Career
Baerwald first came to prominence in 1986 as one half of the duo David + David, with David Ricketts. David and David"s sole album, Boomtown, went platinum and stayed on the Billboard album chart for over a year, winning substantial critical acclaim, the debut single Welcome to the Boomtown became a top 40 Billboard hit. The duo split up following the success of that album for unexplained reasons.
Following the breakup of David and David, Baerwald focused on writing for others, often under pseudonyms, though he found time to record and release two albums: Bedtime Stories, a romantic album based on tales of suburban ennui and decay, featuring Joni Mitchell on guitar and backup vocals on the track "Liberty Lies" (Baerwald would later sing backup for Joni and appear in the video "Nothing Can Be Done" from her 1991 album "Night Ride Home").
And Triage, an ambitious narrative song-suite about the fringe-dwellers of America"s paranoid and disaffected subcultures. Both albums were released to critical acclaim but did not see the commercial success that Boomtown did.
His songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists ranging from the aforementioned Crow to artists as disparate as Japanese classical artists the Yoshida Brothers, opera legend Luciano Pavarotti, rebel-country frontrunner Waylon Jennings, Bangles front woman Susanna Hoffs, country star LaFollette Rimes, jazz artist Holly Cole, critic"s darling Jesca Hoop, and actor/singers Kristen Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke, Hayden Panettiere, Ashlee Simpson, and Steven Strait, among many others Outside of popular music, Baerwald has worked extensively as both a songwriter and instrumental score composer in film and television, including the Golden Globe-nominated song from the Baz Luhrman musical Moulin Rouge! He is also a skilled multi-instrumentalist, with a primary focus on stringed instruments.
Recent projects include the American Broadcasting Company shows, "Life Unexpected" and "October Road", and the Showtime series" "Sexual Healing" and "Pleasure Foreign Sale".
