reprinted without permission from Music Connection Vol. X No. 21 October 13-October 26, 1986

david & david
make a record
the inspiring saga of two smart guys & their portastudio

by Billy Cioffi & Bud Scoppa

at the firefly
we all tell lies
and the cleanup kid
hangs his head
he's the quiet type
came to la to write
but he never made it out of the fringes
keeps a low profile you kick him
he'll smile
thinks blood is his payment for losing

The slender thread that divides Art and Commerce is, paradoxically, a Gordian Knot that is perplexing to even the most clever of popsters. Yet the answer is, as always, simple - it's in the songs. How they slice through the entangled collective consciousness. How they set into motion memories yet unlived. How they evoke the past and distort it into bright or bitter future tense.

The world of David & David is not a place for kids. It's populated by adults only (and maybe some runaways with rough edges). Their songs are the kind of pop short stories that you dance to with one ear cocked to the speaker. Bukowski with a beat.

David Baerwald and David Ricketts sought refuge in each others ' musical intellect after being nearly swallowed by the cracks of L.A.'s Rock & Roll Merry-Go-Round themselves. Each was dealt some bad hands in the traditional mode of "Let's get a band together, rehearse, and get a deal!" before fate plucked them from the edge of cynicism and threw them down at the city limits of the Boomtown. They got together and decided to do it their own way.

A four-track demo tape done on a Tascam 144 Portastudio and given to a temporary secretary at A&M Records resulted in the signing of the duo. The resulting album, Welcome to the Boomtown, has taken both the music media and the airwaves by storm (a rarity, no matter what you think of the record). When you sit down and talk to these two jamokes, it's obvious that each wears the yin/yang of confidence-versus-conflict on his sleeve. When two guys as serious as these boys get something going this strong, two contrasting thoughts emerge. One: "I knew it all the time." Two: "Jesus Christ, I can't believe this is actually happening!"

"Duo" is the perfect word in this instance, because duality is exactly what these guys are about. Baerwald is wiry, intense, and acts like he takes intravenous caffeine feedings. Hell say what he thinks at that very moment. This is reflected in his lyrics as they burst with a combination of rage and insight. He chain-smokes thoughts in long drags and exhales them in quick bursts of articulate smoke rings. Ricketts is more measured, less verbose, and equally articulate. While they're creative equals, it's hard not to think of Ricketts as Baerwald's older brother. You know, the one who saves his smart-assed kid bro when he gets in over his head— or at least gives him the knowing wink (which can mean "Shut up" or "Go for it"). This can be deceptive, because just when you think one is pulling the other's string, you'll push the other's button and the two will circle the wagons.

Ricketts is the groovemeister—he played most of the instruments on the LP. Singer Baerwald also played some guitar, banjo, and other traditional instruments. The music on the LP has many different elements, but one description might by Bryan Ferry collaborating with Last Exit to Brooklyn author Hubert Selby and having War put it to music—intellectually low-riding through Hollywood.

Boomtown is an extraordinary debut, with none of the "We dare you to like this" attitude of some of L.A.'s more pretentious musical artists. What makes the David & David debut so hopeful is its acceptance by radio as well as reviewers. Stations that normally aren't prone to play smart stuff like this are jumping on it and going off "format." What! Is it possible somebody's playing it because they like it, not because it has the same drum and guitar sound as the rest of the records on the playlist? Maybe rock radio is realizing that listeners are starved for something they can sink their teeth into — or are David & David just swimming in the ocean? Maybe they've found out that being alone together ain't so easy, but it's better than being all alone in the big city.   —B.C.

