Gena & Billy Mann Combine Music & Mission in Weston

above: Gena’s top from The Frankie Shop and is wearing vintage Levi’s.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPENCER HEYFRON

Billy and Gena Mann smile with their dog, Summer

Samantha Yanks: Let’s start with Weston, which you call home. How did you come to move here?

Billy Mann: Twenty years ago, we were like a lot of families bursting in their Manhattan apartments, and our place pretty much always looked like a rainbow toddler bomb exploded. I remember walking my son to Central Park to play on the swings, and we had to stand in line behind half a dozen parents and nannies. I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this?” I wanted our own swing set.

Gena Mann: I was definitely more reluctant than Billy to leave New York, and insisted (that) if we left, we needed to be near water. Billy was on a songwriting trip in San Francisco with one of his mentors, Walter Afanasieff, and Michael Bolton walked into the studio. He heard our family was thinking of moving out of the city and told Billy, “You’re coming to Westport,” and started naming many of Billy’s musical heroes who live in the area — Nile Rodgers, Keith Richards, José Feliciano — and talking about the beaches, and the town and the people. Two weeks later, we were standing in Michael Bolton’s kitchen in Westport being introduced to our real estate agent, Sheila Shupack.

left: Family portrait captured by Spencer Heyfron. middle: Gena’s hair done by Emily Sandoval. right: Gena’s dress and sweater are Jenni Kayne. Billy’s sweater is Todd Snyder and pants from Saks Fifth Avenue.

SY: What is it that you love about Fairfield County? And please, each of you give us your top 5 Fairfield County spots.

GM: I love Weston for its small-town charm, incredible schools and because you always run into someone you know at the grocery store. It feels just enough like we live in the country without being too far from conveniences.

Gena’s top 5 spots:
1. Compo Beach: I’m happy whenever I am at the beach, any season, and especially love to paddleboard at Longshore in summer.
2. The Whelk: When we moved here almost 20 years ago, there were virtually no restaurants. So glad to live here in the Bill Taibe era.
3. St Mary’s by the Sea: Kind of a surprise to find such a beautiful waterfront walkway in Bridgeport.
4. Cobbs Mill Inn: Here’s praying it reopens.
5. Sakura: So many happy memories having birthday dinners with our family, when we don’t have a birthday, and all through Covid — I got takeout. I need an hibachi fix every once in a while.

Billy’s 5 beloved Spots:
1. Compo Beach: All year round: Lobster rolls, white wine and sunsets are hard to beat.
2. Casa Me: Legit Italian! I haven’t been disappointed yet.
3. The Saugatuck Reservoir: I used to ride my motorcycle there to sit and meditate. If you haven’t gone, it’s a great place to go clear your mind or have a deep conversation.
4. LeChat Farm: Amazing upgrade since we moved here. Great family events!
5. Bluebird Inn, Easton: For breakfast!

SY: As parents of a child with special needs, have you found a supportive community here?

GM: Over time we have met incredible people in this community who have accepted our children and family at every stage, from summer camp at the Wilton YMCA, where they allowed our sons to attend with special education paras, to Temple Israel … to The Granola Bar — who allowed our son Jasper to volunteer in their commissary for the past several years.

BM: The biggest shift for us came when we met other autism families who we could talk to, share our experiences with and feel safe with. There’s no greater resource for families with special needs than finding other families like yours — people who “get it.” And along the way, our little micro-community would collectively identify the parks, places and restaurants that make families like ours feel welcome.

SY: The passion with which you carry out your mission to support children with special needs is impressive and requires vigilance and dedication. What does that look like for your family?

BM: Gena is a star, mom, and navigates our two boys and two girls in an almost supernatural way. Somehow she’s rarely out of breath. Then again, she was the photo editor of Elle Magazine when she was 23, and her unflappable ability to produce elaborate photoshoots with high-maintenance celebrities and deal with their reps and needs came in more than handy when balancing the needs, schedules and day-to-day blocking and tackling for all of our kids. Neither of us knew what we were doing, but we really made a pact with one another that we would not let our relationship, our fun, our pride in our kids, get sucked into what can feel like a really challenging black hole of issues that come with special-needs parenting.

GM: Billy is more of a big-picture person and he felt really frustrated that there weren’t autism resources for families like ours when Jasper was first diagnosed. …One day in the spring of 2006 as we were driving to see a movie in Fairfield, we had to pull over because a young Senator Billy had invited to our home to discuss autism policy was calling to discuss the gathering.

Spoiler alert: that senator was Barack Obama. Earlier that year, our friend — and my former boss — Atoosa Rubenstein, who founded CosmoGirl introduced us to Suzanne and Bob Wright, the founders of Autism Speaks (and Sasco Hill residents). Billy joined the board of Autism Speaks and found himself helping the Obama administration’s successful passing of a huge autism funding bill into law.
He wasn’t born to fit in and I guess neither were our boys. But if you ask Billy what plaque or award is the most important to him, he will tell you none of them compare to watching our son receive the first pen in the Oval Office from President Obama after he signed that funding bill into law. We have it framed on our wall.

