Hidden Gems: Meet Morgan Mallory of Morgan Mallory Entertainment

Today we’d like to introduce you to Morgan Mallory

Hi Morgan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up as a musical theater kid just outside of Portland, OR with big dreams of being on Broadway and/or becoming a rockstar. In my early 20’s I had some success doing musical theater in my hometown, moved around to play in various rock bands, got to tour the country a couple of times, and had an absolute blast.
Life moved quickly and every year felt like a whole new me, like I was shedding the old Me as quickly as I could grow a new Me.

At 23, I auditioned for The Voice: Season 5 to see if I had what it took to transition to being a solo act – and I got in! NBC invited me to Los Angeles for a month to prepare me for my blind audition, giving me a small taste of what it was like to live in LA. Unfortunately, no judges turned their chairs for me, and I flew home completely dejected. What that experience taught me was that I needed to spend some time learning who I was as an artist and how I really wanted to sound. Going from “whoa – I might be famous in a few months” to “I failed” put a major wrench in my gears. For a few years I took a break from music altogether and continued working all kinds of odd jobs. I’ve been a barista, handyman, waiter, sandwich maker, karaoke host, even a door-to-door vacuum salesman. I took anything I could get hired for.

Feeling like I was already middle-aged, I moved to Orange County in 2013 to start fresh. I worked a sales job while simultaneously learning the ins and outs of the LA/OC music community. This led to my first music teaching job at Los Rios Rock School, where I met a big handful of incredible musicians who taught me what it really meant to work hard and sound good. For the next 5 years, I would balance life between gigging 3-5x a week around LA/OC and teaching music, occasionally heading back up to Portland for some musical theater gigs.

Just before the pandemic, I decided to move to LA proper in 2019 to attempt life as a fully self-employed artist. I started a miniature performing arts academy with actor/teacher friend Philip Orazio, gaining a full roster of students in a matter of months. The only upside to the pandemic was the growing popularity of online lessons, allowing me to teach anyone, anywhere, from anywhere. Though I will always prefer teaching in-person, online students now account for about 75% of my weekly teaching schedule.

It’s now 2025 and I live in Sherman Oaks with my magical partner, Tabitha Trosen, and our 2 cats, Reggie and Ruby.
Tabitha is an actor/writer/producer and easily the funniest/kindest person I’ve ever known.
I converted our 2nd bedroom into a home studio where I spend my weeks teaching voice/guitar/bass/songwriting/production and dabbling in scoring and audio production for short films. I’ve also stayed busy as a for-hire guitarist/bassist and perform as a one-man-band for corporate & private events all over the greater Los Angeles area.

I may not be a rockstar or on Broadway, but my days are filled with love, incredibly talented friends, and more new artistic endeavors than I can ever keep up with.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has absolutely not been a smooth road. I’ve been blessed with much opportunity, but the rough times were always just around the corner. We lost my brother to suicide in 2017, sending shockwaves through our family. Grief like that has cast a unique hue onto our lives, but we try to lean on each other as much as we can. He was a deeply gifted artist who also bore the curse of intense mental & emotional disorders. I feel like much of what I do now is in honor of him, as though I want to make him proud that I’ve stayed with my creative journey for the both of us.

We’ve been impressed with Morgan Mallory Entertainment, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I started Morgan Mallory Entertainment to serve as a broad focal point for the variety of projects I’m embroiled in.
Sometimes I’m performing as a one-man-band, using loopers and live audio wizardry to play corporate and private events everywhere between Sacramento and Temecula. Sometimes I’m a bassist, guitarist, and singer for other artists on stage and in studio. Sometimes I’m helping to compose and produce original musicals. Half of my time is spent teaching young artists how to become true professionals. Anyone can learn to play guitar or sing, but I feel like my focus is to nurture my students’ artistic development into something they can build a career on. My biggest goal is to perpetuate the conversation that art education is more than just an elective or an after-school activity – it’s a way to viscerally interact with what makes us human. We become better people when we become better artists. The world looks to artists to understand who we are and who we could be. There is no better endeavor than to nurture that curiosity in the person’s life that I’m invited to affect.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
A couple of the most impactful books for me have been Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, (a dive into the human mind when faced with life or death situations), and The Music Lesson by infamous bassist Victor Wooten.
The app I use more than Instagram is the UltimateGuitar Tabs & Chords app, which has been a secret weapon for me when learning audience song requests on-the-fly. It makes me look like a magician when I can play that obscure song from that artist no one’s thought about in 20 years. I’ve been called a “Human Jukebox” and absolutely love when people make song requests at my shows – it keeps me sharp. One time, while playing at a ski lodge near Sacramento, a kid asked me if I could play Master of Puppets by Metallica. There was no way I could pull all those intricate guitar parts out of my butt, but the UltimateGuitar app instantly showed me simplified chords and lyrics. I ended up doing the song as a slow, swampy blues tune, and the kid was in awe. That’s one of my favorite moments as a musician.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.morganmallory.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morgan.mallory.music
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morgan.mallory.music
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@morganmallorymusic

Image Credits
Jeremy David