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In 1994, while out on tour with Rod Stewart and reeling from the Northridge earthquake back home in Los Angeles, Small Faces and Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan and his wife Kim bought a two-story wooden house on 15 acres six miles outside of Manor. McLagan loved that the little town had a British name, and the couple settled in for what became a 20-year run as adopted Texans.
On the property McLagan built his home studio, The Doghouse, where he wrote, recorded, and self-produced albums including Spiritual Boy (2006) and Never Say Never (2008) with his band the Bump Band. His Manor neighbor and old Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane, who’d moved to Austin in 1985 after his MS diagnosis, was part of what drew the McLagans to the area in the first place, though Lane relocated to Colorado not long after they arrived.
Ian McLagan lived and worked at the Manor property until his death in December 2014, days before he and his band were set to leave on tour with Nick Lowe. He was 69, and was posthumously remembered as Manor’s own member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted with the Small Faces in 2012.