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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
I'm Elena. And I'm Andrew.
And this is a special episode of Morbid, everybody.
It's special. We have a guest.
We do. Yay. It's 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 coming.
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?
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 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 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 and and it's been 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 i think
when you're nine it's like a whole right everything is so much easier yeah you have that whole sort of neuroplasticity or whatever and and 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 and so for me it was just like
constant discovery and and and like you said it was like it was a way to process my world you know so i just i 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.
It's like real 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 out of that.
Never. But yeah, so far so good.
Yeah. Well, you've been making music since like 1998.
Yeah. Well, I mean, since you were a kid, but officially.
Yeah. So Something Corporate, which was my official second high school band.
And we – throughout my like junior, senior of high school kind of continued to get bigger.
And I sort of skipped college and focused on that.
And miraculously we got signed when I was 18.
That's incredible. And that was sort of the beginning of all of it.
So I – somebody corporate did really well and we toured a ton and put out records.
And then, you know, I've kind of hopped from like about every 10 years or so, start a new project because I am restless, I guess you could say.
And yeah, it's been a journey for sure.
And I've had good fans who are willing to follow me through multiple name changes.
Here we are. Here we are.
Yeah. Something Corporate was my thing in high school.
Really? I love that.
16 -year -old Elena. Yeah, 16 -year -old Elena was like at every show, every single show.
I think that's how we connected was because I started having fans message me on Instagram.
They're like, you got mentioned on the Morbid podcast.
So funny to think about.
The first one, I was like, oh, that's cool.
And then I saw another few roll through and I was like, who are these people?
I'm like, we should reach out to these women.
They keep talking about us.
And it seemed like they're pretty popular.
And then we met at the, what was it?
Roadrunner show. Yeah, we met at the Roadrunner show.
On something corporate reunion.
Yep. Thanks to Connor.
Yes. Shout out. Connor forever.
Connor's a good man.
He's a very good man.
Yeah. My tour manager, he's our Gen Z holding down.
Hell yeah. We like to, I like to bring young bucks into the mix and bring them up.
That's always been sort of a part of our mission.
And Connor rose the ranks from content to now he's tour managing.
Oh, that's so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a good representation of Gen Z.
He is. He is. He's the representation.
I hate the whole kids these days philosophy.
I really like it. 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.
Yeah, they are. Yeah.
Very fashionable. I'm a huge fan.
You got to meet the right Gen Zs.
You do. I'm a Zillennial, so I like - I like to say I'm a millennial because you know Gen Z gets a lot of hate what's funny is like I always rejected the fact that I was a millennial because I graduated in 2000 and we didn't have like 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 denounced this yeah I don't like this qualification or designation imagination i i worked at hollywood video oh yeah 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 -through records oh yeah i remember it and i would make
them play it just so we could have the something corporate performance that's like over and over i had many of my friends uh were blockbuster video employees and we used to go hang out at blockbuster on the weekends because they would just you know they'd smoke weed in the back yeah and like be and you
know like we're proper degenerate blockbuster employee managerial staff and and uh yes i do i miss such a good vibe yeah it's a good vibe that's one thing i wish i experienced i remember blockbuster like a little bit from being like five and six yeah beyond that no I mean the truth is the new model
is working better there oftentimes there were no videos available but but it was a it was a fun sort of uh snapshot environment yeah yeah yeah it's like a cozy vibe well going back to the music how would you say your relationship with music has kind of changed and evolved throughout all the years that you've
been doing it I mean look I think you know you're an author so you know it's like as you you start by writing because it's just like a reflex and it's, and it's this exploratory thing.
And I think that the biggest shift is that you have to continue to find ways to explore and, and make it fresh and make it exciting.
So like I've, I've changed processes over the years, right?
You know, I think when some of that, like, oh, I just have to be sitting at the piano all day.
And like, now I have a family and, uh, I spent a lot of time on the road.
So I do, you know, I, I do little tricks to sort of re -engage myself in the writing process.
I'll write with other people that I'm really excited about.
I try and always like surround myself with writers that are both older and younger than me, you know, just so I can, you know, like I love having people in the room that are still in that phase of writing where they're like hyper creative and just super hungry and it keeps me hungry.
So I think that's change.
And then what you write about changes, right?
So as you get to certain stages of life and the questions are changing about what is relevant or what's important to you.
You know, you have to find new ways in to discuss those things.
And I feel like changing projects for me is like has been a part of that, right?
So it's like something corporate was like very much about, you know, all of the things that you encounter in like high school and coming of age.
Intense emotions. Yeah.
And it's a lot of makeups and breakups.
And I think our industry, like the music business is fueled on a lot of that.
And as somebody who wants to write and perform and do this till the day I die, you know, I've had to sort of shift my thinking, you know, a lot of Jack's mannequin was, I got sick when I was in the middle of that project.
So I had cancer, and I was a cancer survivor.
I was like, how do you write about that?
You know, and, and, and then, you know, and then sort of shifting into this next phase, a lot of it's been about keeping my edge while maintaining a family and, and a life and, and, you know, how to look after my kid and those questions that come with fatherhood and trying to stay creative you know
so i i think those are are sort of uh you know big parts of how i shift and and try and stay creative i love because you can look back on every stage of your life and there's a song for it yeah or an album for it really yeah totally and i think too like i've tried really hard because a lot of my fans
have grown up with me like rather than making the mistake i think a lot of people do as they get older in their artistic processes or trying to sort of recreate their youth and still sing about those things.
And I think the challenge for me is like, how do I really talk about what's relevant to me now and put that in a pop song?
And that can be tricky.
But I think if you strike on something that's universal, it applies backwards and forwards.
And I want people who have been with me for a really long time to be like, oh, he's talking to an experience that I'm having right now because we're a similar age and going through similar things in life.
But also if I do it well, you could be 15 and pick up that record and it will land.
Most of the artists I was listening to when I was 15 were much older than I was and somehow those songs were still connecting.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's like what you just said.
People who've listened to you have grown up with you now.
So it's funny because when we went to the Something corporate concert where we met, It was funny to look around and see, like, I was like, oh, it's just like a bunch of moms and dads being, like, transporting back into, like, something corporate days.
Yeah. But it's fun because it's, like, we've been able to relate to you and the music the entire way through.
And you can feel, like, the shifts, but they're so smooth because, like, you're going, like, we're going into that phase.
So we're going to go in there together.
Yeah. So it's just been really nice.
Like, even, like, last night we were talking about Bluey.
And I was like, well, we're just parents now together.
You know, I think it's, it's like a task, but I think it's a worthy one.
And I'm like, I'm, 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 age 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, 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 life trajectories and and um 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 thanks I try really hard and it
circles 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 all I started listening to you when I was like six yeah and then because I was like You're listening.
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 R .E .M.
when I was, you know, when I was in the seventh grade or whatever.
And, you know, and I became a huge Tom Petty fan.
And like going to those shows, seeing the young people that were picking up, you know, heartbreakers to me, to 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. You're doing it.
my youngest is obsessed with happy I love that she was like wait a second he sings happy and she's five so you're hitting all ranges that's the deal yeah 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 put out the first Something Corporate record, and 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 it 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 it was like the first time I was living in Jordan Pundit from Newfound Glory.
I was living in his guest room, you know, and it was sort of the first time I 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 this sort of piano figure that plays under the verses of that song, which I was like, this is so cool.
Like, 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.
You're like, this is different.
Yeah, you're 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.
Missing out on a show that everyone is talking about just simply is not an option for me.
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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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