MC: The first time I heard what you guys were calling yourselves, I said, 'That's not gonna work."
Baerwald: We were the Samless Daves for a while.
MC: I don't know why it seems to work now.
Ricketts: 'Cause it is. Yeah, we kicked around names...and we kept kickin' 'em. Nothin' stuck. Somebody would turn their nose up somewhere. They'd been calling us David & David all the time anyway, and it wasn't a band, and it didn't feel like a band.
MC: Who was it that signed you to A&M?
Baerwald: Aaron Jacoves.
MC: What was the basis of your appeal, do you think?
Ricketts [to Baerwald]: Am I takin' it this time or you? Basically, if you show them something they want, they're gonna respond to it.
Baerwald: In a case like ours, the record industry's been nothing but pleasure because they see what we see, which is that it's not this little snob or that little snob, but it's people that have full and rewarding lives of their own that need something to listen to. That it's not somebody pounding nails into their forehead saying, "I'm such a tortured genius',' or "I'm such a sex goddess:'
Ricketts: I mean, you can psychoanalyze all that shit, but I don't think the fashion fascism is as prevalent as it was in the early Eighties. There is a kind of groundswell that appears in this town periodically. There was such a heavy fashion gig going on; and there was some good music that came out of it, and then there's other stuff that gets attention. A few times in the early Eighties the press would get behind something seemingly because it was the "hip thing." I thought, "Wow, it really does exist like that — the press is bullshit sometimes, no matter who's writing the articles:' But when it comes down to you, you still gotta do what you do. You just have to note it—see that it exists.
MC: What you're doing is conscientiously non-trend — the first clue is what you call yourselves. It's non-trend by virtue of the fact that your music is very accessible and yet it also has lyric content and a prevailing underlying attitude—all of which specifically does not relate to anything else that's around. That's why it pops out—because it's so stripped of the trappings of today's image-oriented music. It's the antidote.
Ricketts: When you talk about non-trend stuff, there's a side of me that likes hearing that, because there's a side of me that's still going on about the trend potential in this town and everything. But basically I don't give a shit about that, because it never worked for me and that's why I didn't do it in the first place. Fashion fascism—I've been sayin' that for a while now. And this is not to say that everybody that comes out of that is bullshit, because everybody is different, just like we are.
MC: So you chose not to go that route and plugged in the portastudio instead.
Ricketts: When we did those demos is when we really did this stuff, because that's basically what the album became. 
MC: The fact that you were even allowed to make this record exactly the way you wanted to strikes me as highly unusual in this day and age.
Baerwald: [A&M] were happy as pigs when — I'm sorry, what am I saying? They let us go on our way because they didn't know what we were doin' and they figured we did.
MC: Why'd they sign you?
Baerwald: 'Cause one guy—Aaron Jacoves—believed in us and believed in what we were gonna do. And still does. And backs it up with his own little body. We just went to the right guy at the right time.
MC: I gotta tell ya—l think the record is great, I really do.
Baerwald & Ricketts: Thanks.
MC: It reminds me of Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski.
Baerwald: Ahh!
MC: 'A Rock for the Forgotten" conjures up a lot of that type of forlorn imagery. What attracts me to the record is its musicality and how it still remains very angry or emotional. This doesn't happen that often in pop music.
Ricketts: That's right. People think a lot of the time that if they have the right ethics and the right morality, they don't have to play!
Baerwald: It's like in the club scene it all becomes kind of a pose on the merry-go-round. A fashion game—that kind of jive.
MC: Certainly many critics are taken in by that kind of phoniness and posturing.
Ricketts: If it's out of tune it's great!
Baerwald: I think [the musicality of the album] puts more focus on the lyrics, because if you have music that is also illustrating the point—
Ricketts: I mean, it can be out of tune or dissonant; it's just different for us. In this case, it sets up the narrator, so you're more prone to listen to the lyric—exactly what it's saying—it's a scenario that's been painted.
MC: I think it's a mature record; there are elements of Steely Dan in there.
Ricketts: Our point of view is certainly more direct, but musically there are a few elements [in common]. There's also the similarity in the sense that it's two guys and we are the group, so let's cut the crap, y'know?  Two guys can state their point easier than if you have to dilute it through a lot of other people. If you're at the formative stage, a lot of times you have to convince the [other musicians] of what you're trying to get to and it gets diluted.
Baerwald: A lot of good ideas sound crazy at first, and people don't understand exactly what you're trying to get at. And then you say, "Well, I'll be nice and I won't push it',' blah-blah-blah. The result is you wind up with nothing at all.
Ricketts: The way we are is just a lot more centered.
MC: Did you know each other each before you got together as a duo?
Baerwald: A little, yes.
