Weirdos! Today we've got a special guest -Andrew McMahon of 'Something Corporate', 'Jack's Mannequin', and 'Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness'. In addition to heating about his journey as an artist, Alaina dives into some dark history and tells us about dancing plagues and other instances of hysteria. Want to check out Andrew's music, or purchase merch or tour tickets? Visit https://andrewmcmahon.com/ Don't forget to check out the 'Dear Jack Foundation' which provides impactful programs benefiting adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer and their families. For more information visit the foundation's website at https://www.dearjackfoundation.org/ .See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of this episode with Andrew McMahon?
And this is a special episode of Morbid Everybody. It's special. We have a guest. We do. Yay. Andrew McMahon on the show. You might know him from one of his several bands. We've got Something Corporate, Jack's Mannequin, or Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness.
That's me. Welcome. Yeah, I'm glad to be here.
You're all of those.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course. Thanks for being in the studio.
It's like such a cool place to be. I'm honored.
So are we. So getting into the questions, I did read that you are somewhat of a child prodigy when it came to the piano. What drew you to the piano so young?
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Chapter 2: How did Andrew McMahon start his music career?
I mean, it's going to get heavy really quick. We had like a loss in our family. My uncle passed away. And right around that same time, I had a friend's dad teach me how to play a Jerry Lee Lewis song on the piano. And I'd never, I mean, I had piano lessons a little bit as a kid, but... I took the chord that he taught me and all of a sudden just started writing songs.
And that was kind of how I processed my grief from losing my uncle. And that was it for me. I was like, this is the thing. You know, like writing songs became my whole, like I would come home from school and I would just sit at the piano until I was told I had to go to sleep or do something for school or whatever. I love that. And it's been that way ever since.
That's when you know it's meant to be.
When it's something that like heals a part, you know? Yeah, exactly. I just started trying to learn. I got like a keyboard. It's hard.
Yeah, I mean, I think when you're nine, it's like a whole other... Everything is so much easier. Yeah, you have that whole sort of neuroplasticity or whatever. And I really liked it, right? So it wasn't like... I didn't start going to piano lessons until like maybe a year or two after that. And so for me, it was just like constant discovery.
And like you said, it was a way to process my world, you know? So I just... I think I blew past the it's hard part until I got into like having to study classical music. And then it was like, this sucks. Yeah, this is hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wasn't a great student, but I sort of did what I had to to learn how to navigate the piano and read and do all that stuff.
But it was always just like a safe haven for me.
And it worked out. Yeah, I think. Yeah, we're all thankful for that.
It's been the only real job I've had to have my whole life, which is a really huge gift. I mean, I'm always wondering when the bottom will drop. But yeah, so far so good.
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Chapter 3: What influences Andrew McMahon's songwriting?
He is. He is. He's the representation. I hate the whole kids these days philosophy. I know. To me, I feel like it's such a sign of you're not actually paying attention. And I've had my whole perception of the Gen Z universe reshaped by Connor and his people and people we've brought into our camp. I love that. These guys are actually hard workers and super fun and very fashionable. They are. Yeah.
Very fashionable. I'm a huge fan.
You got to meet the right Gen Zs. I'm a zillennial, so I like- She's on the cusp. I like to say I'm a millennial because Gen Z gets a lot of hate.
What's funny is I always rejected the fact that I was a millennial because I graduated in 2000 and we didn't have a qualification. We were just sort of in this nether group between Gen X and whatever was coming next. And then I think By the time I was 30, then they started calling us millennials. And I was like, I denounce this. Yeah, I don't like this qualification or designation.
I worked at Hollywood Video in high school, like RIP video stores. Guys, that's where you could rent movies. That was where you could rent VHS tapes and also DVDs.
Yeah.
My favorite job ever. And I used to make, like we would be able to pick what could be on the screen. Yeah. And I would make everybody play this one DVD. And it was like Drive Thru Records. Oh, yeah. I remember it well. And I would make them play it just so we could have the something corporate performance.
That's amazing. I love that.
Like over and over.
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Chapter 4: Why did Andrew McMahon write 'Me and the Moon'?
And I was like, wow, we're just parents now together. Like, that's wild.
