Jim Hall

Jim Hall has been playing guitar, singing, and writing songs for longer than he can remember. He performed with a number of rock bands in high school, launching his professional career with paying jobs alongside musical partner and fellow student  Damon Danielson.

Hall & Danielson played their own brand of acoustic pop that merged  rock, soul, country, and even dixieland jazz. It proved to be marketable. They released an album titled Gentlemen of Leisure in the mid-seventies, touring  extensively in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest.

At the end of that decade Jim made an unlikely move to progressive rock by joining the band Visage.

Come the 1980s, Jim settled down with a family and a full- time computer job – yet he remained very active in the Twin Cities music scene. He was a key member of the MN Songwriters Association, hosting songwriter showcases, and even winning a KQRS contest — netting his song “That’s What I Said” a spot on their Songwriter album.

All the while, Hall performed in as many different kinds of musical groups as he could. He tried everything from playing stand-up bass for a Bossa Nova combo to crooning ballads for The Rod Smith Big Band. Beginning in the late 1980s, he played electric bass and provided vocals at lounges, weddings, pubs and company parties with a terrifically varied line-up of groups. From 1988 to 1991, he gigged with The Early Birds; from approximately 1994 to 1999, he worked with The Junction; from 2000 to 2007, Hall appeared with The Radio.

It was with The Radio’s guitar player Roy Finley and Roy’s uncle Jim Peterson on drums that Hall co-founded SAINTRIO in 2008. The band’s big vocal sound and ability to cover a wide range of musical styles still keeps him creatively working in the art form which he so clearly loves. Audiences can feel it. They always respond.