From the San Diego Tribune (Rest In Peace)
(Dec. 18, 1986)
David+David a great addition to '86 music scene
By Robert J. Hawkins
Captions: Published: DAVID+DAVID: THEIR ALBUM ON CHARTS 20 WEEKS
THE STORY of David+David's big break is destined to become legend - just as their debut album, Boomtown is destined to be listed among the best of 1986.
Lyricist David Baerwald and composer David Ricketts had about three songs on a demo tape, and in the Los Angeles music industry jargon they were "shopping around for a deal." They gave the tape to the brother of a temporary secretary working at A&M records.
The woman worked there all of three days.
In less time than that, A&M put Baerwald and Ricketts to work on a full album. The result, Boomtown, has been lauded by critics and contemporary music fans alike for the vivid imagery of its lyrics and the emotional impact of the music.
Boomtown has been on the Billboard charts for 20 weeks and shows promise of hanging around for quite some time.
Both men have struggled for years, trying to make it in LA. Not exactly overnight successes, their discovery is an incredible tale.
"It's funny, nobody doubted the story six months ago," says Baerwald with a chuckle. "Now that we've become successful it's `Baerwald claims ....'
"We're trying to find the girl; she worked there three days. Her name is Sheila Ipach," he said, "Maybe she can read this someplace."
Sheila Ipach, if you're out there, David and David want to buy you a bottle of brandy, at the very least.
DavidDavid's quirky route to success is fraught with irony: The people whose lives they chronicle in such songs as "Welcome to the Boomtown," "Swallowed by the Cracks," "Swimming in the Ocean" and "A Rock for the Forgotten" have long ago given up dreams of big breaks like this one.
They are the fringe, the people you don't read about in People. They are the ones who have begun to think the unthinkable - they'll never be stars. As Baerwald says, the people who have struggled and yet remain "frozen out" of the great American dream. Some have even learned to accept the fact.
"Swallowed by the Cracks" is an especially wrenching glimpse into the souls of a faded dancer who once "had fire in my eyes and legs like a stallion" and the would-be actress and writer, whose fates are all too common.
Baerwald brings a journalist's eye to the telling of his tales. That was a profession he once tried when his future in music seemed as hopeless as that of his subjects.
"I got really disillusioned with the whole music thing about a year before I met Dave (Ricketts)," Baerwald recalls. "The LA club scene was a total jive ... scene, pose upon pose upon pose upon pose. So I thought I'd become a reporter, try to do the police beat or something. ... The thing is, I've always wanted to find something I could do where I could be a part of society and not be co-opted by some corporate rationale. I thought that journalism was one area that respected that rationale."
It was music's good fortune that Baerwald ran into Ricketts.
At least the second time they met.
"When we first met," recalls Baerwald "I was 19 and David was 26. I was your basic smart-ass, loudmouth arrogant punk - your basic teen-ager who knows everything. He said he noticed things about me that he liked but for the most part I was pretty incorrigible. You know the type, the Johnny Rotten type.
"We just came from greatly different approaches musically. He was into the disciplined music thing. I was into the chaos of the whole thing ... the two just were very opposed.
"Five years after that, when we sat down to work, it was immediately apparent that we had to continue working together ... I'd grown up a lot and he'd grown more tolerant."
Thus began one of the most promising partnerships in music today.
Ricketts creates the perfect musical expression to match Baerwald's often bleak vision.
That vision swings upward by the way on "Heroes," a tribute to people who make the decision to press on with their lives.
"I've been writing songs for a long time," said Baerwald, "and they've always had sort of a bleak slant to them, and ... I saw this spirit among all the people I've been going through the club scene with: You just come to a point in your life where you have to go one way or another, where you say `I do want to live, I care about life, or I don't.'
"As one gets older, one sees people making those choices, whether they know it - particularly musicians and artists that feel kind of frozen out. I wanted to write a song about that, about making that decision."
To take their show on the road, Ricketts and Baerwald had to come up with a band. The album was just the two of them.
After auditioning about 60 musicians they settled on drummer Greg Ellis, bassist Stuart Hamm, keyboardist Jeff Martin and percussionist Amy Knoles.
The result is a live sound that is "a little more rocking, a little more bluesy than the album," says Baerwald. "There are not quite so many tensions, subtleties. Unfortunately, we just don't have the wherewithal to do that. We can't afford to have a band that size. For me, switching from mandolin, to guitar, to dobro, to lap steel guitar would be such a hassle I didn't want to deal with it."
The show includes the Boomtown songs and others that will likely end up on a second album.
Their first national tour ends Sunday night at the Bacchanal and, after a few weeks off, they'll likely return to the road as the opener for a major act.
