Miss California & Musical Darwinism: An Interview with Andrew McMahon of Jack’s Mannequin

August 4, 2008

A few days before his enthralling performance at The Pacific Amphitheatre in O.C., Buzznet got some time to chat with Andrew McMahon about his upcoming (no more pushing the release date, plz and thx!) release, The Glass Passenger… and other insightful stuff.

It should be noted that I was not the least bit nervous. Andrew is the warmest, friendliest, most disarming person I’ve ever interviewed. He pretty much radiates positivity. ANYWAY, here are some highlights from the 13-minute interview (hey, he likes to talk, and I liked to listen — summon your attention spans and watch!)

[click image to watch the video]
We wanted to know who “Miss California” is, and why it didn’t make it onto the final LP (the track was released digitally as part of a pre-order deal). But Andrew surprised us with his answer: “Miss California is actually going to be on all versions of the record. But I’m calling it a bonus track. The story behind was really just that we’d done all these changes, we’d fixed it up but I wasn’t really psyched on it at first. I liked the song but I didn’t think we’d nailed the production… then when we went to mix the b-sides I was like oh, this song is really good. And we ended up putting it on the record as a bonus track so I didn’t mess up the sequence.”

And there’s more, babies, there’s more. He spoke candidly about experiencing other bands on Warped Tour and how that’s a ripe environment for tour-ideas to take root– but kept hush hush about what bands he buddied up with. He talked about what happened between the initial release date (April?!) and now and why it kept getting pushed. Curious as to the quirks of the other non-Andrew parts of Jack’s Mannequin? Their frontman talks about their Fight Club-esque activities. But no matter the topic, the man seems to spew invisible rays of sunshine out of every inch of his being. I think that’s called being an inspiration. Watch and learn.

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