David James is a Canadian country singer-songwriter who grows up in a musical family. His father performs with Sweet Life, a popular South Jersey cover band, and he begins playing piano at five before learning saxophone in high school, where he also joins an a cappella group.

He later studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and moves to New York. In 2005 he returns to music, with help from a friend who gets him into Sony Publishing and Epic Records. He then records his self-produced album Five Miles East in Philadelphia at his mother’s house in 2006 before moving to Los Angeles.