A veteran session musician, with an extensive and versatile career, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. has led a unique and eminently interesting career. He began as a co-founder of alternative pop darlings Jellyfish, embedding his esoteric voice, musicianship and compositional skills into the hearts and minds of hundred of thousands, if not millions of fans – a fan base that remains firmly loyal this day through all his vocational permutations.
Manning is also an in-demand sideman, arranger, producer and writer, working with a veritable who’s who of the music industry, from Adele, to Marilyn Manson, Johnny Cash, Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, Lana Del Ray and Glen Campbell.
As a solo artist, he has released two albums under his own moniker – Solid State Warrior (aka The Land of Pure Imagination) in 2006 followed by Catnip Dynamite in 2008. He also released a more dance-oriented album under the nom de plume Malibu called Robo-Sapiens in 2007.
Over the intervening years, he has continued to guest on other people’s projects, as well as being an integral member of the recording and touring band for Grammy-winning alternative-rock artist Beck. Now, after finding snippets of time over the last few years, Manning has released his next solo work, a self-produced EP entitled Glamping. It is an aspect of his career that allows him to express his own artistic voice in an unencumbered manner, but which is an important aspect of his overall mode of expression.
“I am really blessed with the career I have had. First and foremost, it has to do with just feeling creatively fulfilled. I found that remaining as versatile as possible and doing as many things as possible as a musician keeps the job exciting, frankly. Just as I am kind of tired and bored of one thing as it becomes predictable, I am offered a different line of work and it requires different tools. I like the challenge of each job,” he said.
“Certainly, as a freelance session person, no two jobs are the same and you’re always required to access a different skill set. And Beck continues to reinvent himself with each record and that always keeps that part of my life interesting. Over the last few years I have done more arranging; I have arranged strings and brass on Morrisey’s last record [2017’s Low in High School] which was a lot of fun, but a whole different hat to wear.”
Glamping, in a way, carries on the artistic trajectory that began with Jellyfish in the early 1990s, through two critically acclaimed albums, and through later bands he co-founded, including The Moog Cookbook and Imperial Drag.
“The solo thing was kind of how I started. My calling card in this business became my first band and that had enough success that we made a bit of a name for ourselves. And we would still be together but personal differences and all those clichés had reared their heads. So that’s the most fulfilling thing to do for myself. There is nothing more gratifying than creating songs from scratch and the process of developing them, seeing them through to fruition and then going out and performing those songs. It’s very personal like that. It’s a natural extension of your personality. You’re not part of someone else’s army, as rewarding as those experiences can be,” Manning explained, who added that he utilized the Pledge model to fund, promote and sell Glamping as a way to nurture direct interaction with both new and old fans alike.
“It became quite clear very early on with Jellyfish way back when that the fans we were appealing to they either got and understood what we were doing 100 per cent or they didn’t. Rarely was there any kind of middle ground or passive fans. And keeping that in mind, I knew when I did my solo records that were mostly released in Japan, that regardless of the size of the audience, that audience was very passionate, they liked being involved, they liked learning as much about myself and the inner workings of the music I was making. And to nurture those relationships was a huge value.
“With the Pledge model, the whole thing is laid out and you literally can have as successful a campaign as you want. Artists are invited to do things they wouldn’t normally do, even if they were signed to an indie label. I am new to it, and the whole social media aspect but it intrigued me. I saw the possibilities of creating a future together with my fans in a long-term way. Because that’s all I am interested in doing for the rest of my life, frankly. I enjoy the freelance work, and I am still sitting on a pile of unreleased solo material. If there’s an audience out there that really wants to hear it, I want to be able to create it for them, realize it for them and get it to them. And the Pledge model is very much set up for that.”
The affiliation with Beck goes back nearly two decades and has been a rewarding and fun experience.
“I joined him when he was touring Odelay at the end of 1997. Around 2002 I took a break from the road, period I didn’t tour or travel with anybody for about nine years. It was at that time he was getting the old version of the band together again anyways, so it makes a lot more sense for that time in my life, and that was around 2011 and I have been with him non-stop ever since. It’s been a great experience and I love working with him and the rest of the band,” he said.
Manning is in many ways a perfectionist, especially when it comes to releasing music under his own name. He has a sonic outcome in his head and keeps whittling away at the music, melody and lyrics until he reaches the creative goal he set out to achieve. Even though he opened up his process to allow for external performers on some of the tracks, the same end game was always in mind when compiling the material for the Glamping EP.
“My methods and approach haven’t changed since the Jellyfish days, but what’s happened is that I have more freedom and less dependency on the traditional record making model, thanks to the computer and the software that’s allowed the creator to make music. My standards for the songs are still the same. I have this production style, songwriting style and a way of seeing a song to fruition and arrangement style that I have always enjoyed and is my preference, even though I have done lots of different kinds of music,” he explained.
“So, when I am working on my own stuff, it’s going to be time consuming no matter what doing it that way. But ideally stuff gets a little bit easier doing it all myself, because wrangling a bunch of guys and paying them, as talented as they are is tough, and I certainly did a bit of that on this record, I worked with more outside people on this record than on any other solo album. Which was an experiment for me and it was wonderful. There are pros and cons to both ways of doing it. Just to be able to get quality recording sounds out of other people’s home studios, there is a lot of computer software that allows for freedom and versatility. It speeds a lot of the process up, and it doesn’t require a traditional record company budget.