SY: How best should people educate themselves about children with special needs? What are some services, tools and organizations to find out more?

GM: Due to the sharp rise of autism over the past 20 years — 1 in 36 children now — it feels like everyone now knows someone who has a child on the autism spectrum. When our kids were first in Weston Public School, I would go into Jasper’s class at the beginning of each year to teach the kids about autism and about what made him different and special. Kids now seem much more familiar with kids who have special needs and learn differently. Today parents can go on YouTube or use ChatGPT to ask questions and get a ton of information, but we still think Autism Speaks can be a great introductory resource for parents with newly diagnosed children. Our younger son Felix attended Winston Prep, an incredible private school in Norwalk for different learners. The Profound Autism Alliance is an important charity we support. …With that we have recently become involved with Abilis, a Greenwich-based nonprofit that provides services and supports for 800 individuals with special needs in Fairfield County.

BM: I think beyond the critical services and tools, our greatest hope is that people try to provide room for kids whose behaviors are different and who learn differently. As autism can be an invisible disability, often a young autistic person may not at first appear to have challenges, but maybe when you figure out that someone might need a little more time, or patience that you give it freely. Our digital world is so fast, and we are so impulse-to-impact-driven that asking people to make room for others who need some patience can sometimes be a heavier lift than it should be. I think about that a lot, especially in such an affluent area where we all are so spoiled just by living here.

left: Fender Precision Bass next to an old nylon guitar. middle: Gena wearing Jenni Kayne. right: At the board, Turtle Sound Studios

SY: And how did the two of you meet?

BM: I have a very heavy backstory that, in addition to spending a couple of years living in my car, also includes having been married when I was in my twenties to an incredible young woman, Rema Hort, who died nine months after we were married from stomach cancer. As you can imagine, a burgeoning musician, widower with a professionally and financially uncertain future, was not exactly the ideal marriage candidate for a nice girl like Gena.

GM: My older sister, Julie, was friends with Rema and actually went to their wedding. In the year or two that followed, she ran into Billy in New York, and they stayed in touch. He needed photos taken for something, and as I was a photo editor at the time. Julie connected us, definitely not with the intention of fixing us up. Billy was on tour at the time and had a show at Tramps in New York and invited me to the concert. That first meetup was the start of a long, and slow, coming together.

BM: Not long after we met, I assured her I would never get married again and that she should run from the disastrous musician who traveled all the time and find a nice boy who worked at Goldman Sachs. And her friends and family gave her the same advice.

GM: I knew he was the one. I just waited him out.

SY: How did you know it was time to start a family?

GM: When we married, we had dated for four years. We had run around New York, and traveled a lot. September 11 came about four months after our wedding, and like a lot of people who took stock of life after that day, we decided to start a family. The first few years were an absolute blur; our boys are 15 months apart!

SY: Tell us a bit about each of your children and their names and ages.

GM: Jasper is 21. He is profoundly autistic, joyful and has been a teacher for all of us. Felix is 20, he attends Landmark College in Vermont, one of only two schools in the country for neurodiverse students, and he loves music and traveling. Lulu is 16, she is a junior at Weston High School. She loves reading, musical theater and choir. Indie is nine, she is in fourth grade at Weston Intermediate School, and she runs the whole show at our house.

SY: What are you both passionate about doing locally?

BM: The people who know us and many of the challenges we have been through also know us to have an incredibly happy marriage. But that didn’t fall in our laps. As soon as Jasper was diagnosed, Cece McCarton, an autism pioneer from the McCarton Center, told us that we would have to take care of each other and invest time in our marriage to keep us together.

GM: Since then, we always have at least one “date night” every week. Even if it means sitting on a bench eating a slice of pizza, we have been religious about always checking in on each other. I wish it wasn’t true, but we’ve seen a lot of relationships get lost in the undertow of parenthood.

SY: Gena, you have an impressive editorial background. Can you tell us a bit about your career?

GM: I worked in magazines in the late ’90s/early 2000s. I was the photo editor of Elle Magazine and then Oprah Magazine during its launch year. Then I was the photo director at Cosmogirl when I had the boys and left magazines when Jasper was diagnosed with autism to dive into figuring out his care. We moved to CT and had the girls while living in Weston, and then, in 2016, a former magazine colleague approached me about starting a shopping and lifestyle platform for families raising children with special needs. We started Wolf+Friends that year, which morphed into a community app for moms raising kids with special needs to meet other moms living in their area. It was an amazing startup and we had exciting traction before covid when suddenly nobody was meeting anyone out in their neighborhood anymore and sustaining a community platform while home schooling four kids became difficult. Wolf+Friends was acquired in 2022 by Dotcom Therapy.

SY: Let’s get into music a bit. Billy, when we were photographing this cover, taking a guitar out was such a natural act. You mentioned you love to play for your son when he is home. Can you share a bit about that?

