Born Evans Pham in Montréal, he took the moniker "Donnie Montreal" to pay homage to the city where he fell in love with music. Pham developed an interest in music at an early age and learned to play the piano at the age of five. Pham grew up in Houston, TX and was influenced by the sounds of electronica, R&B, underground Houston rap, and dirty south hip-hop.

In 2007, he was first introduced to the music sequencer program "FruityLoops" and began experimenting his own sounds and producing his own music.  

In 2010, he began to distribute his own records under the name “Donnie Montreal” for free on SoundCloud. 

To support himself during and after graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington, he took on various jobs in Dallas: waiter, club promoter, and DJ gigs at clubs and afterhours. 

In 2015, he moved to California to pursue his music career - although struggled to make ends meet. Feeling discouraged, he decided to put away his headphones and picked up a job in tech sales. 

The next 6 years, he would climb the ranks and break sales records. Despite finding success in the corporate world, he would experience a sense of deep unfulfillment. 

In 2020, the world was shut down. While setting up his work from home office, he would discover his old headphones and studio monitors in storage. Upon this discovery, he would instead set up his home music studio. 

At the age of 30, he released and distributed his first single “Cant Help It” as an independent artist.

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