ROUZE: You spent most of the decade packing Manhattan bars with a punky little pop band ideal for the '90s market. Why didn't that make you a star?

ROUZE: So then you formed Mannix and started working the heartland sound. Weren't you worried that it was a little trendy?

Mannix: The album has elements of that, but I prefer to think of it as kind of folksy. It probably had a lot to do with what I was listening to at the time. I mainly wanted to make some kind of break from Oral Groove. But it seems that I'll never get away from writing three-minute pop songs. That may be why I've never gotten too far in that whole No Depression scene. I've just been on the periphery. My whole career has been like that.

ROUZE: Do you at least take some comfort in being in New York City, where local acts just don't seem capable of becoming rock stars?

Mannix: Well, there's Spacehog—but I guess they're actually from the U.K. But no, I don't take comfort in that at all. I've thought about moving a few times, especially when Oral Groove broke up. I thought about it, but Chris Peck—who's my drummer and my friend—couldn't make the jump. He's a big part of what I'm doing, so I decided to stay in town and finally get a manager.

ROUZE: There's a big Manhattan hipster pop underground that parallels the movement in Los Angeles. Why aren't you ever involved in those things?

Mannix: To be honest, that whole obsession with the pop sound annoys the shit out of me. I consider the term to be really strange, even though the album I'm working on now has more of a pop direction. I just hate to be pigeonholed. I'm a big fan of Charlie Rich, and I guess he had a similar problem with his record companies, because they couldn't narrow him down. But I should add that I've played out west at the International Pop Overthrow shows over the past three years, and it's really made some connections for me out there.

ROUZE: Finally, the packaging looks great on Pretty Strange. Where does the money come from?

Mannix: Basically, I've worked. I was a branch manager for an import-export company for about seven years and saved a lot of money. I made a choice about eight months ago to just start concentrating on my music full time. Pretty Strange is doing well. It's gotten plenty of distributors, and the Internet has been great. It still seems like things are getting there.