Lubbock’s Musical Lawyer

Stuck in a snow whiteout just before Thanksgiving while driving through the mountains to Angel Fire, New Mexico, the last thing Ann Manning expected was to compose the beginning of a musical. But that, says the Lubbock-based labor and employment attorney, is exactly what happened.

“Going through the mountains, up on the last hill, I could barely see anything,” she says. “All of a sudden, a song went [through my head]: clippity-clop-clop, follow that star. Clippity-clop, how awesome you are. I sat there writing down the music in my head in the whiteout, and finally got down into town in Angel Fire, and wrote the song.”

The tune would become one of the numbers in The Child is Born, an original musical Manning penned in collaboration with a college friend. The show was later staged at the Cactus Theater in Lubbock for two years in a row, with sold-out crowds.

“It was really, really fun,” says Manning.

The Child is Born may have been Manning’s first musical, but it was by no means her first foray into music. Prior to her debut as a composer, Manning had studied piano for many years. She took up the instrument at the age of 8, and her mother, whom she describes as “very strict,” required that Manning practice an hour a day.

Soon she was playing at church, and by eighth grade, she had learned the organ as well.

Manning’s love of music never waned in adulthood. Before attending law school, she taught elementary school music for 10 years. And after becoming a practicing attorney, she continued to play at her church every Sunday.

It was during those years, she says, that a music producer friend suggested she begin making recordings.

“He said, ‘You need to do a CD so your family will have it,’” Manning says.

At first, those CDs were intended to be sent to a small group. But within just a few years, the list of recipients ballooned.

“That first year, I ordered 50,” Manning says. “The next year I ordered 100, and the next year we ordered 500.”

The most recent order, Manning says, was 2,000. She and her husband give them away as Christmas gifts along with pictures of their family. Some of the songs are sacred, some are secular, and some are Christmas music. All are intended to be soothing.

“Anti-road rage music, really, is what it is,” says Manning, laughing.

It was soon after making that first recording that Manning had the mid-whiteout inspiration to write The Child is Born. She notes that what makes the show unique is, in part, the wide variety of musical genres it incorporates, including rap, country, bluegrass, rock-and-roll and Calypso, as well as standard sacred songs.

The story depicts the tale of Christ’s birth from the point of view of the animals who were present in the manger, and their subsequent journey from cranky and rebellious to joyful and kind.

“They see Jesus, and the gossip birds turn into the gospel birds,” she says. “They make this transformation through the story.”

Manning has now produced over a dozen CDs. She continues to play piano for her small church south of Lubbock, and continues to practice law; she was recently named a Distinguished Alumni of the Texas Tech Law School. 

Earlier this month, Manning attended a performance of The Child is Born staged by a nearby church. Seeing the children have so much fun was deeply heartening, she says, and represented what she’d always hoped to accomplish with the show.

“That’s what I had really intended, for it to be used by church schools, to have a play for Christmas,” she says, “because they don’t have many more of those anymore.”