Jack Manley

BIOGRAPHY

Jack Manley is the new solo project of singer/songwriter Jack Manley, whose former projects include Cosmonaut, The Jennifer Shop, and Spires. Jack grew up in Kingston, NY, and left to attend Fordham in the city, where he got deep into the indie rock scene and started his band Cosmonaut. After college, he toured with Cosmonaut and Spires, playing many NYC beloved venues from Glasslands to Music Hall of Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bowl.

A desire to work on his substance abuse issues and be near family and his aging sick father brought Jack home to Kingston in 2019. He started The Jennifer Shop then, which sadly fell apart once COVID hit. In the years that followed, deep in depression and addiction, he basically stopped playing music. After the overdose that almost killed him, he started writing songs again in the hospital in Poughkeepsie, on a broken guitar they happened to have there, which only had 4 strings. That month-long hospital stay helped save his life, and writing songs about his life helped heal him.

The band began to take shape in spring 2023 when Jack shared the songs he wrote in the hospital with his childhood friend classical guitar-player Billy Pierson, and the two of them started playing together at Colony Cafe in Woodstock’s weekly open mic nights. At one of those open mic nights, bass-player Addy Idol approached Jack and demanded in a way only he could to play with them, and then there were three. The band spent months playing and performing without a drummer and recorded their debut EP with drummer Josh Eppard (of Coheed and Cambria) In fall 2023 drummer Noah Sonenstein, a music student at Bard college and friend of Addy’s, finally made the band complete.

The band has played many local shows around Kingston and the Hudson Valley in the last few months, including Avalon, Big Cat, Graveside Variety, and Terrapin Kitchen. The band plans to go back into the studio in winter 2024 to record a full length album, and hopes to tour in the future.

Jack currently lives in Hurley, NY with his soon-to-be wife, cookbook author Anna Stockwell, and their two cats, Francis and Felix.