Elewout de Raad was born in 1971 in Groningen, Holland. At the age of 6 he started taking classical guitar lessons. At the age of 8 he developed an interest for bluegrass music and got his first western guitar which he still uses today. At the age of 11 he started taking lessons from Teije Wijnterp, a rock and flamenco guitar player, who inspired him to figure out music from records by ear. The first song he figured out was "Texas Flood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan, other records by different blues and rock players followed. At this time he started playing in different bands and picked up jazz/rock influences from a drummer he played with for a few years. In 1993 he went to a conservatory and studied jazz music. At the time that he played top-100 music in different bands he hooked up with Hendrik Mulder, a drummer with a lot of the same musical influences with whom he started the Elewout de Raad Project. In 2003 they recorded their first album The Cross, an instrumental jazz-rock CD. Instrumental Guitar (Electric/Fusion/Jazz), total running time, 38:47