Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum - EP 28: Andrew McMahon

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Andrew McMahon (AMITW, Jack's Mannequin, Something Corporate) discusses his writing philosophies, how influential Billy Joel’s music has been to him, and the profound impact his uncle’s passing had on his life. Andrew opens up about getting diagnosed with Leukemia, the moment his doctor called him and gave him the news, and how reckless he became with his body once he got better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah. How's the kid, little Calvin? He's fantastic. Changing his underpants a lot. He's still wears a diaper. Got a great guest here. You introduce me to this guy. Yep.

Andrew McMahon. Yeah. He's got a new album, upside down flowers. When does that come out? That's coming out November 16th, I think they just announced. Yeah, one of the best stories ever, really. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a great story. It's inspirational.

You'll hear all about it, how he, was playing his heart out and just at the height of his career really. He was just really starting out and having some success and then his health just deteriorated. And he tells that story and it's a remarkable story and you'll hear it from him. He plays a song. This is the first time we've had someone sing on the show, which is, it sounds really good. And you filmed it. You could probably post that somewhere, right?

Yeah, we'll have that posted. They probably will have already seen it. Inside of you is brought to you by policy genius. Roberto? You have insurance who talked about this? I do have insurance, but not life insurance. I don't even know where to go. Here's the question.

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Inside of You, Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum. and was not recorded in front of a live studio audience. I mean, you have to like listening to yourself as a musician, don't you? You know, the craft of it over the years for me has been defined a way to like myself. Like listening to myself, if that makes sense. It sort of makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I think when you start doing anything, when you write songs in your garage as a, like, as a kid, you're not really hearing yourself back, you know? And so for the early days of writing, you know, writing music as like a teenager and then getting signed to record label as a teenager and then hearing my voice back for the first time in like a professional sense, you know, it's shocking at first and then...

Are you very critical, just as extremely critical as you can be? I don't like that. Can you auto tune me? Not really in that respect. I think I've found over time that the best recordings are when you don't overdo that. stuff and when you actually, you know, do a few really good takes and then cut up those takes into the, into the song. But, um, but certainly like over years of being on stage and years of being in a studio, you, you figure out how to sing. You know, you teach you, you, it's different than just singing, you know, uh, at first. It's, it becomes a thing of like, okay, well, this is, this is actually my instrument as a recorded device. I'm sure it's the same with like

acting you know you act in theater when you're growing up or whatever and then somebody puts a camera on you and you go oh that's what i look like when i do this like and that's why you take an acting for the camera class of college yeah well yeah luckily i'm not you don't you don't want to see me act but uh i don't know you got a lot of energy you're enthusiastic you're passionate isn't that what it takes to be an artist in general i think so yeah i mean i i think that you have to I mean, you have to be enthusiastic and you have to have energy because you've got a fight to do what we do for a living. Andrew McMahon, thank you for allowing me to be inside of you today. Get on in there, brother.

This is a real treat. By the way, it's like Freddie Kruger's down here. You hear the boiler room? It's the, I don't know what it is. It's the pipes down here in the basement. I didn't even notice. You didn't even notice? That's my tinnitus.

No, I'm just kidding. I have ADD, so I notice everything. Yeah, that's good. That's good. This is also your thing. so you know when it you know when it sounds different yeah it's fine it's just like you know uh nese is here today helping out and uh you know the washing machine's going where where did you drive from i came from uh deep south orange county so like right on the border of san diego and

orange county i'm i'm taking you had other meetings planned today i haven't just coming to see me i have one other meeting just one other meeting is an important meeting i mean i guess it could be i you know i'm i'm i know long i'm publisher free now so I'm sort of doing the rounds of publisher free yeah what does that mean that means that you have no record label I do ever I do have a label so like the side of there's two right there's the record label and the publishing side yeah exactly I mean and for for years like in my first band something corporate I I just chose not to do a publishing deal and then with jack's mannequin uh there was this great sort of young upstart publishing company that you know gave me a bunch of dough and said we

want to help grow your career and they did so and we worked really well together and then uh over the course of our our sort of long relationship which spanned from the whole career of jack's mannequin into you know this newest chapter where i'm going under my own name andrew mcmand in the wilderness yeah yeah which is the coolest title really ever who came up with that me yeah of course why would you do something that someone else came up with that would it be stupid it's like all of my band names actually like they're not great uh and this one confused people like is it and the wilderness i'm like no it's in the wilderness it's me in the wilderness what's the wilderness mean you know yeah then we can get into that but uh but yeah long and short they that small publisher became like this huge

giant publisher and and and ended up being gobbled up and i was able to get out of my deal right before that happened so i may do a publishing deal i may just do it myself uh are they pretty lucrative i mean you know the thing about all these these contracts and, you know, major, you know, business contracts in the, in the music business, it's like, you know, you can sometimes get a good chunk of money up front, but you end up making less effectively, you know, look, you know, if somebody gives me a huge bag of money that I wouldn't be able to make, you know, for five or six years, then maybe it's worth having it because you could go do things with it, but, but you end up basically paying that

money back out of a smaller chunk that you own less of, you know, so. make your money really touring that's what people do they have the tour to make money yeah touring and and the and the music you know i sort of shifted i i have been on major labels my whole life so like you know when something corporate you know we were coming out of high school and and drive through records was like an independent label out of sherman oaks here approached us but i was we were already like in this development deal with a major label at the time and and so we sort of leveraged that opportunity to get a major label deal once I kind of got and then same thing happened with Jack's Manick and eventually it was like I didn't want to be on these major labels anymore because you end up having these flag pulls you have to run up for every decision or people have you know 10 different people have opinions you didn't feel artistic like I have no control over this well you know it's like I did I always would I always make the music in a in a bubble for the most part I always try to really insulate the creative process but then you finish the record and everybody has something to say and that becomes really tough to manage especially when sometimes people say things just so that's the that they can feel important, you know, or feel like they had a hand in it. And not to take

anything away from the people I worked with, but the bureaucracy and the, and the, the, the sort of system of the big record company just felt cumbersome to me. And, uh, and so, yeah, hysterically, I left and signed an indie deal with, with Andrew McMahon in the wilderness. And we make records really affordably. And how much is a record cost? I mean, I've made records that have cost as much as three, four hundred thousand dollars. you know um and these records that i'm making now cost a lot less because we're just way more efficient like how much like how much uh you know a budget for for these last few records will be somewhere between like 60 grand and 100 grand which is still a lot of money yeah it's it's i mean it's a chunk

of money but you know you have they have to sound great and you know what you're doing it's all about the producer it's all about the production the studio where you're going where you feel comfortable the songs totally it's all about that and i've been fortunate that it's like though we're making records for less money you know the caliber of people that i'm working with because i have a really amazing management team uh you know that hasn't suffered as all at all going to the independent labels and and um you know when you make records affordably even though people don't always make it up front which is sort of was the model of the major labels it was like these you know the producer would be like well my fee is a hundred thousand dollars you know what

before you even walk in the door. And I've been lucky to get a lot of these great producers willing to work, you know, for these lower budgets, knowing that if we have a home run and we have a big hit, which we've been... Incentive. Yeah, and I've been blessed on these last couple of records to have a couple of really big songs that, you know, that you make your money on the back end and it tends to flow a little bit more freely because you're not spending so much to get there. I just started playing music. I mean, I've been playing music my whole life, but just I never had the voice that you have.

So I acted and I wrote and I directed and I just, I'd like to sing. I love music more than anything. I was like, God, I wish I was a rock star. If I had Adam Lambert's voice, boy, I would be somewhere or your voice. And so we started playing music and in my basement. And I started right here in this very space. I see some, I see some drums here here. Camp plays the drums and all old friends have known each other for many years.

