Singer, songwriter, bass player and founder member of The Jean Paul Sartre Experience - signed to Flying Nun Records in 1986. JPS Experience released three albums and two E.P's, toured the U.K., Europe and America, won Best Film Soundtrack at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards and released the top ten album Bleeding Star and top ten single Breathe before their demise in 1993. In a subsequent post-mortem the band was shown to have died due to an allergic reaction to the music business.
In 1997, with help from members of The Muttonbirds and JPS Experience, Dave released the self-titled album The Stereo Bus. Largely a solo-record under the guise of a band - this album of self-penned tunes went on to win Album of the Year at the first ever B-Net music awards and was nominated for Album of the Year at the grown-ups New Zealand Music Awards. By this time Dave, and his band The Stereo Bus, had become a live entity and as such were honoured by nominations for Most Promising Male Vocalist, Best Live Act, Most Promising Male Fox, Best Live Promising and Most Live Male.
Despite being executively produced by Neil Finn the second album from The Stereo Bus "Brand New" got fuck-all awards ... none-the-less it was a great record - moving a young journo at the New Zealand Herald to a five-star-review-frenzy ... proud owners of this "difficult second album" still swear by it... and it garnered a nomination for the song "Birthday" in the 1999 A.P.R.A. Silver Scroll Awards.