Earlier in his career, Jack was obsessed with making it look like there was as much distance as possible between his production work and what he was doing with Bleachers, even if that was never completely true. "For some reason, I really love doing it all at once. It's all pretty seamless, and it actually helps me."

Inspiration is never literal, though. "It's not like I find a cool sound and then use it on everything. [Those three records] couldn't sound any less like each other," he says. "It's more a general inspiration about vulnerability and perspective and being around other people [in the same creative headspace]. Maybe because Bleachers has started to become fully recognised on its own, it means I don't have to pretend they're nothing to do with each other." Still, he's not trying to rewrite his Wikipedia page. "The concept of legacy or what I'm known for, that just gets filed into a place of 'I don't know what good is going to come from thinking about this or trying to control it'."

Not deliberately muddying the waters between working on his and other people's records is just one of the many changes that sparked the reflective one-two opening of 'Everyone For Ten Minutes'. 'Sideways' and 'The Van' (working title 'Just Don't Wanna Be') act as a musical origin story for Jack. "They're about breaking this ancestral pact and leaving home to pursue my work," he explains.

His mum was a nurse, and his dad put his own musical ambitions to the side to become a business investor. It was a "huge risk" heading out on tour with his emo group Outline as a fifteen-year-old, he says. "Nothing happened quickly." But he fell in love with everything about travelling around and playing shows. "It just clicked for me, and I never looked back," says Jack, who went on to tour with Steel Train, Fun. and then Bleachers. "I wasn't sad or scared about all of the hard parts because it showed everyone how much it meant to me."

"Playing live is the only time in my life that my brain shuts off and I feel completely present," he says. It's been that way since the first gig. "It's a transcendent moment of pure communication with the world around me. That's just a really inspired place to be." Even today, after more than 25 years of constant touring, Jack approaches every gig with a last night on earth mentality. "It's just baked into me, very often to the detriment of my body. I don't know any other way to do it, though, and I'm not looking for one either."

"The show is always in celebration of something," he continues. At the very least, it's that everyone was able to come together and gather, "but usually there's something bigger that's going on."

Rather than an introduction for new fans, though, the opening two tracks of 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' come from a more personal place. "I wanted to reiterate the facts about how I got here for myself as much as anyone else."

"I've changed in so many ways, but the intention of what I do and why I do it is unchangeable – it's to take a feeling and make it something that you can press play on," says Jack, aware he's reducing a very complicated thing down to a sentence. The ambition is never to reach as many people as possible, but to "connect as deeply as possible". It's the same with his production work. "It's about trying to make something that feels utterly specific and like it could only exist from that person, in that moment in time."

"This conversation usually leads to one about success," says the 14-time Grammy winner. "But I do what I've always done. I write music, I play shows. I help my friends with their records. Everything around it has changed, but it's the same on a soul level. It got me thinking about the early days, where going on tour seemed like a simple decision about having fun, but it was really us setting off on this crazy Lord Of The Rings-style journey that I'm still right in the middle of."

'Everyone For Ten Minutes' then catapults us to the present day with the dreamy 'We Should Talk' reflecting on all the people Jack's lost touch with along the way. Making the record was a long process, but when he got to the end of that whole experiment, he just "wanted to be honest about what it was like to me right now."

The shimmering, triumphant 'You And Forever' is about the journey you have to go through to make yourself suitable for eternal love. "I wrote about all the anxiety of being ready, willing, available and intact enough for someone else," says Jack, who married Margaret Qualley in the summer of 2023.

The frantic 'Take You Out Tonight' is about going out together despite "how annoying the world can be", and the positivity continues with 'Dirty Wedding Dress', which was written about the media circus that descended on Jack's star-studded wedding. "We had to board up the windows and shoot down the drones," he sings. Rather than fury or frustration, it was a reminder that when you let the right people in, nothing else really matters.

All loose and lively, 'Upstairs At Els' is the song that would play over the credits to 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' if it were a movie. It comes after the head-over-heels romance of 'I'm Not Joking', which has quickly become his favourite ever Bleachers song. "I find it very powerful because it's just incredibly honest. There's no shred of cynicism. I never double back on a line or explain something. I just speak incredibly freely. Also, the band is playing live, and when everyone's in a room together, something magical happens."