And we just said, you know, Carl never played the bass. So, gee, what's a G? What's a G? What's an A? It's like a year and a half ago. And he was playing, Kent was playing drums. And my friend was singing back up. I go, I don't sing, but I sang because no one else would sing. And Rob would play guitar. And we just started doing this.

And then a year and a half later, we're like, we played a couple songs at the Trubidor, opening up for my friend's band. We went to like, I was like, I mean, it's like pipe dreams. It's like bucketless shit. And then we recorded an album. We just started recording an album. So I had the first experience in a recording studio. I was so nervous.

It was like, as an actor, imagine you going on stage as an actor or whatever. Oh, it would be terrified. And that's how I felt. So I'm like, I'm not training. I'm not really a great singer, but these are my songs. They feel so vulnerable. And we recorded like seven or eight songs like in three days. It's amazing.

And it was crazy in the experience and talk about budget. I think the budget was $6,000. Yeah. But he worked on, the producer worked on incentives sort of like, hey, you know, hopefully we'll get placement. Yeah. You know. Totally.

So it's a different beast. But like I always think, wow, man, if we had the money, if we had the time, if we had the musical ability. Yeah, yeah. So listen, Andrew, I'm going to be honest. with you i haven't had a lot of musicians on the show i'm mostly because i'm friends with people from the 80s yeah debby gipson uh why would you not have debby gipson i'm gonna have her on she's she's amazing she's gonna come on i'm gonna have like uh uh uh this is just a lot of 80s maybe air supply bitching

bitch and yeah russell hitchcock's a buddy of mine and i'm like you know i'm kind of so i didn't really know your music mostly because i don't listen to anything past 97 okay okay now i'm uh i call it ignorance because there's a lot of great music and I do listen to some music so Rob here 29 year old beautiful Rob with a child he's a child

I think I think I knew that and congratulations but he was talking about you and I was like oh yeah well I don't and I started listening to your shit yeah not your shit your music it's okay music's not shit it's fine but I really started to like it and the first thing I thought

well then I watched you the documentary then I fell in love with you that's why I'm sitting so close to you yeah I'm glad we're here together dear jack and i was like this story if if anything it's so important i just think for everybody to watch not just because you had leukemia and you documented it but it's it's sort of a love story not only with music and your and your girlfriend who's now your wife you're still married right yeah yeah yeah no no yeah we're going strong and your sister and your mother and your love for your uncle that

passed many moons ago and who you always who's an inspiration to you but it's just like a life story that i just caught me off guard my assistant looks over me and goes are you crying i'm like yeah fuck you watch this it's a tough one yeah it's a tough one and i just see you go through these emotions of like hey i'm on camera i'm documenting and then you there's a there's a level of where you just you the camera's not there almost it's like you're just this is life and i'm i'm not well and this is real and I'm not trying to be funny or whatever it's just and it just made me uh it was emotional uh it was a journey it was inspirational so thank you for that yeah thanks for watching man yeah i watched it i watched that whole thing and it was easy to watch it was you know it was just uh

it was great yeah the guys who did it were were awesome it was definitely it was a painful process to get that that that sort of that documentary out into the world because they and it took a few years because it was really hard for me to watch, as you can imagine, you know, and, you know, I think, but it's, it's something that I'm really, really proud of. It's been a long time since I've seen it because there was a point where I was sort of forced to watch it and screenings and when it premiered and things like that. It just brings you back there, doesn't it? Yeah, well, especially at the time that we released, it was really only maybe three years after, you know, the whole, or, you know, the whole, or. deal took place and how old were you i was 22 when i was diagnosed um and you know it says it in the documentary but for your listeners like the the thing for me was like i had just had this you know

i had this sort of like weird affair with my video camera you know because i i didn't i didn't have my girlfriend at the time we were broken up and all these things and and and and so my like pal that traveled with me through this uh sort of period of exploration which was you know a breakup at at 21 or 22 and finishing your album and well and also like leaving something corporate which would have been a really successful band and saying I'm going to do something else which uh you know the the the hubris of youth leads you to believe that you can do anything which is how I felt at that point I was like oh fuck it I'll blow up my band and and start a new one and um and so the camera had become my sidekick in that journey of of growth and developing this new project and

being out on my own and single for for the first time since you know a high school or whatever and and uh and yeah at the point that i got sick it was like that camera was there and that's why it became this documentary i didn't aim to shoot a documentary it wasn't like it just happened to be like you were you were this was your friend then you need to know as a guy who's always been weird about the the the sort of contemporary culture of sort of always having a camera on yourself and and and having to expose every moment down to like Like what you cooked for dinner, I was hysterically sort of early in this sort of video blog concept. You know, I like, I was doing that when it wasn't a thing.

And that's kind of how this documentary ended up coming to be was that I've been filming all these things. But yeah, when it came out, I was still, the wound was still pretty fresh. And seeing it, for the first time, I remember I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I was sick again because it had just, it had just, you know, expanded all of these. the synapses that remind you of what you went through just that you're and that probably could be unhealthy to go back to those thoughts no yeah i mean i think there was a lot of stuff that i did in the aftermath of being sick that was super unhealthy and and in some ways i think the documentary helped me process the experience but it was uh it was definitely a tough thing to be constantly reminded of what that looked like well it was the you hinted at that you kind of threw that away where it was like you did some unhealthy things post sickness oh i was just you know i i i reckless super reckless yeah I mean I I mean in the time that I mean you can see some of the indicators in the in the in the footage of me making that record but I mean I was I was like high all day and I was you know I was I was doing I was doing everything you know I mean we yeah we don't have to get into it I'm good I certainly had my my hand in just about every cookie jar at the point that I found myself sick you know to the point where when I thought when I found out I was like I actually thought it had something to do with Oh, so you're talking reckless, like, before you got sick?

I was reckless before, but when I got better. Once you got healthy, you got reckless again. Times two. So, so, you know, times, you know, times, 10. Do you think that has to do with the psychology of it's going to happen again? I have this in my body. Something's going to happen. I feel like I'm not whole.

Is there some kind of psychology to that? Like, you get, like, so down on yourself that I'm not this healthy young kid anymore. I have this that's going to come back. Why not? Who cares? Let's just go live life and go extreme, the road to excess. least the Palace of Wisdom, short of shit. I mean, that's, in a nutshell, I think the psychology of survivorship, especially at a young

age, is, you know, is finally being documented in some form, but is a very precarious sort of mind field of a million different emotions that you're not usually faced with the 22, you know, the concept of mortality and, you know, these concepts of confidence, you know, usually at a at a young age, especially when you're successful, you, you, you have that confidence to, to, to, to pursue whatever, you know, whatever ends necessary to continue being successful. And the energy. And you have the, and you have the, and you have the, and so all of a sudden have a lot of those things slip away. Um, I think there was an, you know, an era where partying was really fun. And, and when I got back on my feet, it, it felt fun for a while, but then it became pretty evident that it was a, you know, a, a, you know, a

mask to sort of communicate to the world that I was okay and that I was so okay that I could do with this body what I chose. Was there anybody in your family or friends that just said, Andrew, we just watched you almost die for all this time and we were there for you. Like, don't do this to us kind of thing or don't do this to yourself, sort of conversations with important people in your life? Um, you know, I'd like to say yes, but I think everybody was, I think everybody was so glad I was okay. Yeah. And I think in a weird way, what you don't realize about illness is that the people around you in a lot of ways get sick with you, you know, and in so many other ways, they don't, they don't actually have the agency over the body that's ill in the same

way. So for me, you know, I knew what my body was going through. And I, you know, to some extent. And I, I felt within my power in a lot of ways to meditate and push my way through that. When you're on the outside, you're watching this happen to somebody that you love. And so there's a fear of saying too much or saying too little. And so I think there was a tendency, especially in the intervening years of my early survivorship, where I was also such a time bomb, you know, and I was really fragile. and I and and the littlest thing could could freak me out or trip me up or take me off the end of my creativity or whatever it was that a lot of people really uh I think went along with me

rather than than tried to get in my way for any number of a million reasons other than my wife you know and and even she I think it wasn't until you know about four five years in where she finally was like you're a wreck it's not fun to be with you and you're going to going to need to start looking inward if we're going to like have a relationship it was probably about if you figure i got sick in o five it was probably some time around 2000 you know some of those conversation started between o nine and eleven and eleven was kind of the the the straw that broke the camel's back where she's like time for a shrink and i was like all right here we go let's see well now we're getting into the show aren't we rob now i mean i i don't i hopefully this isn't a

comedy show because apparently I'm not going to be very funny no no that's not what this show's about it all in fact this show is sort of evolved into therapy for me therapy for the guest therapy for people out there who are like you know a lot of times celebrities musicians we athletes they seem sort of intangible and they sort of seem like they just you just can't connect with them and like I think what this show does is you know if you don't look there's some people who have no problems I had a great childhood I had this I had this I didn't have the leukemia right and that that's It's fine. It's just honesty. And I think people could just respect that. And I do. And I think

