diagnosed to the concerts post recovery. He even had the camera in the hospital when the doctor told him he had cancer.
“It coincided with sort of the same period of time that a transit kind of happened. It was the first time that I had been away from Something Corporate. I was separated from my girl. I was kind of out on my own for the first time. I was documenting that extensively. I had been filming my every day for nearly six months before the circumstances that led me to the hospital. I had a real rapport with the camera. During the day or at the end of the day, a lot of the time, two or three times a day, I would sit down with the video camera and say here is what’s going on today. Here’s where I am on the record. Here’s where I am in my head space. It became this close friend of mine.”
“In turn, when I was put in the hospital, I hadn’t found out I was sick right away. I just found out I had bad blood work. I remember my instinct at that moment. I called my tour manager because I was in the city and had to go to the hospital in Jersey kind of holed up on a day off. I asked him to bring me my keyboard and my video camera. That was it. It became this sort of thing. I look back and I see some of the comments that I was making and I felt somehow obligated to continue that documenting and continuing that documenting, what I had started to document, even though it had taken this dark turn. That’s why I did it. I didn’t expect anybody to see it, to be perfectly honest. It became this art therapy thing for me, I guess.”
McMahon says he would love to see the film more publicly broadcast, but might have a hard time finding a home for it. “The music channels seem like the most sensible place for something like this, but at the same time, sort of the heaviness of the movie itself, I’m not necessarily sure it would make the most sense on those channels for that public.”
This challenge only adds to McMahon’s nervous excitement to get the film out.
“It is a strange thing. I’m more curious how people will see it from a film standpoint because that’s how I relate to it. It is a pretty heavy film, and the alternative would be anything but. It is a pretty truthful piece at that because we weren’t expecting it to be released and this movie is kind of shot from my perspective. It is definitely a firsthand account of the event.”
This firsthand account and loose string of interviews with family and friends called for the film to have an extra element. It called for a narrator and McMahon could think of no one better than Tommy Lee.
“We brought Tommy in for a couple of reasons. 1. He has a great voice. 2. He was a regular installation in my home movies at that point. He came and visited me in the hospital. He was on the phone with me. I was working on my record with him before I got sick and was working on his record as well. He was able to bring an extra face to this and add some variety than just have some celebrity involved in the narration. In the same sense, he was very much a part of my life at that time, so it kind of worked out all for the best I think.”
So while there are no concrete plans to air the documentary beyond the three theatrical showings, fans do have the DVD release to look forward to on Nov. 3 and pre-orders are already getting exclusive content. There’s even a mini-solo acoustic tour happening right now with just Andrew McMahon and his guitarist Bobby Raw performing a few songs mostly from the Jack’s catalogue, but also dipping further into the Something Corporate well.
“We wanted it to be for the core fans, for the people who saw me tour during that period of time. It is special.”
The special stripped down tour began Sunday, Oct. 4 in Denver and continues through Oct. 29 in California. McMahon will also appear at the screenings of “Dear Jack” and provide a Q and A session following the shows.
Tour Dates:
Oct. 4 – Daniels Hall / Denver, CO
Oct. 6 – Varsity Theater / Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 7 – Lakeshore Theater / Chicago, IL
Oct. 10 – The Southgate House / Newport, KY
Oct. 12 – Highline Ballroom / New York, NY
Oct. 14 – Arts at the Armory / Somerville, MA
Oct. 15 – World Cafe Live / Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 18 – Sixth & I Synagogue / Washington, DC
Oct. 19 – Bowery Ballroom / New York, NY
Oct. 25 – Swedish American Hall / San Francisco, CA
Oct. 27 – House of Blues / Anaheim, CA
Oct. 29 – Troubadour / West Hollywood, CA
Jack’s Mannequin: website | myspace | @ midland theatre | @ sokol underground | interview with pt. 1 | interview with pt. 2
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