Tony Manley talks about his life & music

Today in our music section we have Tony Manley, a 26 years old song writer and recording artist.

Twist Online : First of all please introduce yourself to our readers.
Tony Manley : Hello, people! I am Tony Manley, I write and record music. I am from Oak Hill, West Virginia. I am 26 years old, and I unlocked Surfing Pikachu in Pokemon Stadium. That last part is extremely important.

Twist Online : Who or what inspired you to get into music industry?
Tony Manley : When I was a kid, I’d say 7 years old, my brother had a Reel Big Fish cassette tape, and so that was like my first favorite band. Then about a year later he had a VHS tape with music videos from The Offspring, Blink 182, and Green day and I absolutely fell in love with music at that point and I knew what I wanted to do. “I Choose” by The Offspring and “Adam’s Song” by Blink I would watch the videos for over and over. I taught myself how to play the guitar and that brings us to about now.

Twist Online : Tell us about your recent release “New York City (Can You Save Me?)”?
Tony Manley : New York City came about when I first knew that I was going to write this album “She 86’d Me” as a therapy session for myself, and like the whole album I recorded it in a room alone in the dead of night, and one night I felt like I was going absolutely insane. I just had so much stuff going on, and I was really heart broken, confused, lost, felt extremely alone. I was getting black out drunk a lot. I thought about what it would be like to drive somewhere with a ton of people and just start over, and New York City seems so different from where I live, I came up with the “Hook” I guess you’d call it in the chorus, and I wrote the lyrics around that theme, and really I just vented exactly how I was feeling at the time.

Twist Online : What kind of response you have received from the release?
Tony Manley : It’s been great! I think a lot of people relate to it, it’s an extremely honest song.

Twist Online : What’s your favorite music genre?
Tony Manley : Oh, man. I want to say “Punk” or “Pop punk” but to be honest I like all genres.

Twist Online : What’s the best part of being a music artist?
Tony Manley : The tons and tons of drunken unprotected one night stands for sure. I’m joking. Probably just having an outlet, and being able share your stories or whatever you’re feeling at the time with people in such a beautiful or cool way. I really love it when people tell me they relate to my music, because I know what it’s like when I hear a song and I’m like “That’s exactly what I’m going through” and it kind of helps you know you aren’t so alone when things get dark.

Twist Online : Have you set some goals to achieve?
Tony Manley : I knew that I pretty much topped out after the Pikachu thing. Haha, but yeah, I definitely want to take my music as far as it can go and give an extremely awkward but somehow charming drunken acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards.

Twist Online : Are you working on any new project?
Tony Manley : Oh I’m always writing. I have a band that I’m working on called “Tuesday at Midnight” and that album is almost finished, and I already have a ton of ideas to follow up my current album but I really want to focus on getting “She 86’d Me” heard.