Don Ross was born and raised in Montreal and has lived in various parts of Canada over the course of his life. The son of a Mi’kmaw Indigenous mother and a Scottish immigrant father, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music) degree from Toronto’s York University and started working full-time as a musician in 1988. That year he won the US National Fingerpick Guitar Championship for the first time, and also played with his quartet Eye Music at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Don won the US National Fingerpick Guitar Championship for the second time in 1996. To this day, he is still the competition’s only two-time winner.

Don's album Passion Session, released in 1999, has gone on to be considered one of the high water marks in the world of modern solo guitar, with several of the tunes (notably “Michael, Michael, Michael,” “The First Ride,” “Tight Trite Night” and his arrangement of David Essig’s “Berkley Springs”) now considered more or less standard repertoire in the genre.