Now that Manny Houston is back in the Charleston music scene, he isn’t wasting any time.
The 29-year-old singer-songwriter resides in the realm of hip-hop, but as a classically trained pianist with a penchant for collaborating with diverse artists, Houston’s style is as fluid as it is complex.
Since moving back home from Las Vegas four months ago, Houston put together a tribute show entitled Wonder-Struck: A Stevie Wonder Spectacular which debuts Aug. 26 at the Charleston Music Hall, in addition to cooking up hip-hop and funk jam sessions with local musicians at Bar Mash downtown and Tin Roof in West Ashley.
“I feel like I’ve gotten enough experience now that I need to bring some of the knowledge I’ve gained back to my home base and share it or help build other people up in some form or another,” Houston told the Charleston City Paper.
After spending 12 years in the local music scene, Houston left in 2018 to gig at Disney World as a principal vocalist.
“I moved away because I wanted to find more of a sense of community,” he said. “I was doing musical theater, and I wanted to be around people who looked like me doing musical theater.”
Then Houston moved to New York City and in the fall of 2019 performed in the latest iteration of the Forbidden Broadway franchise entitled Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation.
During the 2020 pandemic, he joined a virtual writing community, Voisey, which pushed him to move to Los Angeles in 2021. He participated in a Los Angeles Academy of Music Production writing camp with producers who have collaborated with major artists such as Ne-Yo, Rihanna and Katy Perry. And last year, Houston performed in a Broadway tour of Freestyle Love Supreme, an improvisational hip-hop comedy musical group.
“There are opportunities out there I know my homies here in Charleston [don’t have] a connection with,” Houston said. “If I have a connect, then let me give it to you. You know what I mean? To be back with this community and build it — that’s the biggest thing.”
Taking it to the next level
Houston learned a lot about full-scale show production since he ventured out of the Holy City, and he said now that he’s back, he looks forward to working with the many immensely talented local musicians to put on high-quality concerts — starting with the Stevie Wonder tribute.
“I think that Charleston is the top music city in America in terms of musicians,” he said. “The way we all gel here is completely different from other places. We can all play our asses off. So, let’s take the production level to the next step. I need the tribute show to be at the highest potential, and I’m putting people in the show that I know want to take things to the next level — that way we can all be partaking in a new experience.”
Wonder-Struck: A Stevie Wonder Spectacular is produced in collaboration with Charleston entertainment agency The ZD Experience and features bassist Corey Stephens, drummer AJ Jenkins, keyboardist Stephen Washington, saxophonist Chris Williams, guitarist David George Sink, a six-piece choir and special guest rappers Slim S.O.U.L and Mike B.
The theatricality of Stevie Wonder’s music is what drew Houston to the icon, and he said he realized Wonder’s music has been a gateway for his own creativity recently during the process of writing new songs for an upcoming album.
Houston is pulling out all the stops for the Music Hall performance, and will open it with an original story poem to set the tone for the evening.
“This isn’t just a Stevie tribute — this is me doing his songs but taking the arrangements and flipping them inside out,” he said. “I’m also doing hip-hop arrangements. I am pulling from my theater background and [incorporating] dance solos [I] choreographed. There’s also an acting aspect too, because this [show] is telling a story of a boy that fell in love and then fell out of love — a lot of Stevie Wonder’s music tells that story.”
The most important lesson Houston said he’s learned lately is to simply believe in his ability to make things happen.
“I used to have this idea that if people didn’t support it, then it couldn’t be done,” he said. “I have to keep my blinders up otherwise I’ll slow down.”
It all comes down to music being a safe haven for him.
“When it has been some of the lowest moments of my life, music hasn’t let me down,” he said. “Music is important to me because it takes care of me. I know it’s going to continue to take care of me for the rest of my life.”
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