David Greathouse is a songwriter, actor, graphic designer, sound designer and editor, recording engineer, and fledgling blacksmith. But his passion is songwriting. Storytelling. The business of taking a listener some place special and returning them changed, or at least affected. His is the art of altered perspectives and artfully colored phrases intent on catching a listener off guard - to knock them off balance and send them on their way with new ideas about stuff. His lyric craftsmanship has garnered great appreciation, and on the guitar, he owns a distinctive and compelling style that is uniquely his own but comfortably familiar. He has been writing and performing for more than twenty years, but since 2008, he has immersed himself in numerous theater and film projects - writing, acting and producing at every possible opportunity.

Throughout most of his childhood David was plagued with health problems, the worst of which was faltering kidney function. By the time he entered his teens it was apparent he needed dialysis or a kidney transplant. He started dialysis treatments the spring of 1980 and his family began the process of testing for the possibility of a related donor, and his mother was a nearly perfect match. During his sophomore year in high school, not long after his sixteenth birthday, he received one of his mother’s kidneys.

David graduated from high school in 1983, and started college that fall with an intended major in Graphic Art. In the summer of 1985, while working as a horse camp counselor at YMCA Camp Lakewood, he met Cindy, his future wife, and that Fall he transferred and changed his major to Music Theory and Composition. In September of 1988, not long after Cindy’s college graduation, they were married and moved to Branson, Missouri, where David was an entertainer at The Shepherd of the Hills Homestead and an active member of the Ozark Songwriter’s Association.

In 1990, they packed everything into storage, and began the process of relocating to Tennessee where David planned to finish college and try his hand as a songwriter. That plan was never realized. David’s transplanted kidney failed in the Fall of 1990, and the couple moved in with his parents. He resumed dialysis treatments, and began the wait for a another kidney. It was a relatively short wait, and he received a second transplant from an unknown donor in February of 1991.

For the next few years, he performed regularly at several St. Louis area coffee houses, and returned several times to the YMCA of the Ozarks in Potosi, Missouri as a featured performer. During this time David recorded In the Balance, a cassette of 11 original songs. He also recorded a live performance entitled Alive & Well. In the meantime, he returned to school and completed a degree in Media Communications in 1994. In the fall of 1995 he and Cindy moved back to Springfield in southwest Missouri.

In 2008, in addition to countless appearances throughout the area, his live performance at the Gillioz Theatre, also in Springfield was recorded and released as a live, double CD.

In 2011, he found himself a willing captive of the Star Trek universe writing several songs for a wildly popular series of live, staged parodies of the classic show.

He garnered his first Composer and Musical Director credits in Queen City Collective’s 2012 production of Euripides’ Cyclops, in which he also played the role of Silenus. Later, that same year, he sank into the lusciously despicable role of Miles in Matt Boes’ Art Is Good, and as a musician and actor in A Class Act Productions An Ozark Mountain Christmas. During this period he also worked with the Skinny Improv’s Playhouse Theater, appearing in Robin Hood and Rumpelstiltskin and several other improvisational children’s productions.

In 2013, David contributed an original song The Voices In Our Heads to Springfield playwright, Bryant Turnage’s, presentation of six one act plays staged under the same title. 2013 also marked the debut of Harvest Moon Productions and its staging of 1000 Cranes. A heartbreaking true story depicting life in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, for which he penned and performed the song Still Falling. He also teamed with Rice Theatricals, to co-produce a series of radio plays under the banner of Radio Heyday. During its run, they  produced well over a dozen shows.

In the spring of 2014, David wrote and recorded the theme song and score for A Little Help, Missouri State University’s student web series, in which he was also cast. In April, 2015 his composition won Outstanding Theme Song at the L.A. Webfest, where he was also nominated for Outstanding Actor for his role as Dan. His score was also nominated for Best Original Music/Score at the 2015 Miami Webfest.

Most recently, he played the role of Old Scratch in J. Allen Williams’ feature film Everything. He also wrote and co-produced two songs for the film’s score and soundtrack. The film was released in 2023.

In 2019 he released his fourth studio album of thirteen original songs titled The Sound That Love Makes. His fifth studio album containing fifteen original songs, entitled THE MARIONETTE: This & That from Hither & Yon was released in July of 2025.