You “Aughta” Know: Jack’s Mannequin, EVERYTHING IN TRANSIT

Welcome back to “You ‘Aughta’ Know,” where we take a look back at an album from the 2000s that was released on or around this day. In this instance, our topic du jour is the debut album from Jack’s Mannequin, a project which emerged as a result of the band Something Corporate taking a break, leading frontman Andrew McMahon to kick off a highly successful solo endeavor.

Hang on, though: there’s more to the story than that.

Diving headlong into this new creative effort, McMahon recorded 17 demos with the assistance of recording engineer Brian Reeves, tracked the tunes with C.J. Eirksson, and co-produced the whole thing with longtime collaborator Jim Wirt. Late in the recording process, McMahon reached out to Maverick Records and signed a deal to release the resulting album. In the midst of doing some advance promotional shows for the LP’s impending release, however, McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but he pushed the label to maintain the planned release date in August.

In the end, EVERYTHING IN TRANSIT actually did get bumped by two weeks, but it was incidental to McMahon’s leukemia, instead being done to allow for additional time for Maverick to promote the album. McMahon wasn’t able to tour behind it at first, having embarked on a chemotherapy regimen which – very, very, thankfully – proved successful, but he did pop up on an episode of One Tree Hill to perform the album’s first single, “The Mixed Tape,” after which he made a few talk show appearances, including stops at Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. In the summer of 2006, Jack’s Mannequin was doing shows with O.A.R., and by November the album had received a reissue – now including a bonus DVD – and Jack’s Mannequin were opening for Panic! at the Disco on their stadium tour.

Although it had an understandably slow start as far as sales go, EVERYTHING IN TRANSIT is now widely viewed as one of the best alternative rock albums of the ‘00s...and if you don’t know it already, well, you ‘aughta’!