Three bands that trace one musician's entire career will finally share a single stage next Saturday, when Andrew McMahon closes out his Three Pianos tour at Long Beach's F&M Bank Amphitheater. Something Corporate, Jack's Mannequin, and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness — the three acts that have defined McMahon's 25-plus years in music — will each perform their own sets before joining together for a finale featuring musicians from all three bands.
The Long Beach date, set for August 22, caps a limited four-city run that also touched Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Philadelphia's Highmark Mann Center on August 8, and Chicago's Huntington Bank Pavilion on August 14, according to Andrew McMahon's official tour listing. As Press Telegram reports, each stop includes individual sets from McMahon and musicians from each band, followed by a combined set that brings all three projects together — a structure that has held across every show on the run.
The concept, McMahon has said, is loosely based on his 2021 memoir, Three Pianos, and the three actual pianos tied to his musical eras. The Press Telegram's report details how Something Corporate's era involved a black upright piano that toured with the band for its first couple of years on the road — the same instrument McMahon used to write Everything in Transit before Jack's Mannequin ever existed. Jack's Mannequin later traveled with a brown grand piano obtained from Baldwin, distinguished by a pair of metal legs instead of wooden ones. McMahon keeps all three pianos in rotation for these shows, per the same report.
From Dana Point Garage Band to Waterfront Headliner
Something Corporate formed in Dana Point at the end of the 1990s, when McMahon and three friends started the band while still in high school. The group's momentum carried into the major-label era, when its 2002 debut, Leaving Through the Window, topped the Billboard Heatseekers chart, and 2003's North debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard 200, according to background from Highmark Mann Center. The band went on to release its first new material in over two decades, the singles Happy and Death Grip, in 2024.
Jack's Mannequin became McMahon's major focus after his cancer diagnosis and treatment, the Press Telegram notes. McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in June 2005 at age 22 and underwent a stem cell transplant from his sister Katie on August 23, 2005 — the exact day Jack's Mannequin released its debut album, Everything in Transit, according to Forbes. That album debuted at No. 37 on the Billboard 200, and the band marked its 20th anniversary last year by releasing an Everything In Transit: Strings Attached EP featuring new acoustic string arrangements, per Rock Rage Radio. Jack's Mannequin's initial run lasted eight years before it wrapped with back-to-back benefit shows at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles in November 2012, later released as a live album and DVD to benefit the Dear Jack Foundation, according to McMahon's official site.
How the Three Pianos Concept Came Together
The whole idea originated around McMahon's 40th birthday, when Something Corporate reunited for a surprise encore set at his birthday party at House of Blues Anaheim, the Press Telegram reports. That moment led McMahon to organize a full year of Something Corporate reunions, followed later by a year of Jack's Mannequin reunions, before he eventually played a one-off retrospective show at Red Rocks that combined elements of all three projects. McMahon, who is about to turn 44, has spent about 12 years fronting Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness as his main musical vehicle.
Keeping three pianos road-ready is no small task. McMahon travels with a piano technician, though not a dedicated tuner, and promoters and venues typically provide a piano tuner ahead of soundcheck at each stop, per the Press Telegram's reporting. At Red Rocks, McMahon reportedly had every key removed from the upright piano until roughly 10 minutes before that set began — a detail that underscores just how much behind-the-scenes work goes into hauling three distinct instruments across a four-city run.
A Family Affair on Stage
McMahon's daughter Cecilia, now 12, has performed alongside her father since she could sing, beginning around age five or six, according to the same report. At Red Rocks, she joined him for Cecilia and the Satellite, a song written about her. Family threads run alongside the professional ones throughout this retrospective, with Cecilia's stage presence becoming a recurring feature of the Three Pianos shows.
Long Beach's New Waterfront Stage
The Long Beach finale lands at a venue with its own origin story. The 11,000-capacity F&M Bank Amphitheater, built on a waterfront site beside the Queen Mary, opened in June with a grand opening performance from Snoop Dogg, according to the Los Angeles Times. The city funded the $21.3 million temporary venue through its Tideland Funds Group, and officials project $2.5 million to $3 million in annual municipal revenue to help offset declining oil extraction royalties, per Urbanize LA. Local officials reportedly view the venue as a precursor to a permanent waterfront Long Beach Bowl.
The amphitheater has no on-site parking, so concertgoers headed to the August 22 show will need to park in Downtown Long Beach across the harbor and rely on venue shuttles or local transit, according to details listed on the venue's own event page. Ticket buyers across all four Three Pianos stops are also contributing directly to McMahon's cause: $1 from every ticket sold goes to the Dear Jack Foundation, McMahon's nonprofit supporting young adult cancer patients, per Visit Long Beach.
Dear Jack Foundation and What's Next
McMahon founded the Dear Jack Foundation in July 2006 to address the specific needs of adolescent and young adult cancer patients, a demographic facing roughly 89,000 new cancer diagnoses annually in the United States, according to the Dear Jack Foundation. The cause remains woven directly into this tour's ticketing, extending a philanthropic thread that has run through McMahon's work since Jack's Mannequin's earliest days.
McMahon isn't stopping at Long Beach. He plans solo shows this fall along with his first solo symphony performance, set for Denver with the Colorado Symphony to benefit the Dear Jack Foundation, with additional symphony dates planned for the new year, the Press Telegram reports. That follows an earlier Jack's Mannequin symphony show with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra around 2011 or 2012. McMahon also said he's been writing a large amount of new music, including finished early Something Corporate songs for a planned re-recording project spanning three volumes with string arrangements, and he's hopeful for a new chapter of his musical career in 2027. Some of that work, per the same report, will happen during stretches in Nashville producing new songs.