I've become more and more honest to the point where my father are. He's like, where an episode show? I listen to him. Like, none of them. I talk about you and you probably don't want to hear some of it. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough territory. It's tough territory. And so, yeah, it's not about being funny. I mean, there's a lot

of people that aren't funny on the show. Rob, for instance. He looks very serious. I respect that. And I respect that. Inside of you is brought to you by Rocket Money. I'm going to speak to you about something that's going to help you save money, period. It's Rocket Money. It's a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. This is just a wonderful app. There's a lot of apps out there that really, you know, you have to do this and pay for and that. But with Rocket Money, it's, they're saving you money. You're getting this app to save money. I don't know. how many times that I've had these unwanted subscriptions that I thought I canceled or I forgot to, you know, the free trial ran at Ryan. I know you did it. That's why you got rocket money. I did, yeah. And I also talked to a financial advisor recently and I said, I had rocket money

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Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince. Go to quince.com slash inside of you for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash inside of you. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash inside of you. Take me back to the time in your life where, you know, because in the documentary you talked about it briefly, but how important you're like your uncle was and your child. I want to know your childhood.

Were you sort of like a child that just did you have a lot of energy? Did you always get a lot of attention? Did you need that? Or were you one of those kids and goes to the bedroom and just kind of draws and writes? I mean, I was a weird sort of mix of both. But I think most people would say I was a really outgoing and, you know, an energetic kid. But I was also really awkward in the sense that I was, you know, I was, you know, from the ages of about seven to 15, I was pretty overweight. and and not much of an athlete in a world where, like, that's usually what defines kids is what they're into, you know.

Competitiveness and like, uh, totally. And I was the youngest of five kids. So I think that's where a lot of my, my sort of like, you know, my parents took me to a doctor when I was probably three or four because they thought I was deaf because I spoke so loud, you know, and, and, and, and, and, you know, like, Rob, see, someone can relate. You know, so, so I wasn't deaf, it turns out. I would just, was in a house full of people that I felt the need to scream over the top of, you know. That's how I always feel. Yeah. So, so, so, no, I mean, as a kid, I think up until the time that I picked up the piano, like all kids, you're looking for your thing. And, and certainly, like the passing of my uncle was, was sort of this, this, you know, most. moment in my life where things shifted and I found my thing, which was writing and

writing songs and poetry and things like that, which are very, you know, as a, you know, as a nine year old, these are not, you don't have like the local nine year old poets that get together or anything. They're playing basketball. So I think there was always a sense for me that I was somewhat on the outside, but not in a way that I don't, I don't think I ever felt alienated. I I always found a way to make friends and, and I was always kind of, I joked, I was always kind of political in a sense. When you're, when you're fat kid, you're terrified that somebody's going to call you fat, you know, like that is a, that's a real thing. And so I lived with that, but I also was so, I think, insecure and wanted people to like me that through my

music, I found this vehicle where it's like, well, I can be the fat kid that plays music and maybe people will at least pay attention to me having this this uh uh you know sort of talent that they don't have and and maybe that's how i fit in you know and and so music was my my way in the circles of of you know weird clicks throughout you know elementary middle school and high school and and uh and help me manage i think my awkwardness and also talk about it in a way that was therapeutic and and and you know didn't mark me with i think that the scar of what it can be to, you know, to look different and feel different. What were you writing? Like, what were some of the lyrics as, like, a little boy, like, where you were just, uh, I was listening to Save by Zero by the Fix in my parents' Attic alone over and over. And it wasn't until 20 years later where I realized the song meant saved by Zero means when you're saved by zero. You're essentially saved by the ground by zero. You can't go any lower than zero. So I'm like, God, I was really fucked up. Yeah. I mean, what were you listening to? I mean, for me early.

I was playing piano right at the age that, like, grunge was taking hold, you know? And so I, I was kind of digging into my, my brothers and sisters' records and what they were into, which was, like, you two and REM and the police. And obviously, like, lots of Billy Joel and Elton John and Bruce Hornsby because I was a piano player. Like, those were the, those were the records that were big for me. I loved Pearl Jam, though. And, you know, there was a lot of stuff out of that, that grunge era. that clicked with me. What's your favorite Pearl Jam song?

I just want to know. Oh, gosh. I mean, I wouldn't, I don't like it. You know, it was like, I bought 10. 10 was like the Pearl Jam record that I, you know, it's like, I'll embarrass myself with Pearl Jam trivia because I was about, you know, 10 when I got into Pearl Jam. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, but the records that really connected with me out of that era and the stuff that started informing my writing as I got deeper into being a songwriter were,

um, you know, was like the counting crows. And, like, definitely, REM was really huge for me. That was, like, the second show I ever saw was REM, you know. I never got to see them. Oh, God, it was. Well, maybe they'll come back. It was magic. You know, I still, to this day, go back to those records.

And I'm just like, you know, those were guys that did something different. They always sounded different than everybody else. And I have a lot of respect for bands like that. But, yeah, I mean, I was into the doors and Hendricks. And a lot of classic rock, my brothers and sisters, you know, toured with the dead in the summer and with fish in the summer when they were out of college. And so they'd always bring me back, you know, Grateful Dead albums and Fish and stuff like that.

So, you know, those bands, Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker, Simon and Garfunkel, it was always kind of a mashup of classic rock and then what I think ultimately has become the classic rock of, you know, that generation. So you wouldn't see someone like Friday night for my birthday. I brought 50 friends to see Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, and Michael McDonald.

Oh, I totally go see that. I've met Kenny before. he's lovely and and uh and so sickly talented and even though we ain't got money oh god yeah yeah yeah i what a what a what a what a jam but uh but yeah so i i mean i always just leaned towards uh anything with a with a with a great melody and a really well written lyric like that has always been what i when i when i find new music and when i when i go to lean on the stuff that that uh you know that that shaped me that's funny because like right before you can't over. I go, you know, I just been listening to his music. And he kind of reminds me of like,

I don't know, like, there's a Billy Joel thing there. I don't know, like the songwriting, she's like, well, yeah, he played with Billy Joel. I'm like, what? Yeah, you're open for Billy Joel. And I'm like, and then you just talked about Billy Joan. I'm like, but it's present. It's there. It's the way, it's the songwriting. It's the, it's the way you sing it, too. It's like there's obviously that influence there. Totally. I mean, he was, for all, uh, intents and purposes my Bible as a as a songwriter when I was it when I was just starting um I think like anything you know your influences uh you develop them over time and you find new music that you're fired up on and and I certainly do but there's a thing that happens with the first

handful of bands that really move you especially when you're in these sort of critical formative moments of your craft that will be there forever you know for me like that's you know you know pet sounds was like massive for me you know ben folds five first couple records were just like they were game change oh god day after what i mean yeah yeah i think those those things really uh those things really inform your perspective for your whole life and and certainly going out and playing with billy joel last year and doing a handful of shows with him, even in this newest record, it reignited a thing for me where it was like, there's something magical about, I think, what he did as a songwriter that not a lot of people have successfully navigated, which is, well, telling stories, also

sonically telling stories, you know, a lot of those records were produced by Phil Ramon, but even into the, into the Khorchmar Records, like, with a, like, River of Dreams or whatever song to song when you listen to a billy joel record while there may be this thread of of time there are all of these different scenes within an album of his that i think are just like it's it's so rare for an artist's voice to be able to inhabit so many spaces successfully um and and you know there are people who will say well like that was you know that wasn't cool that was that you know whatever but but he did it so well i mean And, you know, doing a song that sounds like Motown to a song that sounds like Disco, you know, yeah. Zanzibar.

