Dave Steen & Jailhouse Tattoo

- Guitar/vocals for Columbia Records’ HAWKS.  Wrote & sang “RIGHT AWAY”, #63 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.  HAWKS’ “It’s All Right, It’s OK” reached #32 on Billboard’s Top Tracks AOL chart.

- “I’ve Changed My Mind” as recorded by The Bama Band #70 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.

- Over 135 releases as a songwriter by artists including Eric Burdon, Solomon Burke, Maria Muldaur, B.J. Thomas, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Son Seals, Coco Montoya, Larry McCray, John Primer, Michael Burks, Terry Evans, Big Daddy Kinsey, Sherman Robertson, Tonic Sol-Fa, Jo-El Sonnier, Shaun Murphy, and others.

- 2015 solo CD “Town Full Of Secrets” received a 3 ½ star rating from DOWNBEAT magazine, reaching #31 on the IBBA International Blues Broadcasters chart.    

- Songs on two Grammy© - nominated albums, in two feature films, and performed on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Show with David Letterman”. 

- Twenty appearances over five decades on Billboard album and singles charts, including #1 Billboard Blues Chart for Coco Montoya’s “Writing On The Wall” in 2024. 

- Two-time inductee into the Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  Inducted into the Nebraska Performing Arts Hall Of Fame.

Dave Steen was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, where he taught himself to play guitar. His first serious playing opportunity came as a student at Drake University, when he was asked to join ANTELON, a local funky-soul-and-blues horn band. Steen says, “The band had some serious players in it, and I got my first experience in writing charts.  It was a valuable education, and we got very good; on most nights the band definitely achieved liftoff.”   One of the band’s favorite venues was So’s Your Mother, a college-town Des Moines club that regularly played host to blues legends such as Willie Dixon, Luther Allison, Fenton Robinson, Son Seals, and many others.

After a brief move to pre-Prince Minneapolis to check out the music scene there, a Fort Dodge, Iowa band beckoned and Steen made the move back to his home state.  The pop-rock band, which came to national attention as HAWKS, recorded two albums for Columbia Records in the early 1980’s, scoring a near-hit single with “Right Away” (BILLBOARD Hot 100, #63 in early 1981), which Steen wrote and on which he sang the lead vocal.  By April 25th of that year, another track from the first album, “It’s All Right, It’s OK” reached #32 on BILLBOARD magazine’s new “Top Tracks” chart. 

The band split after a two-album run with Columbia, and Steen signed on as songwriter with Warner-Chappell Music in New York.  His songs yielded recordings by, among others, pop legend B.J. Thomas and rockers Shrapnel, but, as Steen says, “Nothing was really happening, or so it seemed to me at the time.”

Things changed when Steen heard that Ringo Starr had recorded a version of his “I’ve Changed My Mind” (produced by Memphis legend Chips Moman and part of a still-unreleased album) and also learned that in 1986, THE BAMA BAND had released the same song as a single, making it to #70 on BILLBOARD’s  Hot Country Singles chart. 

“"I've Changed My Mind" was really just a 'swamp pop' song, as they'd say in Louisiana - sort of a tip of the hat to Fats Domino.  So when I decided to start writing again in earnest I focused on writing blues, soul, and old-school R&B”, says Steen.  “I wondered if maybe those were the types of music that came most naturally to me, and with which I could best express myself & get some more music out into the world."  

As it turned out Steen didn’t have to wait long to find out, as Son Seals included his song “Last Four Nickels” on his “Living In The Danger Zone” CD on Alligator Records soon afterward.  An outpouring of new material eventually resulted in recordings by James Cotton (four songs included on Cotton’s Grammy-nominated “Living The Blues” CD), Junior Wells, Big Daddy Kinsey, Maria Muldaur, Solomon Burke (on his “Make Do With What You Got” CD, also Grammy nominated; Burke performed the song “live” on the David Letterman show), and a wealth of other outstanding blues & roots artists including Terry Evans, Jo-El Sonnier, The Cate Brothers, Michael Burks,  Sherman Robertson, James Armstrong,  Larry McCray, and perhaps most notably Coco Montoya, a distinguished alumnus of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and a protégé of Albert Collins. 

Steen begin a creative relationship with Montoya in 1997 which has resulted in dozens of released recordings, most recently several songs on Montoya's 2024 #1 Billboard Blues Chart release "Writing On The Wall".  Steen also appears as a guitarist on that album, as well as Coco's earlier "Suspicion" album.  Previously, in 2019, “Coming In Hot” – co-written with Montoya and son Ryland Steen - was selected as the title cut of Coco's fifth album for Alligator Records, 

During this time, and by then residing in Lincoln, Nebraska, Steen joined the house band for the world-famous blues club The Zoo Bar. "The Heartmurmurs" served countless times as the backup band for fellow Lincoln resident Magic Slim. 

The year 2015 saw the release of Eric Burdon’s ("The Animals") most recent album of original material, “’Til Your River Runs Dry”, the opening cut being a song co-written with Burdon, "Water".  

In recent years Dave Steen songs have appeared in such multi-award-winning independent films such as “Blue Collar Boys” (Coco Montoya's recording of "Beyond The Blues")"and “40 Years In The Making: The Magic Music Movie” ("Jump", as performed by Chris Daniels & The Kings). 

A solo project, “Town Full Of Secrets”, credited to “Dave Steen & Jailhouse Tattoo”, earned a 3 ½ star review from DOWNBEAT magazine. 

 In 2017, a reunion show by  HAWKS in Fort Dodge, Iowa saw the band performing for a crowd of thousands as the opening act for Huey Lewis & The News - a band, ironically, with which HAWKS had shared a taping of Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” in 1982. 

To date, Dave Steen's songs have appeared on various BILLBOARD magazine charts 21 times, either as singles or album cuts, in a period spanning five decades beginning in the 1980's.