Dave was born in Chicago and grew up outside the city with his parents and his younger sister and brother. There was always music in the house. His mother played piano and sang in choirs (still does), and his father would often pull out the old Martin and play his favorite Jimmie Rodgers songs. "I remember hearing a lot of Peter, Paul & Mary; Trini Lopez; Bill Gibson, and then stuff like The Seekers, Fifth Dimension, and Petula Clark. We were also really lucky to live near a big metropolitan area, so we saw a lot of Broadway shows like Fiddler on the Roof, 1776, and Bubbling Brown Sugar.

"And then there was radio. It was usually on during the afternoon and before dinner. AM radio was in its heyday in the mid- to late-‘60s, and I listened to a lot of it. I really think that’s where I got most of my songwriting foundation -- heavy on the hooks, short and sweet."

From babysitters and "summer girls" who would watch the kids, Dave kept up on the latest bands. "The first album I really had, besides Davy Crockett, was Tommy James and the Shondells’ Hanky Panky. Then came The Young Rascals (still one of my favorite all-time bands), Paul Revere and the Raiders (my first concert - my grandmother took me), and, of course, the Beatles. Then, in 1970, I heard James Taylor’s "Sweet Baby James" and I was hooked. If I had to name the two biggest musical influences in my life, it would be James and Stevie Wonder.

"By this time I had a little Stella guitar and could play a few chords, but mostly I liked banging on a small set of drums my grandma had bought me. My friends and I would play along and lip-sync with records, pretending we could actually play the stuff."

Dave ended up attending high school in Colorado, and it was there that he got inspired to play guitar and start writing his own songs. "Our first group was called the "Cold Duck Brothers" because we played a version of the Les McCann song. I also had a great music teacher there, Bob Patterson, who made things a lot of fun, and another teacher/friend named Scott MacGregor who played a pretty mean banjo. We had a bluegrass band called the Rocky Mountain Oysters"

After high school Dave decided to go for it and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston for a year. It was quite the eye-opener. Out of just over two thousand students, almost a thousand of them played guitar, which was Dave’s major.

"Going from the prairies of Colorado to the inner city was wild, especially for an 18-year-old kid. I learned a lot of good stuff at Berklee; harmony, ear-training, ensemble playing, etc., and I definitely enjoyed my time in Boston (great music town!), but I knew I wasn’t cut out for the East Coast. As soon as school was over, a friend and I drove out to Wyoming, got a job flagging on a highway near Casper, and I’ve been out West ever since."

Eventually Dave landed in Telluride, Colorado, working odd jobs, skiing, and sneaking into bars to play his first gigs. At some point he decided that he should continue his studies at a liberal arts school, and looking for new territory, he moved to Seattle and enrolled at the University of Washington. It was there that he hooked up with bass player Maurice Jones Jr., and the two soon formed the group Edison Jones. Within a couple of years, "EJ" had become a top draw in the region, with their funk-rock sound lighting up the clubs. They made a video for one of their songs, 'Steal the Time Away,' which placed second in the MTV Basement Tapes competition. Another song that Dave wrote with George Merrill called "When the Lights Go Down Low" was a hit regionally and was later covered by none other than Herb Alpert on his "My Abstract Heart" album.

Now it’s time for Dave Ellis to take center stage on his own. He has opened as a solo artist for acts like Richard Marx and Rickie Lee Jones. Always exploring new combinations of musicians, Dave is playing both acoustic unplugged sets and full-band electric sets regionally and nationally.