Roger Manning at Sidewalk

Roger Manning with Michelle Shocked

In New York City in the mid-1980s, Roger Manning was among the originators of the anti-folk community that spawned Beck, Regina Spektor, Michelle Shocked, Langhorne Slim, and the Washington Squares. The movement, birthed by the first anti-folkie, a man who called himself Lach, was a reaction to the more traditional folk scene in Greenwich Village, and was started by musicians whose more radical performance style could not get booked in those classic folk clubs. Inspired by beat poetry and punk rock, Manning wrote and performed a wordy, aggressive acoustic style of music (as aggressive as one can be with an acoustic guitar), and wound up recording for Black Flag's record company. An advocate for playing in alternate venues, Manning in 1985 challenged the legality of New York's longstanding ban on music in the subway and overturned the law in favor of the musicians. Manning now works as a web designer, and sporadically records and performs. He released his fourth and most recent self-titled album in 2014.

Sidewalk became the long-time settlement of the anti-folk movement, but the owner sold the restaurant and bar in December 2018 and the new owner announced he would close the venue for renovations on February 23, 2019. Many of the anti-folk artists returned to pay final respects to the venue whose future is uncertain. Manning was among the early anti-folk artists who returned to perform one final time. Manning solicited requests and played songs he selected. Accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, his brief set showcased his verbose wit, as with lyrics like "People work hard and end up with nothing. I ain't got nothing either, but at least I didn't work hard for it" (from "Pearly Blues"). He performed several songs in his rambling, talky style, then closed with a duet with Michelle Shocked, who then continued with her own set. Manning's set was pure modern folk; it just simply did not sound like what traditionalists expect of folk music.