A majority of the group - Mikey Hart, Sean Hutchinson and Evan Smith - have been part of Bleachers since the first album, while drummer Mike Riddleberger joined while the band were still touring their first album. "Being in a band is this amazing amount of lived time together and a language that only you know. It just creates a very special thing."

As personal as 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' is, it speaks to a wider conversation about community and change. The whole record was written in the shadow of Jack getting married, while both Bleachers and his production work were "growing into something incredibly powerful" after he'd invested his whole life into them. "I was just feeling so much love, joy and connection."

It highlighted just how much of the world was designed for the exact opposite, with everything from dating apps to ticketing platforms built with bad intentions. "This version of the world, where billionaires are getting richer by running every system in the world, is absurd. Nothing's ever worked less."

"This moment in time has been such a stunning failure for humanity – we all know it, we all feel it, and we all hate it," says Jack, who's noticed people doing everything in their power to redirect their energies towards things they think matter. "Everyone is living in utter rejection of this version of modernity. And I couldn't stop writing about what it's like to live right at the cusp of the next phase, and wanting to kick the door in."

'Everyone For Ten Minutes' isn't a defiantly optimistic record on purpose; it's just what poured out of him. "I just feel really hopeful, just because we're at the end of something. There's an excitement to what happens next," says Jack. "There are obviously so many terrible things going on, but one thing I keep coming back to is this great collective obsession with wanting to move past this time."

To Jack, 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' feels like a celebration of being in a band. "There are a lot of other things going on right now that aren't great uses of time, but history has proven that playing music with people is a very wonderful thing to do with your time on Earth."

"The need to write music, share it and play it live, it does come from a place of loneliness. It comes in waves, but it's always there," he admits. "I feel like I'm on a fucking island a lot of the time but there's something about touring where you discover that people are feeling the same. It's community."

And that community is why he puts so much effort into making Bleachers' gigs as affordable as possible. "It's so sad that we have to put so much time and energy into trying to get tickets to people at the price we intend," he says, with unsanctioned presales, VIP perks and dodgy resale sites all trying to fleece Bleachers' audience. "There are a lot of people trying to ruin a very beautiful thing, but we don't want to only play shows to rich people. We want our shows to be available to everyone."

"There are a lot of politics to it as well. There are a million reasons to kick Trump to the fucking curb but if you care about live music in America, nothing's going to change until he's out."

Every ticket sold for Bleachers' upcoming tour also includes a donation to The Ally Coalition, which was set up by Jack and his sister Rachel in 2013 to help LGBTQ organisations directly serve youth in their communities. "I've always done it, and I'll do it forever. It's just how I was raised," says Jack, who grew up going to punk shows and benefit gigs where donating food or clothing was how you got in.

As for the fans, Jack doesn't spend much time thinking about what 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' will mean to them. "I have a lot of openness and respect to whatever the hell other people's experiences are with it. Whatever they take from it shapes how we see it, and then it shapes how the shows feel. It's a conversation that truly affects everything we do."

"I do hope they take hope from it, though," he adds. "In my darkest times, I haven't really wanted to write much, but sharing music is inherently hopeful."

It's a couple of weeks before 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' is released, but even though Bleachers' last record changed things for the band, Jack isn't worried about how this one will be received. "I love my audience, but when I'm making music, I'm doing what I've always done, which is going to a pretty deep part of myself. The very private, secret thing not being mine anymore, though? I love that," he grins. "The whole reason to make music is because there's something you feel like you need to say, so sharing it is very comfortable for me."

"If you only do the things that you truly love and would live and die by, it doesn't matter if people don't recognise it, because you shared something that you thought was beautiful," says Jack. "If people do recognise it, then you shared a part of yourself and felt seen."

"We're really reaching out to people in our music. You're invited, but that doesn't make it simple, and it doesn't make it casual." After all, Bleachers are for anyone, not everyone.

Taken from the June 2026 issue of Dork. Bleachers' album 'Everyone For Ten Minutes' is out 22nd May.