AM: I'll never tell! [Laughs] They are. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent, but they all represent someone to me, for sure.

Are there any songs that changed a lot while you were putting the album together?

AM: With "Dark Blue," the lyric was almost entirely different when it was written. I think the original lyric, which was just a placeholder, was "I'm black and blue." I had already recorded almost the entire Transit record that that point. I had brought it to a label more or less finished, but I had an A&R guy whose thing was "This is great, but what about one more song?" He really pushed me to keep writing. So "La La Lie" and "Into the Airwaves" came out of that and "Dark Blue" came out of that. "Dark Blue" was the last song recorded for the record, and I remember sitting down and looking at the album as a whole and thinking, "OK, if this is the last song, what are we trying to say?" So I changed the "black and blue" thing since "Bruised" was already there, and I couldn't do that again. Really that became the cornerstone, and that's why I put it in the middle of the record. Lyrically, it was one of those moments where all of a sudden I knew what the story was, and I was having these crazy dreams about tidal waves and the characters—myself and my ex-girlfriend at that time—became this story about this massive storm coming and sweeping us off into the water. So the lyric came quickly. I knew what it looked like in my head, and I think that's why the songs on that record and the [Andrew McMahon in the] Wilderness record are so visual. For me, if I can see it, then it's easier to write it down.

This record came at a crazy time in your life. The day you finished recording was the day you got diagnosed with leukemia, right? It was also released the day you got your transplant?

AM: I was actually in the mastering session for the album when I got the phone call. I knew that I was going to be in treatment—I didn't know that I was going to get a transplant or any of that. I reached out to the label because they initially wanted to put that record out when I was healthy for obvious reasons, like that I could promote it. They had put a lot of money into it, and it's a tricky thing to promote a record without an artist there, but they were very supportive and it didn't take a lot of work to change it. I said, "If we've learned anything, life is unpredictable, and I have every intention of being healthy and well to promote this, but this could be a two or three year process at that point." If I didn't get a transplant, it would have been several years of chemotherapy and all of these additional treatments that are fraught with hardship. You just don't know how available you'll be to anything. The thought of waiting three years to put out a record that was so personal and immediate to me, and I lived and was so passionate about, was just not an option to me.

And this made the release date that more significant.

AM: The release date alone was huge. Once they decided to put it out, we just settled on a date and a few weeks later when we found out I was eligible for a transplant and my sister was a match and then seeing those two dates end up on a calendar on the same date was crazy. There was a lot of that and a lot of prophecy built in. I liken it to being close to the path you're meant to be on. It really gave my illness some solace. I thought that was what the stars aligning looked like at that point—it may not be ideal, but something is at play here and I just have to follow it and stay close to it. When you see those things line up and the way that the lyric on the album seems to oddly mirror what happened following its release and all of these things…