“But you still have to know what you’re doing. You still have to know what the goal is. And in my case, I raised the bar very high. There were many moments on this EP where I would record something, like spending maybe three days recording vocals only to listen back and go ‘well, that’s not going to cut it. I am going to have to change my plan, change my approach because it’s not good enough.’ And it’s because I know what I am shooting for and as trained as I am, there is always something new to learn. The process, for me, invites you to go deep and ask what is my true sound? It’s a great journey of self discovery which is one of the reasons I like it no matter how many recordings I do.”
The eclectic pop stylings of Manning’s creations are intelligently composed, flawlessly performed and yet still retain an accessibility and listenability as anything you would hear on modern pop radio. The tireless effort he puts into crafting songs such as Operator is indicative of both his compositional excellence and his willingness to bring in an outside collaborator to shore up areas of a song where he feels there is a deficiency.
“That song came out of a writing session with a gentleman who was working on his own record. He and I assembled a bunch of songs together and this was one that just didn’t develop and sat on a shelf, although I always believed in the ideas behind it. I believed in the verse and chorus for a long time and I had his permission to develop it and see it through. It had no lyrics and I asked my friend [and noted artist and producer] Chris Price if he could help flesh out a lyric,” he said.
“When I demo a lot of my songs, I just sing gibberish and nonsense, although in this case for the chorus I was singing ‘operator.’ Based on my gibberish, Chris turned it into a story about a lonely guy who is so desperate for conversation he was happy just to get the operator on the phone. Which, if you think of it, is really from a bygone era, a thing of the past. But he had a lot of fun with the wordplay there. I took his first draft and massaged it a bit and tried different things here and there and that’s how we came up with the tune.
“I terms of arranging it, I had a lot of fun singing very full and lush background vocals with another very talented singer/songwriter in town named Bleu McAuley. His voice and mine are very different from each other, so I though it would make for a good harmony team. I am very proud of how those vocals came out. It’s pretty much a straight up 1970s AM radio song.”
Another song that had sat on the shelf for a while waiting for some re-examination and revision was It’s All a Dream, which also saw an injection of potently emotive lyrics from Price.
“That was a song that I had intentionally written for this incredible Taiwanese artist that I had been working with about 10 years ago named Joanna Wang. She and I both realized it was much too poppy for her as her stuff is a little more adventurous and experimental. I let that one sit on the back burner for years, but I couldn’t get it out of my head because I believed in it so much. But, again, I didn’t have a lyric,” Manning explained.
“I hired Chris and brought him into the fold to speed up the process because lyrics just take me forever. It’s a real chore. I am very happy with them, Chris did a great job and when all is said and done, I have never put a lyric out there that I didn’t believe in. But it’s a hell of a process. For It’s All a Dream I probably wrote the music for that in 20 minutes. It just came very fast because I knew where I was headed with it.
“Again, Chris wrote a great lyric and I just massaged it a little bit as he took my gibberish and my scatting and turned it into something that made sense and completely fit the tone of the song. It’s a fun song, and a very keyboard-oriented song. The secret is really lots and lots of background vocals and keyboards. It’s an up-tempo ballad really. And we added a background singer from Beck’s group named Cecilia Peruti, she sang with me and Bleu in we got a very Fleetwood Mac sounding vocal on there that I think is pretty cool.”
I’m Not Your Cowboy is essentially a song about expectations and desperately wanting the person you are attracted to to fit those expectations, as unrealistic as they may be.
“It’s basically about a woman who has put this guy on a pedestal and she is deeply in love with him. But it’s only because she is attached to him being somebody who he is really not. He is a city slicker and she wants this rugged modern country cowboy guy for her romantic fantasy to be complete. The song is basically about him telling her that it’s not going to happen. This is who I am. I thought it was a really fun lyric and Chris did a good job on nailing the essence of that one, while I helped finish it off,” he said, adding he brought in more performers to create and authentic brassy vibe.
“I hired a gentleman named Jesse McGinty to play trumpet and trombone. I arranged the big brass section for that. We went into the studio and multitracked a bunch of trumpets and trombones and made it sound like a large ensemble. He’s a young jazz kid from Los Angeles and I was introduced to him through Bleu and he really surprised me and did a very good job, just what the song needed.”
Manning continues to tour with Beck off and on throughout the summer and into the fall. This includes a swing through Canada in July with stops in Toronto on July 7, Montreal July 10, Quebec City on July 12, wrapping up in Ottawa on July 13.
As for touring in support of his own music, Manning says it’s difficult to book and pay for the sort of band he would require to bring the music to life, and that it would also be hard to do a stripped-down sort of touring arrangement.
“It’s hard to get any kind of live entity out there unless you’re sleeping on people’s floors and eating McDonalds, and all crammed into one little van the whole time, which we all did in our 20s. I am not interested in doing that any more or putting any of my friends through it. So, we will play some live shows, I do want to do that. Also, what’s going to happen is we’re going to try to film the live performances or even just try to get ourselves into a rehearsal room and do a really nice live video recording that we can upload and share with people,” he said.
“It’s not sustainable to do a traditional tour unless by some fluke I had a song in a movie that shot me into a whole new register of fame and fortune and the buckets of cash are flowing in. We are looking at playing some major markets and seeing what that is going to look like. But it’s to be determined.”
For more information on Manning and his solo work, visit http://rjmjr.net, or https://www.facebook.com/RogerJosephManningJr.
For more information on the current Beck Colors tour, visit http://www.beck.com/tour-17.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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