What Anchors Jonnie Morgan ’10? People and His Music

*photo above courtesy Herb Maximo

If you listen closely to the music of Jonnie Morgan ’10, you may hear the faint sounds of a rhythmic tide lapping a sandy beach. 

It’s not your imagination. Morgan grew up in the Safety Harbor area on the west coast of Florida, about twenty minutes from the beach. The area’s sun-kissed beaches would often draw Morgan and his friends away from home for skim-boarding and volleyball.

“People often tell me that I have a very laid-back personality,” Morgan says. “I definitely think that growing up so close to the beach had an influence on my songwriting.

His latest solo record, “Anchors” (due in Fall 2025), is very sea-driven, Morgan says.

“If you listen to a couple songs, you can kind of lose yourself a little bit in the kind of beachy realm.”

Morgan has been losing himself in music since he was in middle school, he says. He acquired some of his musical taste from his oldest brother who was “really big into the Dave Matthews Band.” His brother, Jason Morgan, had an acoustic guitar and learned the riffs to many of the band’s songs. And all along, Jonnie Morgan was watching.

Recently, Morgan was going through his childhood things and found a letter from his mother to his third-grade teacher.

“One of the things she had written,” Morgan says, “Was that I was always trying to write songs and sing and make up lyrics. I don’t remember any of that. And all of a sudden, something clicked – instead of the sweet surfboard for which I’d been saving for years, I decided to get a guitar.”

That impulse purchase changed the course of his entire life, he says.

“I started learning licks on the guitar,” Morgan says. Not just Dave Matthews’ songs, but the popular Collide by Howie Day, a 2005 single that sold more than 1.5 million downloads.

Despite his affinity for music, Morgan had not seriously considered pursuing it as a career choice when he was deciding on colleges.

He still had the beach on his mind; his Spanish teacher told him that UCF was 45 minutes from the beach. Her son was a student there and was able to surf all the time. Morgan thought the Orlando campus sounded like his kind of place. He figured he would study economics in the College of Business.

Economics is a branch of social science that broadly focuses on everything from interest rates and productivity to the behavior of individuals, businesses, and organizations when it comes to using their wealth. Those who study the field often have strong communication and analytical thinking skills. Morgan was interested in business and thought that studying economics could help him in a variety of career options.

Occasionally, however, he would pick up his guitar and start noodling.

“It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I really began to write my own songs,” Morgan says.

One of them, “Saranade“, was inspired by his first serious love affair.

“It was the type of feeling a romantic movie gives you,” Morgan recalls. “The song that came from our story sparked everything for me, and gave me the confidence and love to write songs and to truly express my feelings through my music.”

When he debuted “Saranade” to his family and friends, their positive feedback about his work was unexpected, but welcome.

“They told me that this wasn’t just any song, it was special,” Morgan recalls. “And to this day, people still come up and tell me that it’s their favorite song of mine.”

The recognition that Morgan received for his original composition struck a chord deep within.

“It just sparked a passion and creativity in me, and boom! It took off from there,” Morgan says.

By this time, Morgan was in his junior year at UCF. He sat down with his parents and told them of his revelation. He didn’t know what “this” was, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“I told them that music was what I wanted to do forever,” Morgan recalls. He’d had a scholarship, but his parents had also been helping him along the way with his expenses. He wanted to finish his degree, but he also wanted to pursue any musical opportunities that came his way. He told his parents that it might take him an extra year to graduate.

To his relief – but not to his surprise – his parents told him to go for it.

Morgan had been pursuing his craft while completing his degree, when Zlatko Masic ’10, his roommate and comptroller in UCF’s Student Government Association, along with Logan Berkowitz ’08, then-SGA president, approached him.

Masic and Berkowitz had heard Morgan’s music, and wanted to help their friend reach a wider audience. They steered Morgan toward the Dungeon Lounge, a nightspot close to campus that offered free wine for ladies on Friday evenings. After auditioning, management offered Morgan $75 to play his music for two hours every Friday.

Getting paid to do something he loved? Sign him up.
“At the time,” Morgan says, “I was making $10 an hour from a part-time job, so it wasn’t a difficult decision.”

After a short time, Morgan began to attract a regular crowd. After he graduated, he tried a few different jobs – UPS worker, substitute teacher – as he figured out his next steps.

It was a grind.

Morgan’s schedule of working at a middle school during the day and gigging at night led to many 18-hour days. He knew it was not sustainable, but after about a year and a half, was able to call himself a full-time musician.

For a while, he was playing a combination of cover songs and his original music. He realized that although he enjoyed entertaining an audience by playing the former, his greatest joy was sharing his original songs.

“When I played my own music,” Morgan says, “It was the first time in my life that I felt that I could be the best at something.”

And it wasn’t that he felt he had the strongest voice or the best guitar techniques, he says. He felt that his strengths were in the honesty of his songwriting and the connection of how it brought people together.

“My own music is my way to say I have something to tell the world,” Morgan says.  “I’m very passionate about helping people and my songs are my connection to the human race.”

Right around this time, Morgan was at a local songwriter night at UCF and met bass guitarist and future band member – Jeremy Adams ‘12.  Adams was pivotal in the success of his career as he gathered local musicians to surround Morgan’s talent and songs.  Brandon Sollins ‘11 (lead guitar), Corey Paul ‘13 (trombone) and Bruno Ufret soon joined forces to form Jonnie Morgan Band, or JMB as they were known around town.

“I surrounded myself with the top musicians in the Orlando area, and I began to pay more attention to the business side of music,” Morgan says.

He noticed that adding a horn section to the band resonated well with the crowd. He also began selling merchandise in response to requests from his fans.