MC: The stories in the lyrics of the tunes have depth and yet they are easy to follm. The lyrics are picturesque and they create an atmosphere, but they're linear. You don't go into a lot of oblique abstractions.
Baerwald: That's right, I don't really trust adjectives on that level; there's too much gray for me. I think the ambiguity that results from fact is more interesting. If you try to pretty it up, you take away from the ambiguity—take away the objectivity that you [as a writer] should have. If you tell a story—if you just state the facts, like a good journalist—you leave a lot more room for people to understand it on their own level. When you read an article in the paper, you're already aligned, one way or another, your own history. You're already predisposed to things when you read the article. You'll read whatever you want into it. A lot of people call the stuff on this record "cold-blooded',' and some people really think we're "sensitive.'
MC: In 'A Rock for the Forgotten;' you make no judgments about how people get sidetracked.
Baerwald: No, no! Shit, I know how it happens. I happened to be lucky in meeting Dave and a lot of other things, so I've ended up not having to do that, but.. .God knows...
Ricketts: If you've done it a couple of times, you know what it is and you should be able to write about it.
MC: Let's talk a little about the recording process.
Ricketts: We usually started out with a drum program. Then I'd generally lay down a bunch of tracks on a given day. Then David would come in and lay down some tracks. We'd try to get a tune to a point where we were getting excited about it on the same day we started it. We just continued to do the tunes because we had already laid them out on the demos. So by the end of the day usually we'd be in the position to put down a lead vocal on it, thereby going with all the energy that was put in it.
MC: The tracks don't seem to be tremendously labored-over in the sense other records do—sounding like they've been through a lot of mixes.
Baerwald: It's the spirit. If you're ready to do it, you're ready to do it; if you're not, you're not. Going back over and over won't help.
Ricketts: It's got the energy and that's what we were always going for: doing it well enough but doing it quick enough so that it has that kind of athletic-event energy, where you get the moment going.
Baerwald: The moment that's everything.
Ricketts: You put one part on because you want to hear what it sounds like; then you put another part on because you want to combine them. "This part will make the song sound like a song."
MC: Don't you think that a song should simply be able to be played on one instrument and sung and it should stand up to scrutiny?
Baerwald: I think that that's true, but I also think that playing a string quartet on one violin, although it will sound good, it's just the barest theme.
Ricketts: A lot of our material is set up on the premise that the parts are dependent on each other to make a whole.
Baerwald: I think you could, however, do these songs in the barest form and they would stand up.
Ricketts: There are two schools of thought; I tend toward that one. But there is another school—like Fela Kuti or Ebenezer Obey—where the interaction of the rhythm is a statement in itself.
Baerwald: That kind of complexity springs from the earth itself..
MC: When you first started tracking the album, did you lay down the rhythm section parts, as a band would?
Baerwald: When we first started doing it, it was Richie Hayward on drums and Tony Levin on bass.
MC: Since neither one is credited, I assume it didn't work.
Baerwald: I think it was less Richie than the [original] producer [not Sigerson].
Ricketts: It was our first record; we didn't necessarily know how to verbalize what we wanted or how a groove feels.
Baerwald: Plus you're sitting in the room with some personal heroes.
Ricketts: And you're still not getting what you want and it becomes weird and counter-productive.
Baerwald: And then you say, "These guys are famous—but it doesn't sound good."
Ricketts: It would have been a good record; it just wouldn't have been our record.
MC: So it was a false start, then.
Baerwald: Yeah, exactly. Look, what are we? We're songs. We're not Dave Ricketts and Dave Baerwald, we're songs. "Are we getting the songs? No:' So we had to stop. We had to start getting the songs, which is what we started out with at Dave's house.
MC: You went back and started with programmed drums, then?
Baerwald: Yeah. After we had everything set up, we had Ed Greene come in to overdub drums. I know that's not hip.
MC: Now, some lyric elucidation. When I first got the Boomtown tape, I played it in the office without actually listening to it, and the first song that insinuated itself into my consciousness was "Ain't So Easy," with that "And I rub your back... And I tend to your aches" chorus that suggests nurturing. Suddenly I find I'm singing along with it, and I don't even know what the song's about. Then I notice the line about "I'm sorry about your eye."
Baerwald: She hit it on a doorknob.
MC: So it's a song about soothing, right?
Baerwald: Ha-ha.. .are you serious. What the song is about is a person who's really in love with a woman, but he's a very weak man—he's very weak and he's very lost. And he seeks solace wherever he can find it. One of the places he seeks solace is in the beating of his wife. He hits her in the face. And she's tired of it; she's decided that she wants to leave. And he doesn't want her to. He says, "I'll never do that again. I really am sorry!' But she knows that he knows it's gonna again. See, the guy's lying to her.