Old d+d story from my newspaper
K
KP in SD
(view)
From the San Diego Tribune (Rest In Peace)
(Dec. 18, 1986)
David+David a great addition to '86 music scene
By Robert J. Hawkins
Captions: Published: DAVID+DAVID: THEIR ALBUM ON CHARTS 20 WEEKS
THE STORY of David+David's big break is destined to become legend - just as their debut album, Boomtown is destined to be listed among the best of 1986.
Lyricist David Baerwald and composer David Ricketts had about three songs on a demo tape, and in the Los Angeles music industry jargon they were "shopping around for a deal." They gave the tape to the brother of a temporary secretary working at A&M records.
The woman worked there all of three days.
In less time than that, A&M put Baerwald and Ricketts to work on a full album. The result, Boomtown, has been lauded by critics and contemporary music fans alike for the vivid imagery of its lyrics and the emotional impact of the music.
Boomtown has been on the Billboard charts for 20 weeks and shows promise of hanging around for quite some time.
Both men have struggled for years, trying to make it in LA. Not exactly overnight successes, their discovery is an incredible tale.
"It's funny, nobody doubted the story six months ago," says Baerwald with a chuckle. "Now that we've become successful it's `Baerwald claims ....'
"We're trying to find the girl; she worked there three days. Her name is Sheila Ipach," he said, "Maybe she can read this someplace."
Sheila Ipach, if you're out there, David and David want to buy you a bottle of brandy, at the very least.
DavidDavid's quirky route to success is fraught with irony: The people whose lives they chronicle in such songs as "Welcome to the Boomtown," "Swallowed by the Cracks," "Swimming in the Ocean" and "A Rock for the Forgotten" have long ago given up dreams of big breaks like this one.
They are the fringe, the people you don't read about in People. They are the ones who have begun to think the unthinkable - they'll never be stars. As Baerwald says, the people who have struggled and yet remain "frozen out" of the great American dream. Some have even learned to accept the fact.
"Swallowed by the Cracks" is an especially wrenching glimpse into the souls of a faded dancer who once "had fire in my eyes and legs like a stallion" and the would-be actress and writer, whose fates are all too common.
Baerwald brings a journalist's eye to the telling of his tales. That was a profession he once tried when his future in music seemed as hopeless as that of his subjects.
"I got really disillusioned with the whole music thing about a year before I met Dave (Ricketts)," Baerwald recalls. "The LA club scene was a total jive ... scene, pose upon pose upon pose upon pose. So I thought I'd become a reporter, try to do the police beat or something. ... The thing is, I've always wanted to find something I could do where I could be a part of society and not be co-opted by some corporate rationale. I thought that journalism was one area that respected that rationale."
It was music's good fortune that Baerwald ran into Ricketts.
At least the second time they met.
"When we first met," recalls Baerwald "I was 19 and David was 26. I was your basic smart-ass, loudmouth arrogant punk - your basic teen-ager who knows everything. He said he noticed things about me that he liked but for the most part I was pretty incorrigible. You know the type, the Johnny Rotten type.
"We just came from greatly different approaches musically. He was into the disciplined music thing. I was into the chaos of the whole thing ... the two just were very opposed.
"Five years after that, when we sat down to work, it was immediately apparent that we had to continue working together ... I'd grown up a lot and he'd grown more tolerant."
Thus began one of the most promising partnerships in music today.
Ricketts creates the perfect musical expression to match Baerwald's often bleak vision.
That vision swings upward by the way on "Heroes," a tribute to people who make the decision to press on with their lives.
"I've been writing songs for a long time," said Baerwald, "and they've always had sort of a bleak slant to them, and ... I saw this spirit among all the people I've been going through the club scene with: You just come to a point in your life where you have to go one way or another, where you say `I do want to live, I care about life, or I don't.'
"As one gets older, one sees people making those choices, whether they know it - particularly musicians and artists that feel kind of frozen out. I wanted to write a song about that, about making that decision."
To take their show on the road, Ricketts and Baerwald had to come up with a band. The album was just the two of them.
After auditioning about 60 musicians they settled on drummer Greg Ellis, bassist Stuart Hamm, keyboardist Jeff Martin and percussionist Amy Knoles.
The result is a live sound that is "a little more rocking, a little more bluesy than the album," says Baerwald. "There are not quite so many tensions, subtleties. Unfortunately, we just don't have the wherewithal to do that. We can't afford to have a band that size. For me, switching from mandolin, to guitar, to dobro, to lap steel guitar would be such a hassle I didn't want to deal with it."
The show includes the Boomtown songs and others that will likely end up on a second album.
Their first national tour ends Sunday night at the Bacchanal and, after a few weeks off, they'll likely return to the road as the opener for a major act.