She's always a woman. Yeah, steely Dan, like down to, like down to early Beatles. Like, there's something magical, I think, that Billy Joel did in channeling his influences that always really impressed me and then sort of reimpressed me. Not that that's a word, but made a second. I make up a lot of words, bro. Yeah, but made a second really strong impression on me watching him perform his catalog. in, you know, in these baseball stadiums. Did you play those songs at all?

Can you play Billy Joel songs? I, you know, it doesn't seem like a coverer person to me. I'm just not. It's so funny because I just, I don't get like you're like, oh yeah, you guys want to hear Allen Town? Not only that, but like that, even when people are like, can you play this song of yours? Like if, chances are, no, if I haven't been performing it in the past six months. Like I, you know, I, you know, why did you even set this piano up here, Rob?

I mean, it's so funny because I actually saw it and I remember Rob saying that maybe there would be a keyboard here and I'm just like... Don't feel pressure. I don't even know what I'll play. So you don't play covers at all. I mean, I do. Could you play by ear? Because I know you play it by ear.

That's kind of your thing, right? You could just... I mean, I know how to read, but I mean, poorly. But I mean, I know the shorthand of... Could you play New York State of Mind just off your, in your head? No. Probably couldn't do that. No, I mean, I could sit down and learn it, but I'm not going to sit down here and play it.

And all of a sudden, magically perform New York State of Mind for you. There's some people that do that. Especially because there's like six, verses in that song but is there i mean probably i mean most of his songs do which is the best part so you were you were overweight as a child back to that you almost died when your mother gave birth all right right well yeah i i i you weren't breathing yeah i mean i think like a lot of things that that my you know all these things become lore and and and so yes so the the story goes that that i was born really unwell. But it was also, I think, one of those things where I was going to be fine,

but there was a chance of, you know, having one of two strep infections or something when I was born. And if it was the other one, I would have died. But because it was not that one, I was intended to live. So, but as my parents will tell the story, like, you almost died. I don't know if I almost died. I think maybe I, maybe there was a fear that I almost could have died. Of course, and of course, as a parent holding your kid, knowing that there's a, you know, a 50-50 shot that you have this infection. Yeah, in their minds, yeah, I was, I was, you know, uh, yeah, of course. And I, I can understand that as a parent. But I, you know, I try and demystify some of these things because I don't know for sure that

that's the case. Right. Yeah. But it's cool to kind of make, yeah, it's storytelling. Look, there's, there's no question. There were a handful of occasions where I was very close to not living in my early years, and I'm glad that those turned out the other way. Yeah, or went deaf.

Yeah. he's just loud just loud uh so you know when your uncle passed away we don't have to talk about this that much but he was a great musician right no he was actually my uncle was a remarkable man and a very complicated person but he was an entrepreneur from the time he was in high school he was he started a magazine that he he edited out of you know my grandparents garage um that became uh at the time was called industry magazine i believe and it became this like very powerful magazine within some industry yet like I again I don't know that this is 100% true but he I believe had a hand in the waterbed craze like the 70s and the 80s like where he published

I think the magazine where these things were sold and and and that was like a you know that was how he made I think his his first big sort of sex in a waterbed I'm not going to answer that question with yes because it wasn't your wife no no my in high school my best friend had a water bed what was his name ted his name was adam and i would be lying to say i i never had sex in a water bed but i i you know it was a place that that that when you had a girlfriend uh you would you know us and you know our friends maybe took some strange joy in seeing what the waterbed was like when, you know, hanging out with your lady.

It was fun. I only did it once, Rob. You weren't around with water beds. I found it to be very... Uncomfortable. What's going on here? There's nothing to press against, you know? And you have no leverage.

There's no leverage point. You know what it is? It's the lamest sex ever. You want to do some slow, curvy, wavy, lovemaking? Get a waterbed. I mean, look, yeah. It was more of a, you know, more of an embellished makeout session, I would say. But it was, it was.

We get it. We get it. You didn't have sex. If anybody's listening. But, yeah, I mean, Adam, I think he knows that we, we used his, his waterbed in this way. I can't imagine he thought we were doing anything else in his room. Can you make sure we tweet that? Adam, just so you know, there was some making out on the waterbed.

Yeah, those stains. Well, Jesus, now you're getting dirty. Oh, my God, that water bed. I'll tell you, though, because we used to just, that was where we would. you know, in high school, you'd get like a 12 pack of like bush, uh, bush, uh, bush light or Keystone ice or whatever horrible beer you can get that was ratcheted up in alcohol percentage. And under Adams waterbed, there was this thing we called the coffin because there, there was, as, you know, the structure of a waterbed needs to have space underneath, uh, to allow for the

motion of the, you know, so this one was set really high. And so there was this big, empty space under the entirety of his waterbed. So we would drink all of these beers, right? Right. And then we put him in a trash bag because we didn't want to walk past his parents. And just put him under the bed? So for like all of high school, we were just shoving empty beer cans and trash bags under his bed. I mean, yeah, but not any worse than a 16 year old boy does.

You know what I mean? Right. And I think it was at some point his mother, after he had like even moved. out of the house his mother like was cleaning the room and just found just garbage bags full of like the worst beer that you could find and a couple of andrew mcmans condoms no no i know you didn't have sex an embellished makeout session umbelished makeout i don't know where we're going with this we were talking about my we're talking about my uncle so yeah water beds yeah beautiful that was a conversation about it so his kind of claim to fame was that at at a point when he

was really young and fairly unseasoned as an entrepreneur, Jane Fonda put out this workout book that was like this popular, became this popular book for aerobics before, like before aerobics was this huge trend. And my uncle pitched her on this idea, well, I want to shoot a video of you doing your workout. And, you know, there's new things called VCRs. And I really think that people are going to buy these tapes and they'll work out in their living room with their VCRs. You know, that was my uncle's Your uncle thought that. That was his concept. And he went to Jane

and she was impressed by his ingenuity and, and this idea. And so they made the Jane Fonda workout. And it became a phenomenon like nothing else. It was one of the things that... So he became really rich.