You know, I think it's like a task, but I think it's a worthy one. And I'm like, I'm super reverent of the fact that there are people who I've been seeing at shows since they were, you know, high school, middle-aged kids coming out to see me. When I was not much older than them, I was 18 or 19, but it felt like a world apart, right?
When you're sort of like grown and then you have like a kid in the audience. Now, you know, now we're sort of orbiting the same world. Life trajectories and I really like – I want to make music for those people who have been in those rooms and I want them to have songs that they can connect to at this stage of wherever they're at. You're killing it. No, thank you. I try really hard.
And it darkens down because there was like three generations of us at that show because it was – Elena, me, and my little cousin. So it's like, I started listening to you when I was like six.
Yeah.
And then still do. Because I was like, you're listening. And my cousin's like three, singing like I woke up in a car. So it does trickle down.
Yeah, well, like the shows I went to when I was, you know, the first shows I was going to, a lot of them were bands, my brothers and sisters, three of them are 10, 12 years older than I am. And, you know, I went to see REM when I was, you know, when I was in the seventh grade or whatever. I love that.
You know, and I became a huge Tom Petty fan and like going to those shows, seeing the young people that are picking, were picking up, you know, heartbreakers to me, to my people, my brothers and sisters ages and older, you know, in a dream world, that's really what you want. You want to see people across generations connecting to what you do.
And that's sort of the fight I'm in every day is just to sort of make sure that, you know, it spreads to as many people across generations as possible. It works. It does.
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Chapter 5: What are dancing plagues and their historical context?
Well, finally to transition us into like our world of morbid and macabre. You have a song with your band, something corporate called Me and the Moon. Yes. It's a little more eerie and haunting. It's like not the typical style for you. So tell us a little bit about where the idea for that song came from, like how it came to be.
We'll say like when we put out the first Something Corporate record, I think a lot of that music was really reflective of sort of our high school, post high school journey, because a lot of those songs were written in that time. And that was sort of the first record we went out and toured the world with and got noticed for.
And then, you know, by that point that I was coming back to write those songs for North, I was just in a much different headspace. And it was like, I wanted to do something moodier and And it was like the first time I was living in Jordan Pundick from Newfound Glory. I was living in his guest room, you know, and it was sort of the first time I'd lived away from my parents.
And so I had all this freedom just to sit in a room and write all day. And I mean, I would be lying to say I wasn't like smoking a ton of weed at that point and just playing the piano and just trying to find new chords and new chord shapes and progressions. And I got to the sort of piano figure that plays under the verses of that song, which I was like, this is so cool.
It felt like something really new for me. And the first words that showed up were, it's a good year for a murder. That's so good.
It's such a good opening line.
I remember even in that moment being like, oh, this is going to land pretty interesting. Like this is different. Yeah, I'm like punk rock princess to let's talk about murder, you know. But I was just in love with it. And it sort of wrote itself, like the verses wrote itself. And it became about this sort of idea of like a suburban mother finally reaching her breaking point with her husband. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How did hysteria manifest in nunneries historically?
Just started dancing and carrying on with wild abandon. And the noise from these dancers made it impossible for the priest to deliver mass. So he went outside and he started to reprimand the group. And they were just seeming completely oblivious to him. Like it wasn't like they were ignoring him. They just like didn't even know he was there. Just kept going.
And rather than heed the priest's words, which at that time people would heed that priest's words. Yeah, you had to. They just continued dancing and clapping and leaping. And they were forming what would later be documented to be called a ring dance of sin. Oh, obsessed. Which I kind of love.
I want in. Right?
Where do I sign up for the ring dance of sin? So according to the legend, the priest, who was very angry, very incensed about the interruption and disrespect, quite frankly, cursed them all to dance for the entire year, and none of them were able to regain control of their bodies until the following Christmas. What? Wait, the priest did this? Which I didn't realize priests could curse people.
So he insisted that they keep going because they had even started.
He was like, oh, you want to dance? You're going to dance until next Christmas. Yeah. Wow. And they did. And by the time the curse was ended, the group was exhausted and reportedly fell into a deep sleep. And a lot of them never woke up from that deep sleep. So they died. So he just straight up killed some of them.
Can I ask practical questions about food and bathroom?
None of that. In fact, many of these dancing plagues, food, bathroom breaks, sleep, don't happen. They just dance through it, and that's how most of them die. There's deaths that come out of these. Are they just peeing all over themselves?
Probably.
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