MC: He means it when he says it, though.
Baerwald: Right, exactly. But he knows it ain't the truth.
Ricketts: I think somebody that pathetic doesn't know.
Baerwald: I think he knows deep down in his head that nothing's gonna change. She wants to believe him; he wants to believe what he's saying. But both of them know that it ain't the truth.
MC: And yet there's this feeling of immense tenderness.
Baerwald: Because he's just beat her up! And he realizes that he's done for the first time. And he's saying: "Oh, Jesus—I am really sorry! This'll never happen again. Forget the past, and I know that's not so easy!'
MC: Are there any other songs or lines you're particularly proud of?
Baerwald: There's nothin' on that record I'm not proud of. Actually, there's two little guitar things I did that I'm not that proud of, but..fuck that..
MC: How do you envision your stage setup for the tour?
Baerwald: We're gonna have a lot of ferns, I can tell you that. No. We're gonna have a six or seven-piece band. No horns. A backup singer—a woman, because a lot of the stuff is about interplay between men and women. It's gonna be drums, bass, two guitars, a keyboard player.
Ricketts: Let's face it, the tunes have a certain objective—they all have a certain viewpoint. But they also have grooves and stuff that a band can have fun playing. Like last night at rehearsal, and this is what I hope we can do onstage, we were expanding and following each other.
Baerwald: If you can put that in a club, which is probably where we're going to be playing, it could be explosive.
MC: What were the songs on the demo that sold you guys to A&M?
Baerwald: Uh, "Fuck the World',' "She's a Spazz',' "I'm a Bitch'.' No.
Ricketts: "Being Alone Together'.' That was the one that they finally decided on. "All Alone in the Big City" was on our first demo.
MC: Why do you think A&M picked 'Welcome to the Boomtown" as the first single?
Baerwald: 'Cause that song introduces you to us.
MC: The fact that it's the first song on the album, and that it starts with the word "Welcome; ' suggests some premeditation.
Ricketts: Nah. You know what's so great about that? There is no premeditation there. I mean, after the fact, that makes all kinds of sense, but the fact that it comes about spontaneously makes it that much better.
Baerwald: It made sense for the record.
Ricketts: I'm tellin' ya—when we were doin' that tune, the last thing we were thinkin' was "hit single."
Baerwald: Yeah, we were thinkin,' "Hey, this is pretty fuckin' spacey, man. This is like out there'."
Ricketts: That one, it never even entered our minds that it could be a single.
Baerwald: We thought it would be "Swallowed by the Cracks," "Being Alone Together," or "Ain't So Easy."
MC: "Swallowed by the Crucks" seems like the obvious one, because it's got that one-line chorus that keeps building.
Baerwald: There's a lotta lines in that chorus.
MC: You've sure found a lot of different ways to sing the line, "Swallowed by the Cracks."
Baerwald: Whatever. There's optimism, pessimism, and total despair, y'know?
MC: What noteworthy subjects have we not yet broached?
Ricketts: I think there is one thing and that is the nature of our collaboration. I have a lot of friends who find the notion of a synthesizer abhorrent—which is something I had to get over myself. It didn't take me too long but it did take me a while. I think that the collaboration is a hook in and out of itself.
Baerwald [reading from an album review]: . merging a classic American folk sensibility with Eighties technology and production techniques'.' Well, far fucking out! I think that's exactly what it is. From Woody Guthrie to Dylan  to whatever. Sort of the troubadour chronicling the tenor of the times, tra-la.
Ricketts: Right, but employing whatever is contemporary.
Baerwald: The whole notion of found objects. Synthesizers have become found objects as much as five-string banjos. You're a fool not to use them; you're a fool not to use a five string banjo as well.
MC: Do you suspect you 'II be criticized for having made too slick an album, then?
Ricketts: It depends on who you're talking to, since we have different style points between the two of us. When you put that together there are going to be people who think what David does is this and what I do is  something else. We both cover such a large area.
MC: I think the last thing I would call the album is slick.
Baerwald: I agree with you totally, but tell that to some of my friends!
MC: Oh, some think you've sold out?
Baerwald: Yeah, some.
Ricketts: Some of my friends have said that, too, and what it is is that they see their friend doing something. And "sold out" is one of the first quickies that they flash on. let's face it—you say you've sold out and you've got a lot of guilt.
Baerwald: Holy shit! I've sold out!
MC: It could be jealousy or envy.
Baerwald: Sure—I was waiting for you to say it!
Ricketts: Plus you couldn't possibly have gotten where you did for any good reason; there has to be some sort of scam involved, because that way they can justify it to themselves.
MC: It's like people who use the word commercial in a negative context.
Baerwald: "Is it commercial or good?" Then you look at people like Smokey Robinson or Motown and Stax people. You say to them, "Is it commercial?" and they say, "Fuck, yeah—of course it's commercial! What do you think I do this for—my health?"
MC: It's okay if it's Sixties black music for it to be commercial and artful.
Baerwald: Definitely.
Ricketts: These are the Rock Rules, and there are lots of Rock Rules....