Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio

An art gallery, a library, or a secondhand record shop is where you are most likely to find Dave Guard during his leisure hours when the Kingston Trio is traveling. And this may be where Dave feels most at home, because his home in Palo Alto, California, has some aspects of each of these places.

Dave and his wife, Gretchen, are avid collectors of modern paintings, and valuable works of contemporary artists hang on almost every available foot of wall space in their home.

Dave is also a voracious reader; and as a serious student of musicology, he has shelves of recordings by obscure instrumentalists and all-but forgotten singers, drawers of out-of-print song books and manuscripts, and boxes of file cards that cross-index his research.

All of this would seem to indicate a pedantic, withdrawn personality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although Dave Guard is a crack scholar (B average at Stanford, recipient of many scholarship awards), he is also an outgoing, fun-loving person, and an athlete who loves basketball and baseball and has lettered in football and track. He's an expert body-surfer, a skindiving enthusiast, and a very good amateur photographer .

Dave was born in Honolulu, October 19, 1934. He attended Honolulu's Punahou School, where he met Bob Shane. They both graduated in 1952.

Dave's father, a civil engineer and a colonel in the Army Reserve, thought his son's aptitudes indicated a business career and Dave agreed. He enrolled in Stanford University and supported himself by washing dishes, waiting on table, and ultimately entertaining in a Bavarian type restaurant. After receiving his B.A. in Economics in 1956, Dave entered Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

While attending graduate school, Dave met a young Stanford co-ed from Los Angeles named Gretchen Ballard, and what began as a campus romance became a lifetime partnership when they were married the following year.

Their first child, Catherine, was born June 1, 1958.

Although Dave is the principal arranger for the Kingston Trio and a fine musician and singer, he is almost entirely self-taught. His only formal musical training has been vocal lessons with the Trio's vocal coach, Judy Davis.

Dave is the acknowledged leader of the Kingston Trio and often their spokesman as well. His speech is a colorful combination of musician's jargon and expressions that sound lineally descended from the Encyclopedia Britannica. In this individualistic argot, anything in which he finds pleasure is '.nutty ." When it becomes superlative, it is '.right off its knob."

Dave's home, his family, and singing before a receptive audience as one-third of the Kingston Trio -- are "right off their knob" for Dave Guard.