About four years after Morgan had talked to his parents about his dream to become a full-time musician, his father came up to him at his band’s album release party (“Janus“) at the House of Blues in Orlando. 

“I knew he had been worried about me,” Morgan says. “But he came up to me and was just welling up with tears. He told me he was so proud of me.” 

Morgan says he feels that one of the reasons that his music has connected with so many people is because he writes and sings from the heart.

“I love being around people,” Morgan says, “But there’s a big part of me that is quiet. I tend to think about things deeply, and my music is where I can express that. You may not know exactly what I’m thinking about, but I think there is a sense of vulnerability that comes through.”

That vulnerability is especially evident in one of Morgan’s favorite songs, “Lullaby (I Love You).” He wrote it in 2016 as his wife, Amie, was going through breast cancer for the second time. The gentle melody sounds like a love song – and it is – but it’s really a love letter to Jesus at a time when he felt very distant from God. [update: Morgan’s wife is now four years cancer-free!]

When his booking agent (John Sammel – CJS Productions) heard the song, he reached out to Morgan and encouraged him to submit it to a national songwriting contest – JBL Professional’s Eon One Take Contest.

It was a long shot, Morgan says. He submitted “Lullaby” for consideration without much hope or thought. But, after the field was narrowed to ten finalists by a panel of judges that included music legend Quincy Jones, Morgan took to social media and spent the next ten days trying to get as many votes as possible.

“I ended up winning the whole thing and got flown out to LA and I thought it was my big break, Morgan says.

It wasn’t.

The opportunity was, however, a major stepping stone, and something Morgan says he will always be proud of.

After winning the contest, Morgan redoubled his efforts but also felt a little lost.  Everything that he had been working for over the years had finally come to fruition. 

“I had these thoughts of, okay well now I did it, I proved myself.  What now?”

You would think it would be the highlight of his career, but it was a lower point for him, professionally and personally.

Morgan says, the nature of the music business, and life in general, began to take its toll. Some of his members left because they were expanding their families and wanted to stay closer to home. Morgan began to get burned out, he says, and stepped back to being a solo artist.

And, in 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Morgan hung up his guitar forever – or so he thought.

After about 18 months in the business world, he rediscovered his passion.

“I think I needed a time out to discover who I was without music, and the time away allowed me the grace and the freedom to realize it’s a part of my life,” Morgan says. “I realized I still have a story to tell people, and I still have a lot to give to the world through my music.”

In October, Morgan was the musical guest at UCF’s Shining Knights Award celebration. The Shining Knights Awards are the highest honors that UCF bestows upon its alumni and friends.

“Playing at UCF in the Pegasus Ballroom was one of the highlights of my life,” Morgan says. “I am so grateful for the love and support that UCF and their alumni have shown me over the years, and it was truly an honor to perform for the recipients and honored guests of this remarkable event.”

Morgan recently reflected on his trajectory from playing his guitar in the Libra dorms for a few friends to the path he is on now.

“I recently texted Matt Passerella ’08,” Morgan says. “I told him that I just wanted to thank him for his belief in me when we were at UCF. He was my biggest cheerleader, and he just kept encouraging me, even when I felt like giving up.”

It was a different time before Spotify and Facebook, Morgan says, and there was no easy way for musicians to gauge how well their music was being received. Passerella was a touchstone for Morgan, keeping him grounded and focused.

Sean Perry ’96 is another UCF alumni to whom Morgan credits with his career. Perry, along with Rick Wheeler ’95, co-founded the Florida Music Festival and Conference in 2002.

“I was determined to get into the festival,” Morgan says.

It was not an easy mission. Unsigned artists flocked to the Orlando area for the festival, determined to get an audience from anyone in the entertainment business.

One time, a 14-year-old Taylor Swift was asked to leave the venue after her performance because she was not 18, the age requirement of the festival.

Morgan says his sole mission was to make it into the festival to play alongside major acts like Third Eye Blind, Less Than Jake, and Flogging Molly.

In 2011, The Jonnie Morgan Band received top honors at the festival after beating out 40 bands in a competition to headline the main stage. It fueled the belief in himself and his band.

[click on link below for an audio message from Jonnie Morgan to Sean Perry]

At 37, Morgan feels that he has matured as a singer-songwriter, and is especially proud of his new solo record, Anchors.

The nautical theme of an anchor not only harkens back to his early days on the Gulf Coast, but also refers to the symbolism of an anchor.

“I recognize that my fears have me tied to the shore,” Morgan says, “But I’ve got to cut loose if I want to set sail on this boat. In other words, live your life – don’t let fears or anxieties hold you back from reaching your goals.”

It can be hard to do, Morgan acknowledges. Life, as it happens, tends to get in the way of living our best lives. Morgan himself knows that the pain that people experience as they grow up can leave permanent scars that not everyone can see, but are lurking there nonetheless, affecting their daily lives. He hopes that his new record inspires healing and growth.

“I never want other people to feel the pain of things that I went through, whether it’s bullying in middle school, or the emotional pain of watching a loved one suffer through a serious illness,” Morgan says. “When Anchors comes out,” Morgan says, “My hope is that people will become inspired to do the things that would normally scare them – and to share those experiences via social media using the hashtag #livebeforeIdie” – the name of a song on Morgan’s new record.

In the nearly 15 years since Morgan left UCF, he has had time to reflect not only on his education here, but also on the traditions and taglines that have become part of our history.

“Sometimes, I find myself thinking of the phrase ‘Charge On,’” Morgan says. “I never really understood its deeper meaning until my family and I began experiencing true adversity later in life. My music has been a way for me to ‘Charge On’ in my darkest times, and I am so grateful for the support and opportunities that UCF has given me. I want all Knights to find their own reasons and passions to keep Charging On. You can do it, I promise.”