Local band practices for tour with last-minute show

Before embarking on a nationwide tour this Friday, front man Andrew McMahon had a spur of the moment idea to work out the bands’ kinks — play a warm-up show at the Viper Room Tuesday evening and bring along up-and-coming local band Lady Danville.

The plan was finalized Tuesday morning and word spread like wildfire about this impromptu show.

“Welcome to band practice,” McMahon said as they took the stage that night. “We’re doing this to work some things out before the tour starts, so it may be a little rough, but that’s why we invited our friends.”

Hailing from Orange County, Jack’s Mannequin has deep roots to the Southern California area, so it is no surprise that McMahon and the rest of the band consider Angelinos to be friends and that there was no better way to catch up with those friends than to hang out for a night playing some of their old music.

Beginning their set with “Into the Airwaves” set the energetic tone of the evening, and each “friend” (all seemingly clad in dark-rimmed glasses, multi-colored plaid T-shirts and a variety of keds) in the audience sang every word.

The evening continued to feel like a jam session at McMahon’s apartment rather than an actual concert, and, just as he had warned the audience before the show started, there were several hiccups that caused the show to not go quite as planned.

With a couple amplifier and guitar problems afflicting their guitarist, Bobby Anderson, right at the beginning, McMahon resorted to whipping out some solo songs he was not planning on playing, which continued the raw feeling of the evening. Not long after Anderson got his complications under control, bassist Jonathan Sullivan’s bass slipped and landed out of tune, which caused another hold up for the band.

“We’re just a calamity up here,” McMahon joked as he stalled by playing “Turn the Beat Around,” by Gloria Estefan. “We’re playing my friend’s wedding soon, so we’re working on some music like ‘Turn the Beat Around.’ Yes, that’s right. Jack’s Mannequin is available for weddings.”

All joking aside, once the instruments were situated, the band began to “get into a groove” and played a majority of the songs from their album Everything in Transit, and a select few from The Glass Passenger.

McMahon, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in June 2005, slowed down a bit and played a song that was the most emotional part of the evening; a song called “The Skyscraper,” which he said was written about the first nurse he had when he was going through treatment — a woman named Diane.

He sung of exhaustion, his insecurity with the illness and how Diane would “plug his machines back in” when he was feeling weak, a song that tugged at the heartstrings of every “friend” in the crowd.

As they finished up their set, they thanked everyone and sang the popular “La La Lie,” about yet another heartbreak and being “ready to move on.”

The evening moved on right along with them, and acoustic rock band Lady Danville came out to close off the evening in a soft, sensitive and harmonious way.

The band that began as a duet based out of a UCLA a cappella group, accompanied with a keyboard, acoustic guitar and a cajon drum, along with the powerful harmonies of the three band mates’ voices, took the audience on a visual journey through each of their songs.

Lady Danville’s keyboard player Michael Garner, guitarist Daniel Chang and percussionist Matthew Frankel led the audience in a sing along to their song David, causing the crowd to erupt in a melodious swirl of “da-da-da’s” and “ba-ba-ba’s”.

Finishing off the night, the guys stepped out from behind the microphones with only a harmonica, ukulele, maracas and their voices to play a song about a woman doing merciless and terrible things to them, and them “wanting her back” regardless, which left the crowd laughing.

Jack’s Mannequin begins their U.S. tour on Friday beginning in Seattle and finishing off March 5 in Norfolk, Va., and Lady Danville is set to play the Green Schools Benefit in Venice, Calif. on February 11.