Oh, insanely rich. You know, and as a young kid, you know, as a, you're four, five, six years old. And I'm, you know, I'm with my dad and my cousin who's the same age and we're going on a helicopter to the Playboy Mansion. So my uncle can do a deal with Hugh Hefner to do playboy video. And, and, wait, you went to the Playboy Mansion. Not only I go to the Playboy Mansion at the age of like five, but they wouldn't let us in. So we had like one of Hugh Hefner's handlers and my dad kind of like hanging out with me and my cousin over by the pool. It was a

quiet day. There was no action as far as I recaller was told. But my cousin and I, being five, peed in the pool, stood outside of the Playboy Mansion pool and peed into the pool. And this is like the legend of our trip to the Playboy Mansion on my uncle's helicopter. I mean, I believe we were allowed to finish. I'm sure much worse has taken place in the pool. I think the security guard probably goes, those kids think that's bad. I was really fortunate to get to the mansion. years later and took my wife to the mansion to a party you know where we actually uh what was the party do you remember I don't remember it was a sponsor party but Heff was there

there was like a topless DJ I didn't meet half um he was it was it was really like it was towards his last couple of years um and I was with a friend who was a photographer and he shot some amazing pictures of Heff kind of in this receiving line that were so really beautiful it kind of just showed this frail dude and still in his velvet robe and just kind of the the end of this this weird era of American culture but um but yeah so that that was my uncle though he did these incredible things and um where did he live he lived in newport beach he he uh he had he had

he moved around and were you there a lot did you always experience like the the ocean and his boats did he have was he just like yeah he had a huge yacht called the oz he yeah he was he was he was really for our family and i think the reason that it was such a sort of moment for me was because our family, you know, we, we lived on the East Coast in the Midwest, mostly, you know, my dad's job, he was in retail. So we moved every couple of years, but we generally were on, you know, to the, to the east side of the Mississippi. And, and, but we spent all our summers in California, staying at my grandparents' house and, you know, and playing with my cousins at their house. And, and so my uncle was, you know, he was an icon in his own right. But to our family, he was also this. this really dynamic he's hysterical funny guy and and so smart but also you know he there were a lot of things about about the way that he maintained his empire and you know let a lot of people into his sphere that that that really kind of were his undoing ultimately and and you know when he passed from from cancer he had he had been through this really horrible thing where you know he was an

Orange County Democrat, which was a really, especially at that time in the Reagan era, was a really, you know, he put a, I mean, he had a target on his back for a huge chunk of his, his sort of rise to the top. And he was, he was a figure that was polarizing politically for a lot of people and ended up sort of being embroiled in this ridiculous campaign finance scandal and was strung up on the national news. And it was a real trauma for, for our family. And sort of in the midst of him trying to make his comeback. He got sick. And so I think, you know, that whole arc of his career and his success and the dynamic, you know, the dynamic of his personality losing him at that time was, was really, you made a huge impact, not just on me, but everybody in our family, you know, I don't think most people, he was just loved. He was loved. And when he was gone, it blew a hole in our family that was really, you know, very, it was, it was, it was, profound for sure yeah and um and in a sense i think there was it was the first time i had felt grief like that and i i i cried for days when you were 11 i was nine yeah it was i mean i was

maybe i might have been eight it might have been right before i turned nine actually and and and but it did something to me like when he passed and i and we were close but close but close and he was my uncle who i saw in the summers you know it wasn't it wasn't like he raised like you know he raised me like a second parent anything but i i elized him in a way and losing him I think it put me into this place where I had to fill that with something and music was what was the thing that I filled that gap with.

Yeah, I, you know, it's funny because, you know, again, it's my uncle. It's my dad's brother. He lives in Chicago. I see him twice, once a year, twice a year, but I've always had this connection to him and my aunt. I just, the way they listened to me, I just felt like they were too,

there's a few people in my life that I actually felt as a kid really listened to me and were interested in me. Yeah. Which is important in your developmental stages. didn't really feel like my parents were there. They weren't there. I mean, maybe they tried, but they just weren't present. I didn't feel like they were interested in me. And my uncle just wanted, and even to this day, I'll talk to him about relationships. He's a psychologist. And we'll

see up until two or three in the morning and we'll talk about things and I'll go, have you ever done this? Maybe you should see a therapist. And we talk, but very candidly, openly. And so I can relate to you that if something happened to my uncle, I'd be devastated. And this was someone you looked up to and He was exciting and different, and there was a lot of love. So when that happened, you say you found music. Yeah, well, I think, too, with him, because I was always more into the arts and I wasn't this athletic kid, you know, he was proof that you could, you know, with a great idea, make it in the, in the entertainment industry, you know. And so it's no surprise that I found music. And my first songs were about him.

You know, my first songs were about the grieving process and what was your favorite song then that you remember about him that you just, oh, that always comes to mind. Yeah, the first song I ever wrote was called Believe, you know, and it was, it was, it was a story about some version of faith. I mean, it wasn't, I was raised religious, but I never had that, that, that bone, really, but I, but I, but I, but I, I think it was about the mysticism of, of, of, you know, what, where somebody goes when they pass and, and, and, and, and, and, and, what they leave behind and what part of that is left with you and and you know but then from there a lot of the songs that I wrote were really about moving because I moved so much and I was always reintegrating into a new um you know culture within our country you know I moved from new Massachusetts to New Jersey to Ohio to California Illinois you know it was like so I was always like having to embed in new spaces and so a lot of my writing and even to this day like that thread is still very present. Ohio. Yeah. I mean, that, you know, that thread is so present in, in my music now, like, motion and, and, and culture and where you fit into that culture and,

and how travel informs, uh, uh, perspective. I mean, those are the things that I think became bedrock of, of, um, my writing. And, and that's what I, so much of my music was about was coping with, with seeing, you know, being in a new town and being the new kid and being uncomfortable in my body and how to, and how to, you know, make my way through whatever the machinations of, of becoming a part of a new school and a new, new town. And once you just, it sounds like it just took off. Like I, you loved it so much. You were probably in your room writing all the time, new songs and you started performing in high school. Yeah. I wrote, um, I just wrote every day all day long. As soon as I get home from school, I would

just write. And yeah, I, you know, there was a, there was a, there was a, sort of a tricky portion of my life where I stopped writing for a year, which, you know, when you're a kid and you've done something from ages nine to 12 every day all day long. And then, you know, when we moved to California, um, I stopped for, for a year and got a little depressed truthfully, you know, and, and, and actually started acting, you know, was I think that was, I'd always kind of did, I'd always done theater as a kid because it was another way to perform. as a songwriter in your 10, you don't have a lot of outlets for performance. So I actually got really into theater and was going to go to Idaho Wilde performing arts school.

Like that was going to be my thing. And my dad wouldn't let me. He thought it was ridiculous for a kid to leave his parents like, you know, for, you know, for a year of school and not live with them and all that stuff. And it was funny when I got into, when I moved to Dana Point with my family. and started high school there. All of a sudden, I started in the theater program there, was a little put off by it. But I realized, like, oh, yeah, you have this skill.

You can play piano and sing. And so I would be in the theater room and I'd sit down at the piano and I'd start playing these songs. It is amazing how people just love it when someone can play piano and sing. It's just like that energy that. Well, like, this is the things that we do. I mean, we're performance artists. And so we're inherently insecure.

And so when you have a talent, You need attention. And you're in high school and you're fat and you're trying desperately to make friends. Like for me, I was like, man, I'm just going to wander over to that piano and see if anybody turns their head. I'm not going to get laid with my weight. I'm going to get laid with my song. Yeah, you know, you're just, I was just such an uncomfortable kid. And all of a sudden I found a tribe in there, you know, and it emboldened me to keep writing.

And that was really what got me into it in like, this is going to be what I do. And performance isn't going to be through theater because the drama teacher was really ruthless and very much had like a strange vendetta against me and a handful of my friends in that camp. And so I was like, I'm going to do it through music, you know. And so I started just writing and writing. And then, you know, high school clicked and I made good friends. and I, you know, grew up a little bit and got comfortable in my skin and found a girlfriend. And all of a sudden it was like I started writing these songs that felt more like the songs you would hear in the world. Right.

Not exactly like them because it was, you know, it was still a very different era of music. But, but yeah, that led to starting my first high school band and the second version of that band became the thing that was signed. Simply corporate. Yeah. I mean, how hard. is it to how you think of the word insatiable you know like uh for me it's perfectionism and you know trying to get out of that

and always having to be the you know there's there's really no such thing as being perfect you can't be perfect so do you ever suffer with that or did you suffer or have you learned to work with it and and sort of accept like hey i'm not going to be perfect i'm always not going to like something about myself about the music about and how you get through that and how you let things go are you was there a time It was hard to let things go and you just almost a little manic about it, a little crazy about it, like too much. And have you learned to let that go? I mean, yeah, I think I could be a really insufferable person in a recording studio at times.

