Dave Mininberg
Dave grew up playing the saxophone in the high school band and with a couple of small groups through college. He picked up the guitar in his 20s because of his love of singing. Growing up close to Washington D.C. he was often tuned into WPFW on the weekends listening to the blues. His influences run the gamut from Louis Armstrong and Wes Montgomery to Paul Simon, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles.
After giving up on his dream of playing baseball and tiring of government work, Dave began teaching Social Studies full time at the age of 25. He also bartended at a well known blues bar in Miami Florida where he was able to see top talent up close such as Graham Drought, Ron Dzubila, Slash, and Bill Wharton. “I knew I would love to do something like that” he says. “A job that could be a lot of fun and I could have a couple of beers too.”
In his mid 30s Dave started to play solo acoustic around Charles Town, West Virginia at places such as The Mecklenburg Inn, The Charles Washington Inn, Cliffside, and others. In the fall of 2006, Dave hooked up with the guitar teacher at his school; Tom Briner. “Ever since I hooked up with Tom, I have been working steadily on the weekends as a musician. It has been awesome! He definitely makes me better and gives us a lot of flexibility.” For bigger gigs they bring in Kelly Briner on bass and fellow teacher, Phil Truiett. The two generally stay busy working in Leesburg, Ashburn, Purcellville, VA, and Charles Town, WV.
As time progressed customers at venues such as the Horse Shoe Curve would request originals. Dave had written poetry when he was younger and turned his attention to songwriting. On the recommendation of Billy Joel, (yes, that one) Dave headed for Nashville. Since then he visits 3-4 times per year and has been a regular in writer rounds at such venues as The Commodore Grille, Bobby’s Idle hour and more. He has also done small tours with fellow Nashville writers such as Marc-Alan Barnette, Eric Haines and John Carroll. As well as festivals locally and in places such as New Orleans. Dave keeps expanding his repertoire of originals and covers. From blues to rock to country to Buffett, Dave covers a lot of ground. Along with working regularly with professional songwriters and music licensing agencies in Nashville, he has been featured on Nashville radio shows such as WFMC jams and his single “Jimmy Buffett Didn’t Write This Song” spent over 4 months on the top 40 on A1A radio. He performs as a featured artist at numerous festivals including the 3rd street Songwriter Festival in Baton Rouge and as part of the hit writer series at the Whiskey Bent in Nashville. He has had songs in rotation on the Island Time radio show in Cleveland, Beachbarradio.com out of the Florida Keys, Tampa Bay FM and other stations. Dave is a member of the International Singer-Songwriter Association.
