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Johnny Alters and "Manny."
Johnny Alters and "Manny."
If you’ve ever gotten a shot or a check-up at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, there’s a chance you might have actually been treated by a reggae “star.” Before becoming a nurse at the hospital, Montauk local Johnny Alters dedicated himself to working with musicians, doing anything from making coffee to working in the studio, for many years.
“I did [music] for a few decades, and then I walked away from it, stored all my recording gear, and decided I wanted to be a nurse,” Mr. Alters said.
Mr. Alters then went back to college at NYU Nursing, and did rotations at Mount Sinai and NYU Langone before becoming a nurse at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, where he has worked for 10 years. During the height of the pandemic, Mr. Alters worked in the COVID-19 ward, and spent his time volunteering for the ER and the ICU. When they became available, Mr. Alters began distributing vaccines in clinics across Suffolk County, from the Shinnecock Nation to local churches.
When the spread of the pandemic began to slow, with more time on his hands, Mr. Alters decided to switch gears. Given his musical background, and passion for music of all kinds, making an album was the perfect project.
“I needed a release, an escape, and I decided I wanted to do music with Manny,” Mr. Alters said.
Manny, a Montauk-based musician who uses just his first name (like Cher or Madonna) is originally from St. Lucia and has been in the music industry for years. As part of a reggae band, and then a solo artist, he toured across all of Long Island playing at restaurants and clubs for music lovers of all ages.
“When I got to Montauk, it reminded me of the Caribbean, where I am from, and so I decided to stay in Montauk,” Manny said.
Manny and Mr. Alters crossed paths a few years ago and instantly hit it off.
“I heard Manny performing at one of the clubs in Montauk,” Mr. Alters said. “I had just finished surfing and wanted a slice of pizza. I heard his voice from across the street and I just couldn’t believe how good it sounded.”
Since that cheesy meeting, they’ve kept in contact, and Mr. Alters has seen Manny perform at venues all across the island.
“I thought to myself, if I ever wanted to get into music again, it would have to be with this guy,” Mr. Alters said.
Although Mr. Alters had been a fan of Manny for a long time, they'd never made music together before they embarked on their recent collaboration, which produced an eight-track reggae album called “To The Sun,” released this summer. The album features songs like “Long Island Girls,” “Chill Out” and “Surfing Through the Wet Dream.”
“We’re beach lovers so we wanted to make an album that was like a tribute to summer,” Mr. Alters said.
The album name is all about celebrating the good times, “chilling out,” and the reggae beats are perfect for a lazy summer day, Mr. Alters said.
“‘To The Sun’ is about skipping the summer traffic … and taking a direct rocket ship to the sun,” he said.
Manny’s passion for reggae started early but wasn’t always supported, he said. When Manny was just a young kid, his father, a blues fan, preferred that Manny listen to other music genres.
“When I was younger, my father was strict and didn’t really approve of reggae, and didn’t approve of me listening to reggae,” Manny said.
But “reggae was in Manny’s blood,” Mr. Alters said, and the second track on the album, Reggae Street, Manny wrote when he was just 17 years old living in the Caribbean, and listening to reggae music in the streets of St. Lucia with his friends.
Mr. Alters’s favorite song off the album is actually a cover: “D'yer Mak’er,” by Led Zeppelin, which Mr. Alters explained was originally written as a reggae song.
“Jimmy Page, the guitarist in Led Zeppelin actually does a guitar solo in the original song,” Mr. Alters said.
“We didn’t put his solo in our version, but if he wants to come by and do a guitar solo we’ll adjust the song to fit him in there,” he joked.
For Manny, his favorite song is the more-downbeat “Who Has Seen the Wind.”
“It’s simple, but when you listen to the lyrics it says everything,” Manny said. “It’s based on a poem written during the romantic period and it's a somewhat sad song about how you can’t see sadness, you can’t touch it, but it's blowing through the trees and hopefully it will pass through.”
A somewhat unlikely pairing, the duo describe working together as an extremely rewarding, and at the same time enjoyable process.
“In some ways, Manny and I are so alike it's not even funny,” Mr. Alters said. “We’re both set in our ways, but we’re both such music lovers and such fans of music that we come together for the love of so many different genres.
“We both push each other, we’re both very demanding, we fight and bicker a little, but it ultimately comes together and it’s satisfying because I know I’m working with someone who has integrity and such a passion for what we’re doing,” he continued.
Mr. Alters only spoke highly of his co-collaborator whose voice he described as “distinctive,” and “uniquely his own.”
“Manny is going to be Manny no matter what you do,” Mr. Alters said. “He’s not going to be like, ‘I’m gonna try to sound more like Adam Levine.’ He’s gonna be Manny. If you ask him to do something and it doesn’t feel right, he’s going to make it his own.”
Manny expressed a similar sentiment about his music partner.
“It’s simple — we’re willing to listen to each other, which makes us work so well together,” Manny said.
“To the Sun” is available on most streaming platforms. For more information about the album and Manny, visit mannymontauk.com.
