John McManus, a 25-year-old born ’n’ bred Middletown resident, is making some serious headway in the local music scene. McManus has three music projects in the works: a solo acoustic career, as lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the rock band Jumpship, and as the head of his recently-launched record label called Self Evident Records.

McManus got his start while an eighth grader attending Penncrest High School, where he first picked up a guitar and began taking lessons at age 13.

"I saw (Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like) Teen Spirit,’ and that was it, I was hooked," he said. "That was the spark. I started with alt-rock, and then I went back, all the way back to the Beatles, and then I went forward. Got into the folk scene, blues, metal, so it’s a little bit of everything."

McManus has been playing off and on with Jumpship members since 1996. The band, featuring Keith Roman on lead guitar, Dan Reimer on drums and Mike Meredith on bass, took a bit of a hiatus last summer and reformed in December.

"The band is really starting to come together," he said. "That’s where my first heart is, the band that I’m a part of ..We all want to make our living doing it. And we’re moving. It’s a long road to do it, we also have our day jobs, but we’re committed to it."

He said he sees both the solo and band ventures moving along smoothly in coming years.

He’s recently done a five-song solo CD called "Side One," and said he’s aiming to do another.

He’d also like to do a CD with Jumpship, which hasn’t laid anything down yet.

But exposure may prove difficult with radio stations nationwide reporting a decrease in the rock audience paralleling a movement into hip-hop and Spanish-language stations.

"Y100 just got the plug pulled," he said. "That hurts people like me. They did local music, they did the thing at Grape Street (Pub) ..Modern rock, whatever ‘alternative’ is, there’s no station for that anymore. If you like diverse music, having that gone is really bad.

"There is music out there, you just have to kind of look for it. You can’t rely on MTV to give it to you anymore. MTV doesn’t even do ‘M’ anymore."

And this is where the local live music scene comes to the forefront.

As McManus said, the Philly music scene is incredible, even if it is now having trouble finding a broadcasting outlet beyond college stations.

McManus said he’s not a huge fan of the current hip-hop wave sweeping the radio, instead drawing inspiration from old masters like John Lennon, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Cream, and so on.

Which is not to say he’s turned his back on today’s music entirely, but the mainstream rock available garnered little more than an "ehhhh" from the aspiring rocker.

"The classics are more inspiring than the stuff that’s there now," he said. "We need something fresh, we need something new. Rock in general is hurting, pop-rock is hurting for something new. We need another explosion of a city, of a scene.

"(We need) something honest, something out of left field. I think it will come soon, it’s just a matter of who."

It could be Philly, he added. With the recent glut of local bands like Pepper’s Ghost, Jealousy Curve and Ike growing a steady and loyal fan base, you could probably go to any of the local open mic nights and see at least one group or performer that will blow you away.

"Its all here, we just need to be discovered," he said.

He is reluctant to call himself Jumpship’s "band leader." It is more of a collective drive to do what is best for the song, he said, even if that goes against his personal opinion.

"Over this amount of time (in a band), you learn that it is what the song needs first," he said. "We wouldn’t have been together this amount of time if we had the ego bashings."

While McManus said he leans more to a folksy sound in his solo stuff, Jumpship is a straight-ahead rock band. Not that that means he’s a different person on stage in either scenario, but as the band taps a certain energy in him, so is his solo stuff more intimate.

To see for yourself what McManus has to offer in either arena, you can catch Jumpship at a 10 p.m. all-ages show at Stoney’s British Pub April 2. This will be their first live show in quite some time.

McManus will also showcase his solo stuff at a 9 p.m. all-ages show at Aston’s Mt. Hope United Methodist Church: Coffee House Against Cancer on April 9 with Jennifer Rufo and Dave Clark.

Do singer-songwriters have girls throwing themselves at them by the legions? Because that could explain why there are so damned many of them. John McManus brings the rock, quietly. Side One consists of five mid-tempo acoustic rock numbers about all the right subjects: love, girls, life and you know, stuff. John McManus's saving grace, in the world of local singer-songwriters, is that he seems to sing naturally, and doesn't sound like he's had some vocal coach teaching him to sing "properly." Nothing new to be found here, but still an enjoyable listen, and from what I hear, a hard-working performer. Probably a hit with the college crowd.