– It was kind of difficult (writing “The Glass Passenger”). You know, I think the thing about it is for the first time, not just in my career but in my life as a songwriter period, I think I really struggled with how to talk about what’s in my head. I found myself at times suffering from writer’s block during the making of the record and at times was extremely frustrated.
– For me it’s really about being on the other side of (survival). I mean, in a lot of ways the past record was less about covering what happened to me in the hospital but a lot of after the recovery process and reconciling some of the things that had happened in that past. This stuff that I’m writing now, I think, is sort of free from a lot of the burden of that. And in turn, I think it comes a little bit more evenly and will be a record about being back amongst comfortable living and everyday, as opposed to maybe some of these extremely kind of heavy issues related to my illness and sort of moving on with it.
– By the time (Dear Jack, a documentary about McMahon’s fight with leukemia) happened, I had kind of come to terms with the fact that we were doing it. The film at the time wasn’t really intended for the people’s media. It was a way for me to kind of get it out, whether it was frustration, or fears or whatever, you know where I wasn’t really in a position to write music in a journal because it was so hard physically to do a lot of that stuff. Facing the camera and kind of just saying what was on my mind became a very therapeutic way for me to handle the illness. Putting it out, I kind of got nervous that people would see such a chunk of my life, but at the same time, it seemed really relevant and an important enough story to tell.
– (The Dear Jack Foundation) is a lot of people reaching out and trying to find a way to take up the cause of fighting cancer and to find ways to help contribute. There was sort of this overwhelming sense from my family for them to help, and I figured, rather than sort of fragmenting them and playing them to the direction of a bunch of different charities, that we would create a charity where initially, if they wanted to donate or get involved, this would be a place that they could do that and know that their money was going to be in good hands with people who were doing great research, people of various organizations with outreach and awareness.
– We start rehearsals on Friday (Jan. 29). We’re going to do the five day rehearsals. After this, we’re going to prepare some new material, kind of hammer out exactly what it’s going to be. But this will be the last big tour we’ll do before we put together a new record. I think it will be a lot of the popular songs mixed in with some classic B-sides that have gained favor over the years that we haven’t had the chance to play live.
– There’s a lot of really cool bands that I’ve been digging lately. There’s another band called Say Hi I’ve been looking into a lot of. Some modern bands like Regina Spektor, things like that. But I think my biggest overall influences are just from listening for years and years to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Counting Crows, Neil Young.
