FANS OF ANDREW McMahon know the artist to have worn many masks throughout his career spanning the last 25-plus years. For the early adopters, McMahon fronted the rock band Something Corporate before embarking on his own solo project in the form of Jack’s Mannequin. And after an 8-year span that saw three albums released, McMahon retired the Mannequin moniker before beginning on his third musical iteration, Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness.
The through line between all three acts is songs that fluctuate between dynamic and melodic with themes that are always introspective. With a piano as the only instrument on his current tour, McMahon will play an amalgam of tracks from his past and present during An Evening with Andrew McMahon and His Piano at Hi-Fi on October 25.
Recently, McMahon reunited with his previous bands for shows here and there, but the inspiration behind an intimate solo tour was one derived from the need to challenge himself.
“I’m always a ball of nerves before I leave for tour,” McMahon says. “Just the combination of leaving home and leaving my family. Every tour is so wildly different, and every set of dates was going from one band to the next. This is going to be me solo at the piano. It’s a part of what I do to keep myself agile and interested in my work.”
He notes that, in his preparation, he’s relearning over 70 songs from his catalog to delineate his set lists from night to night.
Recently, he reintroduced himself to many of the hits that made SoCo and Jack’s Mannequin household names to fans of pop-punk and alt-rock when he reunited with both bands during the Three Pianos tour, including a three-hour career-spanning show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
In reestablishing himself with songs from his band’s former days, McMahon has taken a walk down memory lane in the process.
“There are moments that bring up memories from when I wrote it. The songs about relationships are often about my wife. We’ve been together for 20 years in December, and that part is interesting because I find myself thinking about how we went through a hard time and how a particular song came from it. I pinch myself that I’m alive, in a strong marriage, and with a great family. A lot of these songs, I find myself wondering how we got through this or that because so much of music is born out of transition in life,” he says.
As each song evokes a different memory for McMahon, he says some of his eagerness to play them live and stripped down with just a piano comes from the potential to make listeners feel something different than they did with the song’s original iteration.
The reimagining of his former hits doesn’t stop on stage, either, as he recently announced the release of Strings Attached Vol. II (Something Corporate Years), a five-track EP that features songs produced with string arrangements from the SoCo days. McMahon took a similar approach in 2025 with his Jack’s Mannequin EP, Everything In Transit: Strings Attached.
While some things change, others remain the same. One of which is his Dear Jack Foundation, a nonprofit he founded 20 years ago after he was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. Since then, the Dear Jack Foundation has provided programming that directly benefits adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer to improve their quality of life and create positive health outcomes from treatment to survivorship.
Though McMahon’s music will have a residual effect on his fans for years to come, it’s the change he’s brought with the Dear Jack Foundation that he believes may leave the biggest impact.
“I’ve had a couple of very profound moments being at events with Dear Jack and hearing from participants we’ve worked with over the years talk about their experience being a part of our programs,” McMahon says. “I’ve thought to myself since I was 9 that my mission in life was always to make music, but when I’m no longer here, it very well may be that this is the thing that I leave in the world that will matter most.”
