Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
Roger Joseph Manning Jr. is an American power pop and electronic rock musician, singer, and songwriter with a prolific career in the industry. Roger’s career began as early as 1989, when he began arranging string, brass, wind, and vocal ensembles for Jellyfish, the first band he co-founded.
As his time with Jellyfish came to an end, he began his second co-founded band, Imperial Drag. Imperial Drag was together from 1994-1997 and saw overwhelming overseas success, particularly in England and Japan. At the same time, Roger co-founded The Moog Cookbook, which was started solely as a means to have a forum to express his and his partner’s love for the bygone era of vintage synthesizers and exotic keyboards. It was this duo that lead to his longtime relationship with Beck Hansen.
Roger has been working with Beck for around 20 years now. They have toured the world together and Roger has been a part of recording upwards of five critically acclaimed albums.
By 1997, Roger’s career as a freelance session keyboardist, songwriter, arranger, and background vocalist was in full swing. Since then, Roger has been involved in the creation of hundreds of pop/rock albums, film and TV soundtracks, commercials, radio spots, tours, and more.
Roger began his solo career in 2006, with the release of his first solo album “Solid State Warrior”. This album was released in Japan only, but was quickly followed by a release in the US under the title “The Land of Pure Imagination”, with slightly altered song content. His second album was also only released in Japan initially. This album, “Catnip Dynamite”, was released in Japan in 2008, and came to the US (along with three bonus tracks) in February 2009. His latest solo release was a 4-song EP called “Glamping”.
Roger is known for his unique style of playing various analog and digital synthesizers, and his main genres are electronica, power pop, psychedelia, and jazz. He also does session work with a number of artists and some commercial and soundtrack music. Through work he did with producer Jerry Finn, he was credited as keyboardist on a number of recordings with Blink-182. Roger is also credited with playing keyboards on several works by singer Morrissey between 2004 and 2009. In 2012, Roger worked as an arranger on Paramore’s double-platinum self-titled album. Most recently, he was featured on “Echoes of You” by Marianas Trench.
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