You know, my bandmates in something corporate, all of them, amazing guys. I'm so fortunate that we've maintained such good friendships over the years and still keep in touch and see each other. And I think just being successful at a very young age is tricky for anybody, you know, but I grew up a perfectionist. I grew up very, you know, learning to be very hard on the people around you with the intent of executing your vision, you know. And I always had a very strong vision and still do to this day. And I think what I've learned over time is a combination of what to let go. how to try and be a perfectionist but but but also not let your your sense of perfectionism get in the way of letting good work out before you kill it too you know and and and but i could be very difficult yeah and and historically you know not be the easiest person to work with you know i think there a lot of people have fun working with me but at my worst i can be really tough i could be really tough yeah well how do you let that go of that sort of uh i mean you just admitted it in a way like

I'm hard to work with. I can be hard to work with. I can be such a perfectionist. So in my head and have you ruined relationships with that? Have you ever apologized years later and said, hey, listen, I was, have you, have you done anything like that? I've done a lot of apologizing in my life for sure. I believe, I really believe in the act of apologizing. I think that, you know, especially when you're, when you're a really strong personality, which I am, and I feel like every day, especially through getting into therapy and trying to understand myself better so I can find a way to communicate with the world better and communicate my vision better and respect that not everybody is inside my head, even if they're working on my project or working in

the room with me. I think it's been a huge part of the process of the last six or seven years for me. I think it would have got there faster if I hadn't gotten sick. I don't blame my illness for that. But I think, you know, when I started Jack's Manick, and that was such a painless process. But the end of something corporate, making records and doing tours and making decisions was a very painful process. I felt like my vision had been hijacked. And I felt, and it wasn't, but I felt attacked. And we got so bad at interacting with each other that we just acted sometimes spitefully and sometimes not in the best interest of the group or one another. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we weren't ever the type to just really brawl all out. We were,

We were much more political and, you know, talk to this guy and see if you can get him to move and, and that got so exhausting for me. And I realized this isn't like a healthy environment for me to work. And so I started Jack's Manikin and it was so painless and it was flying and it was like, oh, I realized like me and a producer in a room can do great work together. And we can find a vision and we can collaborate on a vision. It was so collaborative and so painless. The aftermath of that, getting back into making records, I sort of fell right back into like, well, maybe I'll bring the band and the studio and then that those records got very difficult and um not to take anything away from anybody else but i found really over time the way that i work best with people is one on one

you know i i i love sharing and collaborating with people's visions but i do find it gets very tricky when you put a lot of heads in a room sometimes that you you run into a space especially me who's a people pleaser i run the gamut of saying yes let's go with that idea yeah let's try that or but you're wasting time or it's a good idea but it just doesn't lock with what you see for the for the project or the song or the that that thing that you that intangible of your your end game and um so I think a lot of the work that I've done over the last several years is is one you know finding out a way that I work that I feel inspired in a way that gets me to good work and then surrounding myself with people who I really trust and who I want to hear what they have to

say yeah um and also want to fill your vision like want to make that come to fruition like that's the goal or who have a or who have a vision for what they see for me and help to build out my vision for myself and so it really like i've become super collaborative in this over the course of these last few records and this this wing of my career but in a way that i feel like i still have agency over what's important to me um but i'm also getting to to sort of import all these ideas from great thinkers that are helping me to achieve that. But at times, you know, especially if you're my day-to-day manager and you could have him here and he'll tell you, you know, there are times where I do get frustrated and when you're the first in line and the messenger

of what can sometimes be bad news, you know, I can still, that guy can come out. I try to manage a lot better, but I also try really hard when it happens and when sort of the, I see red and let it fly. Are you a yeller? Can you yell? Can be, you know, yeah. And I, I, are you an F bomber? I swear.

Profusely. Yeah, I'm a horrible mouth. Yeah. Again, I'm better than I've been. And the big part of it, I think, beyond just the way I talk to people now, especially when I'm working, I really do try when I, when I find myself, saying something that I shouldn't have said or acting in a way that's just not uh that just doesn't

it doesn't comport with how you should be in the world if you want to get love back you know that I do really try especially these days to just take a breath and and and then make the call to say okay right I didn't handle myself well there how do we get to the next place how can we fix this or what what can i do to sort of like you know get us on the right page i think that's just maturity that's what you know i've done i've certainly written emails where i'm like oh you know i just don't think this is good and also you know and then i write an email and i go oh that's not bad they're men they could they could handle it and then all of a sudden i feel like the the energy is off and they're like upset and like somebody else will read it and go well maybe you could have just

prefaced it with something positive i'm like well do i need a sugarcoat well sometimes you just need to say hey here's what's good and here's what i think we could use some work it's all about refraising and i'm like eh but i've learned to just it's easier to sort of just say hey andrew you're very handsome you have great hair i'm so glad to hear you say that but i really would fucking hate if you don't play a song today fair enough i mean do you i i mean do you i think there's a line and i you can you can tell me what you what you think about this i also think there is a point where it's like what we do is is it's not I mean there are a lot harder jobs but at the end of day when you have to send out a representation of yourself sometimes you have to be like no that sucks

somebody sends me artwork yeah if somebody sends me artwork that sucks now if it's the artist I'm not going to be like that sucks right but I will on another chain say this can't this is not what we're doing or this person doesn't get what we're doing let's not go any further and that's the other thing I've learned is like when something isn't working just stop sometimes it's really best to say you know what i'm not gonna i'm not gonna die on this hill i'm gonna walk away and do something else yeah hey this isn't the right direction but i really appreciate your work yeah but your art sucks i honestly i didn't know i was like okay what are we gonna talk about there's so much to talk about but i do want to hint talk about one other thing yeah talk to me your wife yeah what's her name kelly

kelly yeah there was a couple things kelly you and kelly like sort of the height of like like you're sort of like this artist and you're growing and you got this record label and all these things and you guys break it off yeah right that's what happened in in a few words you broke it off i did and what was your reasoning you know it was it was uh first of all you're 22 well i was 20 to and and for me at the time what you have to understand is our break was wrapped up in so much other stuff and and a lot of it was wrapped up in this thing like i had been on the road for the better part of three years make and when I wasn't on the road I was making records and we were together through that

whole thing and before and after as well but I had just lived with so many people on top of me and by the time something corporate had had wrapped up I was just I was just fried I was tired of being around people you know not like I just didn't the intimacy I had spent so much of the intervening years between high school and and my early earliest of 20s like just in rooms full of people people with opinions about who I was and what I was and what I was doing. And I just felt in that moment that I was like, I just need to not be attached to anything, you know? And that's sort of what you told her. Yeah. I mean, and it was, it was horrible because it really wasn't that I wasn't in love with her that I didn't see us having a future. It was just that I was so confused about who I

was you know like those last years of being in in the band it was the kind of thing where you would say like this is how it should be and in my mind this is the way things should be and then I have all these other people saying no we need to go this way or that way this is the right way this is the right way and Kelly wasn't one of those people but but I think just after in the midst of all that you know you're growing you go from a teenager to now you're a young man and and and and I I had made some money and now I had a house and bills and all these things and it was a like, and I felt so confused about who I was and what I really wanted to do because the thing that I knew I wanted to do was music and I was doing it, but I wasn't fulfilled all of a sudden.