(Dec. 18, 1986)
David+David a great addition to '86 music scene
By Robert J. Hawkins
Captions: Published: DAVID+DAVID: THEIR ALBUM ON CHARTS 20 WEEKS
THE STORY of David+David's big break is destined to become legend - just as their debut album, Boomtown is destined to be listed among the best of 1986.
Lyricist David Baerwald and composer David Ricketts had about three songs on a demo tape, and in the Los Angeles music industry jargon they were "shopping around for a deal." They gave the tape to the brother of a temporary secretary working at A&M records.
The woman worked there all of three days.
In less time than that, A&M put Baerwald and Ricketts to work on a full album. The result, Boomtown, has been lauded by critics and contemporary music fans alike for the vivid imagery of its lyrics and the emotional impact of the music.
Boomtown has been on the Billboard charts for 20 weeks and shows promise of hanging around for quite some time.
Both men have struggled for years, trying to make it in LA. Not exactly overnight successes, their discovery is an incredible tale.
"It's funny, nobody doubted the story six months ago," says Baerwald with a chuckle. "Now that we've become successful it's `Baerwald claims ....'
"We're trying to find the girl; she worked there three days. Her name is Sheila Ipach," he said, "Maybe she can read this someplace."
Sheila Ipach, if you're out there, David and David want to buy you a bottle of brandy, at the very least.
DavidDavid's quirky route to success is fraught with irony: The people whose lives they chronicle in such songs as "Welcome to the Boomtown," "Swallowed by the Cracks," "Swimming in the Ocean" and "A Rock for the Forgotten" have long ago given up dreams of big breaks like this one.
They are the fringe, the people you don't read about in People. They are the ones who have begun to think the unthinkable - they'll never be stars. As Baerwald says, the people who have struggled and yet remain "frozen out" of the great American dream. Some have even learned to accept the fact.
"Swallowed by the Cracks" is an especially wrenching glimpse into the souls of a faded dancer who once "had fire in my eyes and legs like a stallion" and the would-be actress and writer, whose fates are all too common.
Baerwald brings a journalist's eye to the telling of his tales. That was a profession he once tried when his future in music seemed as hopeless as that of his subjects.
"I got really disillusioned with the whole music thing about a year before I met Dave (Ricketts)," Baerwald recalls. "The LA club scene was a total jive ... scene, pose upon pose upon pose upon pose. So I thought I'd become a reporter, try to do the police beat or something. ... The thing is, I've always wanted to find something I could do where I could be a part of society and not be co-opted by some corporate rationale. I thought that journalism was one area that respected that rationale."
It was music's good fortune that Baerwald ran into Ricketts.
At least the second time they met.
"When we first met," recalls Baerwald "I was 19 and David was 26. I was your basic smart-ass, loudmouth arrogant punk - your basic teen-ager who knows everything. He said he noticed things about me that he liked but for the most part I was pretty incorrigible. You know the type, the Johnny Rotten type.
"We just came from greatly different approaches musically. He was into the disciplined music thing. I was into the chaos of the whole thing ... the two just were very opposed.
"Five years after that, when we sat down to work, it was immediately apparent that we had to continue working together ... I'd grown up a lot and he'd grown more tolerant."
Thus began one of the most promising partnerships in music today.
Ricketts creates the perfect musical expression to match Baerwald's often bleak vision.
That vision swings upward by the way on "Heroes," a tribute to people who make the decision to press on with their lives.
"I've been writing songs for a long time," said Baerwald, "and they've always had sort of a bleak slant to them, and ... I saw this spirit among all the people I've been going through the club scene with: You just come to a point in your life where you have to go one way or another, where you say `I do want to live, I care about life, or I don't.'
"As one gets older, one sees people making those choices, whether they know it - particularly musicians and artists that feel kind of frozen out. I wanted to write a song about that, about making that decision."
To take their show on the road, Ricketts and Baerwald had to come up with a band. The album was just the two of them.
After auditioning about 60 musicians they settled on drummer Greg Ellis, bassist Stuart Hamm, keyboardist Jeff Martin and percussionist Amy Knoles.
The result is a live sound that is "a little more rocking, a little more bluesy than the album," says Baerwald. "There are not quite so many tensions, subtleties. Unfortunately, we just don't have the wherewithal to do that. We can't afford to have a band that size. For me, switching from mandolin, to guitar, to dobro, to lap steel guitar would be such a hassle I didn't want to deal with it."
The show includes the Boomtown songs and others that will likely end up on a second album.
Their first national tour ends Sunday night at the Bacchanal and, after a few weeks off, they'll likely return to the road as the opener for a major act.
