Dry meets Cheap Trick!
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11/15/1980 Jim Morgan realizes he is socially retarded and decides there's got to be a better way to meet girls besides trying to talk to them! Jim's previous music experience was a few piano lessons and playing trombone in school. Knowing that the trombone wasn't going to get him very far in rock and roll he purchased his first bass guitar and amplifier. It was a used "Electra" bass for $150.00 and an amplifier for $75.00 that led him down the sinful road of rock and roll music. A few years later he was playing in his first rock band "Dark Crystal". This gig lasted until a few months after his first wife came into the picture in 1984. Soon after he realized that quitting the band was the wrong thing to quit so he quit the first wife. From that point on he vowed no woman no person was ever going to tell him to quit playing bass except maybe a coroner. From 1985 through 1986 he played in "Crosscutt" a top 40 band... where he met his second wife...
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Jumping ahead to 1987 with a new wife, Jim joins the high energy rock and roll "hair" band "Triax". Playing hair metal songs from the 80's, Jim blistered his fingers for about 6 years. Moving up to 5 string basses for the deep low end and experimenting with tube pre-amps for vintage sounds. Going into th 90's he experimented with keyboards playing bass-keyboard on the left hand and filling up the rhythm with the right hand. After about 2 years of sucking at that... Jim purchased a 1967 Hagstrom 8 string bass that got him on the road to "Multi-String" basses. "The problem with 4 string basses is you just can't get enough feedback." "Triax" faded away into a hairless void on 9/12/1993. Two weeks later Jim joins "Tye-Dyed Cat" with Sean Kistler. He was in "Tye-Dyed Cat" until 11/26/1994. On 5/20/1994 Jim gambled his marriage and buys a new Hamer 12 String Bass... Lost that bet...
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Jumping ahead to 1997 with another new wife, Jim was playing and recording in a country band named "Free Spirit" with Brandon Merry. He played country music for about 2 years (mostly on a 12 string bass) where he learned to play with "restraint". After country music almost caused him to enter a permanent catatonic state of mind that was enough so in 1997 when the planets aligned and the already established band "DRY" needed a bassist he jumped at the opportunity to join. Dumping the 5 string bass and now utilizing a 12 string bass along with both guitar and bass amplifiers in tandem to create a bass guitar and rhythm guitar sound all in one that provides a wall of sound that is perfect for a 3 man rock and roll band. Jim says, "A rhythm guitar would be in the way (musically) and besides that it's somebody else we would have to pay."
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Influenced by Cheap Trick, The Beatles, Enuff Znuff, Stone Temple Pilots, and Rush to name a few, Jim is an out of the ordinary bass player that uses mostly 12 string basses along with a variety of other 4 string basses. "DRY" doesn't use song lists to play songs in any specific order so if "Brick House" is the next song and a 12 stringer is hanging around his neck, then "Brick House gets played on a 12ver!
Jim likes to record, mix and master Dry's original music. He likes to play at the local "Unplugged" open mike and sit in with other local bands for the challenge of playing songs un-rehearsed.
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In April 2005 Jim got an endorsement deal with Waterstone Guitars out of Nashville Tennessee. Jim's bass arsenal includes a few Waterstone Tom Petersson Signature 12 string basses, a long scale 1993 Hamer 12 string, a custom order medium scale 2004 Hamer 12 string, a Waterstone ME-2 semi-hollow 4 string bass, a Waterstone Indra bass, a Fender Jazz bass, a Fender Precision bass, a Vietnamese 8 string bass, a Waterstone Rainwood bass and several others. These days Jim uses a Ampeg V4BV 100 watt tube amplifier with 6-10 Ampeg speaker cabinet for the bass end of things and a Fender Concert Reverb 4-10 combo for the guitarish high end.
Why so many bass guitars? Jim believes he should have more basses than ex-wives.
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Jim with his 2005 Waterstone Tom Petersson 12 string bass.
"It's the 'Mac Truck' of 12 string basses. A piano on a stick it is."
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Meeting the inventor of the 12 string bass Tom Petersson.
Click here for more details of Dry meeting Cheap Trick.
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