And so it was really more an act of just like needing to take control of my life and my body and my mind and just like explore. And I had to do that without any attachments. I mean, you can, you know, my parents, I don't even know if it's really covered in the documentary, but like I had really I sort of not out of spite or anything but I had really kind of detached from my family I I don't talk about that I had I had really gone on this solo mission and the only people around me were like I had two high school best friends who lived in the house where where that I had had bought with my first publishing check and and and I spent that year on this kind of like where I was. where I would travel on my own and I would write songs in my room and I'd wake up when I want to and I didn't and I, you know, and I didn't talk to

people who were in charge of my business every day and I just like I just did whatever the fuck I wanted for a little while and I needed to you know, at 22 years old I don't know what I'm doing in 46 Yeah, so something's working for you Yeah, it's the HM company

Yeah, there you go No, they're just, he's a good buddy in there But you know what I mean? Sometimes you just need that, you need to go on that journey. And, um, and it was, it was, it was really, it was really hard. I mean, the hardest part of that was being separated from her because it was like I had this, we had this magnetic thing that we were, we felt this need to be together. But I also felt like if I was going to go on this, this sort of adventure that I had to go it alone. And I had to do that without doing all the bullshit that people do when they're broken up, which is.

they talk to each other and fight all the time and I was like in my mind I was going to get back together with her it was always in my head that this was that this was just a side road around a better end but that I needed this thing to take place for us to to be together and and and so it was hard but we made this clean break and it was brutal on her and it was brutal on me but obviously I can't own any of that because I was the one who did it that should be a title of your next album what's that side road back to a better end to a better end yeah i mean right back to a better luckily i feel like i'm on i'm on the right road at the moment but but uh that's my that could be that might be the that might be the documentary of my life but uh but uh but yeah and and you know we did

we found our way back to each other luckily we did so and we're doing so before i found out i was sick but but the the the real sort of hard work of getting back together largely happened in that hospital room you know and what was it what i mean take me back there for a second because you talk about in a documentary but i need to know like you're exhausted you just mix the album ironically yeah um what was the album everything in transit everything in transit and that's the same day you found out you had leukemia or is that the same day you went to the hospital so i was in the mix suite all day uh not the mix suite i was in the mastering suite all day with a guy named ted jensen putting the album in sequence and like you know a lot of transitions to the record and just sort of like putting the

album together it was mixed now it was mastered it was like the day final day I was on the road with the band we were we just done a huge show in New York that sold out and and building itself is in the Chelsea piers and it's all concrete and you couldn't get cell reception in there in his in his office so I'd never I never saw the call and I had this this Polaroid camera that I had always been traveling with I would always go out and take pictures and I was like listen to the record finished was like wow it's done walk downstairs go take polaroids or whatever sort of inspires me to kind of to you know to mark time for this this this thing and then i look at my phone and i was like i can't even tell you how many messages it was just like message after

message after message all from the same doctor's office you need to call us and you need to call us right now finally the message is just like wherever you are whenever you get this go someplace where there aren't a lot of people and call us back you're not well and you can't be outside you can't be anywhere you need to be in a hospital and so I call and he's just like well by the way just take me there for a second because right there my my my heart starts to beat oh yeah there's there's this numb feeling you get isn't there it was the realization of a fear that had been brewing over whatever had been going on in my body like something's going wrong I'm tired all the time I can't explain that fatigue briefly just like I had to sleep I just I it was it was it was

my voice kept coming and going uh sometimes it would show up for a show other times i finished a show and i couldn't speak you know i i i was having trouble breathing um and a lot of those things i was just you know again i was i was i was partying so much that it was like i would just drink my way through it or just smoke a ton of weed or whatever that i i i'm getting anxiety from it you know i was i was not really an anxious it wasn't really anxious i was i was confused you And I assumed, I think in my heart of hearts, I assumed it was because of this schedule of like the touring that I was doing and the lifestyle that I had been pursuing at the time was like, you know, there were any number of reasons why it could have been not well, you know. And so when I, I mean, I just, I immediately ran back to the suite where we were mastering. I put myself in the artist's sort of area in the mastering suite and called the doctor and he was just like, look, a breeze could blow right now and you could get a cold that would kill you.

You have no immune system. He had literally, he's this brilliant man, Dr. Scott Kessler, voice doctor in the city. He's the one who would take my blood because I was bothering, if my voice was bothering me. And he had the wherewithal to go, like, you don't look well, I'm going to take your. blood. It wasn't a normal doctor. I was just trying to get steroids to get my voice to work for a New York show. And he had already called, he looked at my pathology. He called the best doctor in his mind in the city that could deal with it. And it was a hematology oncologist. And he said, you need to go right to New York Presbyterian. And this doctor is waiting for you. Now, mind you, it's the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. So everybody's about to leave. for the weekend and he's like he's he's going away but he's going to stay there until you get there because he needs to see you and he I got in there and they were just like on your stomach bone marrow biopsy like just all of a sudden it was just like you just went through a hellstorm

immediately immediately are you just like oh we got to be so overwhelmed at this moment like what what the fuck is this real does it seems sort of like they've got me wrong here they've got the wrong blood work they'll take it again I'll be okay it's not what they think it is was there have any of that doubt or you knew something was? No, I knew something was really wrong. I would, you know, there was a moment when, you know, when he sat down and he said, you know, and it was within the first hour so that I was there, said you have, in my mind, one of two things. It's either a plastic anemia or leukemia.

We're not going to know which it is until this pathology comes back and it's going to take a while for it to come back because my bone, from the bone or biopsy was my bone was so dry. that he barely aspirate anything out of it because it just wasn't making any good marrow. And, and yeah, and he, he said, you know, he said those two things. And I, I just, I just kind of sat there and, you know, I called, I called one of my oldest friends first. I didn't call Kelly first because I was just like, there's no, this is not a call that I can make at this very moment. And I called and I just remember just breaking down and I was breaking down together. And I'm like, I might have, I might have cancer, you know.

And, and, yeah, and, but I will tell you that there was that, I was surrounding that whole point and it was probably just shock that I think I was running, I was so hypermanic for a year, you know, I was so, it didn't sleep. I didn't eat. All I was doing was creating. It was invigorating and it was so, it was so wonderful, but it was also so dangerous. You know what I mean? And, and I was living so fast and I had money. And, you know, so I could. get i could i could i could get as much of whatever i wanted and i could i could go out as late as i wanted and i had cash to burn and i had no one to hold me to account and i was making really good music and so and now i was on the road and it was like and now we're on the road you know what i mean so it's it's it's moving even faster and i felt i had felt for some time that i was kind of careening towards something you know and so when i found out i was sick in some very strange way there was a piece I had with it because I knew I was careening towards something. And I think I felt better about it being cancer than being like rehab or whatever other shit was going to go along with that.

You know, and in a way it was like it was you have to stop. You have no choice. You're moving so fast. Your inertia is so intense that something has just said no. And it's your body. and I was ready to listen, you know, and I did. And I was, and so I, I was able to approach it very peacefully because I felt like it was, it was a piece that I hadn't had.

Isn't it amazing when you talk about like money and fame and this and that and life and nothing matters if you don't have health? I mean, it's so simple, but health is wealth. It's just, it is a, it is a commodity that we take it for granted, you know. And, and there are a lot of things I do that probably aren't so healthy, but I live a lot healthier lifestyle now, you know, and, um, but yeah, it's, it's a crazy thing when for every given reason you should, you know, you're young and you should be okay. And then you're not, um, you really are forced to forget everything that you're doing. And I was fortunate, you know,

I was able to do that. A lot of people in this, crazy weird polarizing world we live in right now, you know, where we politicize health and how we receive health care and things like that. I always just laugh. Like, you know, all of us are going to be faced with one of these catastrophes at some point in our life. Some of us, by virtue of having money and good health insurance, will survive when others don't. And I think that is so wild. And so it's tragic. It's tragic. And it's, I think it's a real crime. of what's taken place in our politics and what's taken place in the form of a, you know, capitalism that we've turned the care of our beings, you know, into into a commodity for people

because it really is we need to see good doctors. I wouldn't be here. Yeah. I had two forms of insurance and I had access and intelligent people guiding the way. What I had, there is no question. That in the hands of other institutions and there's just not even a question. And I find that really, it gives me pause when people fight about, you know, about taking care of this disastrous health economy that we have, you know, that we haven't stepped up and said, as a people, we need to do it better, you know, whatever that is, we need to come together and do it better for sure. Agreed.