BM: If I’m being truthful and abandon the “guitar is an extension of myself” cliché, I think I just feel more secure with a guitar in my hands, on my lap, even on my back. … It makes sense that all of our kids have music woven into their lives. While both of our boys are neurodivergent, our younger son, Felix, has perfect pitch and plays guitar and piano constantly. Our girls are also super into music. Lulu is President of Company at Weston High School and just played Gretchen in this year’s production of Mean Girls and Indie sings with us sometimes, loves dancing and both girls strum guitars with me, too.

SY: Can you tell us about your studio and collection of instruments. Do you enjoy playing yourself or working more with artists developing their talent? Or both?

GM: I had an insane wish list for us when we started looking to live outside the city. …I basically wanted a slice of Central Park that felt safe for our autistic kids to play in, without waiting for swings. And yes, while we totally love Westport and all of the amenities, Weston has two-acre zoning and is more rural, and I wanted a retreat feeling so that when artists came to our little compound, they could lie in the hammock and write lyrics, or go out on the canoe to practice, or swim. So finding our home took time and when we found it, I was worried that artists might not want to come more than an hour outside the city to Weston to work, so I wanted to make sure it felt special here.

BM: If you asked me if I preferred doing music for myself versus developing other artists in the past, I would probably say I preferred the solitary part of it. But I think that’s in part because I didn’t want to rely on other people’s schedules or work ethic. I’m an extremely hard worker and have always felt like if I can’t outplay someone, I’ll outwork them. But as I got more successful, I started to realize that higher altitudes of talent brought higher intensity and a lot of humility. …I realized quickly that I get better faster playing with people who are approaching music from a different perspective than me.

SY: Professionally, Billy: Can you share a bit about your impressive music career? Who are some of your favorite artists that you have worked with?

BM: If Forrest Gump had been about a music journeyman, it definitely would be me — a story no one would believe could happen. I started writing songs and playing guitar at 5. Between 4th and 9th grade I went to six different schools in Philly, even while I was a good student who excelled at music. As long as I was doing music, I wasn’t in trouble and I didn’t get sucked into the more lethal booby traps that a lot of my peers did with “that life.” When I finished school, I had a series of manager experiences that ultimately led me to get out of Philly and live in my car for about two years. (Years later) I got signed as a solo artist that came out on A&M Records, and it was a flop. But the whole time I was recording that first album, I was trying to write songs for other people, with other people. And some amazing things came out of that time: I learned the music industry, I got to tour with amazing artists like Sting, Hall & Oates and Page/Plant, and later wound up writing or producing with some of them.

left: Mann cave. middle: Billy playing on vintage Steinway. right: Gena’s makeup done by Emily Rosnick

SY: During your time living at your Weston home you have had an impressive roster of artists come for a visit. Can you share a few names? What emerging artists are you enjoying working with now?

GM: Our home in Weston has seen a lot of incredible artists and I have some hilarious highlight moments that stick out for me. The Backstreet Boys came for a week and half of the guys stayed at the house and the other half crashed at the Westport Inn. …I remember John Legend and I writing, and on a break he took my son Felix riding through Weston on our bicycle built-for-two. Of course, Michael Bolton, coming over and spending most of our time together in the sunroom talking about fatherhood and then the two of us writing Christmas songs at the Steinway. …But we’ve also had President Obama, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Congressman Jim Himes, and other leaders here to mainly talk about how to help support autism families with funding and more inclusive policies. And I’m not just about the Democrats; I’m open to speaking to anyone who wants to help autism families. They are my political party.

BM: I do really love developing artists and somehow I’ve got a knack for finding talent in their infancy and taking that risk. Some new artists I’m really loving working with right now is an indie project from Staten Island called Ferry Townes, which is signed to Licorice Pizza in L.A., a supertalented hip-hop Mexican-American artist called Obed Padilla, and I have an indie company with my partner, Benton James, where we had a top 10 classical album with neo-classical pianist, BLKBOK. And we partnered with fellow Westonite Jon Singer’s music publishing company, Spirit Music, and signed hip-hop producer TWhyXclusive who won 3 Grammys this year for Killer Mike. … Oh, and then I’ve got a podcast called, “Yeah, I F***ed That Up,” where I interview celebrities about their moments of self-doubt and failure. I’ll start season two sometime in the new year. And as always I’ve got new songs to come with Cher, Lizzen, Allen Stone and some others ahead. Honestly, I still can’t believe I’m able to do all of this for a living. It’s busy but I’m loving it.

SY: What are you most looking forward to at the moment?

GM: Summer! Weston is so beautiful in the summertime. Once we open our pool and the flowers are blooming, we rarely leave the house (except to go to the beach). And Billy’s very into sitting in the canoe on our lake and catching large-mouth bass while listening to music. It’s our favorite time of year to be with our family and we love to have all the kids home.

BM: The summer with my family. We love Compo Beach. We love walking. The amazing thing about Westport/Weston is that it’s an all year round community that becomes a beach town in the summers. My kids are the happiest in the sun and so is Gena and that’s all I want. And the charities that are important to us are always front and center. ABILIS in Greenwich, Profound Autism Alliance and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation which I co-founded to honor my late wife which has been going strong now for nearly 30 years.

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