Dave Montgomery was born July 7, 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri. As a boy, he spent summers on his grandfather's farm in Caledonia, Missouri, one of the many farming and mining towns in what was once one of the most mineral rich regions in America. Montgomery's father taught him his first three chords at the age of 12 and his mother taught him three more. He learned songs from old cowboy song books, old records, the radio, and local bluegrass legends like the Arcadia Valley Boys. Like other bluegrass-schooled pickers in the '60s and '70s, Montgomery discovered singer-songwriters Jim Croce, John Denver and Bob Dylan, and began writing his own songs and trying his hand at rock 'n' roll. His first band, Company, played high school gigs and private parties: lacking material, the band would plow through 45 minute versions of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

After he graduated from high school in St. Louis, Montgomery began playing solo sets around town, and then, in 1979, he joined three bands simultaneously: Paul Brake and the Bluegrass Limited, George Portz and the Friends of Bluegrass, and Countryside Grass. In 1980 he won the Missouri Area Bluegrass Committee Flat Picking Contest, the first of many such awards. In 1987 bluegrass legend David Parmley awarded him first prize in the Missouri's first state-sanctioned Flat Top Guitar Championship.

Over the years, Montgomery has established himself as one of the best flat pickers in St. Louis. He has opened for bands like Beausoleil, The Dixie Chicks, and Tony Rice, and has appeared at bluegrass festivals throughout Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Montgomery can be heard at his weekly shows with country rockers Liquid Prairie, the eclectic and acoustic Prarie Dogs, the Chris Talley Trio, George Portz and the Friends of Bluegrass, and at Monday night open mike at the Venice Cafe, where he has been host for eight years.

Discography Strange Rangers 1991 Liquid Prairie   Wagon's Ho 2000 Chris Talley 2002 George Portz and the Friends of Bluegrass