Agreed. Kelly, she's been sort of the anchor. She's still like, you guys have been together, how long? She's amazing, yeah. We've been, I think this summer, we will have, we would have started dating 17 years ago. 17 years, you have a child now? We have a little girl, she's four and a half, Cecilia, yeah. And as a 22-year-old guy going to the hospital, broken up with a girlfriend,

isolating himself, needed some time on his own, doing whatever, to survive that and look, look back and see where you are now. doing a new album you're you're healthy knock on wood yeah we're knock on wood uh everything every day's a blessing yeah what's crazy about that time compared to this time is that this album that that i'm that i'm finishing is the first album since that time where i'm back in that town that i lived when when this whole thing happened and i'm writing music the same way i was back then and in this like in this sense of flow and by myself and a garage with my piano and and walking it up to Santa Monica and doing it with this with a producer and fin it I mean it's like

there's this really bizarre parallel between then and now but the beauty of it is that I that she's there you know and I would not be alive were it not for my wife I mean plain and simple that at the most critical times in my life when I needed to be when I needed to be when I needed go crazy she she incubated the worst of my freakouts you know and then when it needed to be pulled back to ground she had the wisdom to say this is the moment i need to actually step in you know she's not a nagging person she's not you know we we operate with so much deference to each other as individuals that when she speaks up and says okay now we need a course correction i'm like oh my god yes I'm not going to fuck this up you know and and to have somebody in your life that knows you well enough that that that gives you the latitude to to to be every sort of strange expression of your inner mind and lets you wander around the house like a crazy person trying to put these puzzles together you know and and and manages to to to stay grounded herself and it's so grounding for me yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a

such a gift and she's seeing you in the darkest there's nobody that's seen you that dark that messed up that on the you know the door she knows yeah she has she the thing she has she the thing is she knows you know she knows the worst places that i that i've that i've ended up you know and and you can't put a value on that you know and she's just she's just she rocks man she's just hot you're that yeah i mean it's awesome to actually look at somebody that you know that you've known forever and just be like you're you as just this person as a whole are like more sort of mystical and beautiful and strange and and you know so awesome to love you know it's a pretty it's a pretty remarkable thing a couple quick questions these are just fast are you

related to Vince McMahon I'm not really at Angela and Ferguson come on Angela what kind of question is that my friend or Ed McMahon no no no or Jim McMahon but I live He lived in Chicago when Jim McMahon was the quarterback for the Bears, and we would always get the best seats when my dad would call in to get a reservation. Back in the day, Super Bowl Shuffle shit. Ariel J93, would you ever get Jack's Mannequin back together for a union tour, or even 15th anniversary of everything in transit, 2020? Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is, like, I play with two of the four members of Jack's Manich.

And even my last tour, Bob, my guitar player from Jacks, was out with us. So, yeah, I mean, my priority is to, is to create new beautiful shit, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't doubt. Like, Jacks will play shows, you know, a show here and there at some point for sure. But it's, like, not the first thing on my mind, for sure. Tell us about the nonprofit real quick. Yeah, so Dear Jack Foundation sort of began in the wake of my survivorship. And we've really become just this amazing force for adolescents and young.

adults who both face or in treatment for cancer or who have survived it. So, yeah, we do these two amazing programs. One's called the Life List, where we help patients who are in treatment, adolescents and young adults, 15 to 39 is basically our age range, super underserved demographic, way under-researched, you know, have worse, you know, have seen almost no improvement in their survival outcomes in 30 years compared to every other demographic that's exploded. So, yeah, one of the big programs is we get in the hospital room with these patients and we say, let's develop a list of items and things that you want to do while you're in treatment so that we can keep you focused on the bright side of things and give you, give you things to look forward to, you know, incredible stuff. kids have gone to tapings of SNL or we built a play set for a family who just wanted a place, you know, mom just wanted to see a place for her kids to play so that, you know, when she was

convalescing effectively, she didn't have to leave the house, you know, these really powerful things that have built communities of young adults and the program that I'm really proud of that's informed largely by the experience my wife and I had in survivorship where we really didn't have anybody there to guide us and did it so very alone. We created a program called breathe now where we host a song you can oh there's a song you can breathe yeah it's kind of it's rooted in yeah yeah you can breathe yeah yeah so breathe now is is is sort of the title came from that song and and the uh the program is really beautiful where we get um where we get six couples um into a into a space usually a very beautiful space for four days uh on a retreat that's

effectively a wellness retreat where they do yoga and breathwork and meditation and things like sound healings and social breakouts where both the survivor and their spouse or partner advocate who went through it with them kind of get to talk about their experience and get to meet other people who went through it and also just learn tools via a really, you know, great social worker psychologist that comes along with us to approach survivorship and the difficulty of survivorship in a healthier way. And that program has been just, It's been insane how much growth you see from these couples. And, yeah, we're raising.

We're in the process of raising money right now. We're doing a thing called the 200K challenge. We're trying to raise $200,000 before our benefit show in November. And, you know, our target is really close in sight, especially compared to other years that we've done this. It's pretty exciting. Well, Rob would love to donate. Yeah. And I would love to donate.

So we'll do that. Make sure we do that, Rob, right after. You guys, if you do $50,000 apiece, we could be done with this thing today. We do $50,000. He loses his house. I've done it to Deer Jack. Yeah, of course he has. Deer Jack is the documentary.

This is a very talented, talented man and a good man. A man who's seen a lot, his face death and survived and has a lot of love to share. And this has been a real treat. Thanks, man. I appreciate you. For allowing me to be inside of you. Yeah, thank you for letting me open myself up to you. And you know what?

Thank Rob. It's been a joy to have someone inside of me today. Yeah, there you go. so yeah this has been amazing uh what are you going to sing do i have a choice in this i don't really know i honestly it's so funny because like all i've been doing for the last several days is like writing new music so my brain is fried with with uh can you do uh i mean ohio's tough isn't it i could probably do that and yeah it might take a second but i could do that yeah i think i fucking love ohio and i grew up in indiana give me a minute it'll yeah yeah let me work it out

On the razor's edge At the first sign of light, the car was back And the house was quiet And my sister slept As we started the drive to California Where it's warmer Gonna start a new light Gonna miss Ohio

But this time We're gonna get a right Station wagon, tigers flying, Katie's counting crows through the tears in a blue eyes State lines and capitals go rushing By-yes, I'm trying to find a station on the radio Everything's gonna be better on the West Coast The days move fat on the northern plains and I read the maps as the prairie grass moved in the wind like waves and we can't look back some man you just can't see we had a

reasons for leaving It's better this way Gonna miss Ohio But I'm not Gonna miss the rain Station wagon Tigers flying Katie's counting crows

Through the tears in a blue Eyes steel lines and capitals Go rushing by as and try to find a station on the radio everything's going to be better on the west coast better than the mess we left back home in Ohio Ohio

Ohio by red door Abandoned worlds We drink on weekends There's magnets Pulling from the ocean floor I can't forget Where you looked when we were leaving

Tigers flying Katie's counting crows through Tears in a blue eyes State lines and capitals to rush in by as I'm trying to find the station on the radio everything's going to be

better on the West Coast better than the mess we left back home in Ohio Ohio Ohio Ohio Ohio

Ohio Ohio Ohio Ohio Oh, Ohio is here. Oh, Ohio. I believe has the podcast to enhance your football season is here.

Oh, man. Believe has the podcast to enhance your football experience from the pros one of the most interesting quarterback rooms to college Michigan is set at eight and a half wins to fantasy if you feel that way why didn't you trade them become a better fan and listen to the football podcasts from believe just search believe that's bL-E-A-V podcast follow and listen on your favorite platform