Popular Rock Band to Perform at Ashland University

The popular rock band Jack’s Mannequin will perform at Ashland University on Sept. 25 at Kates Gymnasium, located in the Physical Education Center on the Ashland campus. The concert will begin at 8 p.m., with the doors set to open at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the concert, which go on sale Aug. 1 on tix.com, are $15 general admission prior to the concert and $20 at the door. Tickets for Ashland University students with ID are $8. The opening band for the evening is Treaty of Paris.

Nicole Dyer, director of Student Life at Ashland University, said she is “thrilled” that Ashland University was able to sign Jack’s Mannequin to perform in Ashland. “We wanted to get a top name band for this year’s fall concert and we are so excited to be able to announce that Jack’s Mannequin will be here. They are an awesome band,” Dyer said.

Jack's Mannequin is a piano rock band from Los Angeles, Calif. The band was formed in 2004 and released their first album, “Everything in Transit,” in August of 2005. In June of that year, front man Andrew McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but he has now made a full recovery.

The band followed that initial release with the album, “The Glass Passenger,” in September of 2008 and that album has climbed the U.S. charts.

“My past is my past and a lot of ‘The Glass Passenger’ is about that,” says McMahon, “but it’s also about trying to write myself out of it. This is a record about trying to get out from underneath something. I want people to receive the music for what it is and not have to contextualize it against my own personal battle.”

After McMahon’s hard-working punk-pop quintet Something Corporate decided to take a break in the summer of 2004, he found himself writing a batch of confessional piano-driven songs that explored his return home to Orange County and his attempt to reconnect with the people he had alienated when he left to tour with Something Corporate.

With the help of several musician friends (which included producer Jim Wirt and Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee), McMahon began recording “Everything in Transit” under the moniker Jack’s Mannequin.

In June 2005, the day he finished mastering the last song, then 22-year-old McMahon was diagnosed with leukemia. He was forced to postpone all music-related activities and immediately undergo chemotherapy, which led to a bout with pneumonia that nearly killed him. Two months later, on August 23, 2005, Maverick Records released the sardonic, sweetly melancholic Everything in Transit, which debuted at No. 37 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart and was well-received by both fans and critics.

Then, following a stem-cell transplant from his sister, McMahon was able to make a full recovery. “’The Glass Passenger’ is not about recovering from cancer,” McMahon says. “It’s just about recovering. I was trying to use the music to sort through and reconcile with the adversity of my past.”

With music as his emotional release, McMahon was able to inject his songs with an uplifting positivity that engages everyone he meets. The album’s tone is set with the first single “The Resolution,” which is about accessing the positive, and continues through the moody, layered “Swim” (about fighting for the goodness in life at all costs), the feel-good sing-along “American Love,” and the propulsive “Spinning.” McMahon’s lush tenor voice and expressive piano playing underscore the lyrics’ unabashed honesty.

Co-produced by Jim Wirt (who produced “Everything in Transit” and who has also worked with Incubus and Hoobastank), “The Glass Passenger” was written and recorded over the course of the last two years, during which time Jack’s Mannequin embarked on several tours, including the 22-city “Tour for the Cure,” which raised more than $125,000 to benefit The Dear Jack Foundation — a non-profit organization founded by McMahon to fund cancer research.

In 2007, the band made the rounds of the major summer festivals, including Summerfest and Lollapolloza, and contributed an inspired cover of John Lennon’s “God” (with Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood on drums) to the charity CD “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” which also featured such best-selling artists as U2, Green Day, and R.E.M.

“The completion of this album and its release represents the closing of a chapter,” McMahon says. “It was a difficult time, but also one of immense hope. It was during this period that my music and my life were the most seamlessly bound together — a truth that makes this album's release far more pleasing for me than most could ever imagine.”