Meet her at the corner of E and 23rd streets

Published in the Asbury Park Press 6/13/04
By KELLY-JANE COTTER
Music Writer

Patti Scialfa's eyes light up when she talks about her upcoming tour to promote her new solo album, "23rd Street Lullaby."
She envisions a tour of club dates in 12 to 15 cities around the country, beginning in early fall.

"Oh, I can't wait," she says, clapping her hand against the arm rest of a leather couch at Sony studios in Manhattan. "That's when the fun really begins, when you get to bring those songs out. We did one live thing already for direct TV with (co-producer) Steve Jordan and Nils (Lofgren). It was great -- there was an audience of contest winners. Do you want to see it? Let me show you."

She walks into another sitting room, where her manager, publicist and other staffers from Columbia Records are taking care of last-minute details before the release of the album, which hits stores Tuesday. She asks if she can show a reporter the concert special, which was taped at the Hit Factory in New York and airs through direct TV sometime in July. Pretty soon, there is Patti Scialfa and her band on the screen, and the real Patti Scialfa is watching, too, and it's evident from her happy face that this is someone who enjoys her work and knows how lucky she is.

You'd think that maybe Scialfa wouldn't be up for another round of concert dates, having spent much of this century on the road as back-up singer and guitarist with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Most recently, there was "The Rising" tour, but right before that was the reunion tour of the late '90s and, in between, the myriad, semi-spontaneous local shows for which Springsteen is justly famous.

Springsteen is her husband and the father of their three kids, who are now 13, 12 and 10.

It takes a certain personality, and a lot of stamina, to enjoy the grueling schedule required by a world tour, especially a Springsteen tour, which always involves concerts that last for two hours or more. And it takes even more ambition to spend whatever free time remains writing songs for your own album. But Scialfa, whose debut album, "Rumble Doll," was released on Columbia in 1993, has been eager to get her own music out there.

"'Rumble Doll' was basically a love letter with a cast of few characters," she said. "It was about figuring how to integrate yourself into a relationship, a real relationship. 'Rumble Doll' was dealing with those questions. This one has a broader cast of characters."

"I had most of the stuff written before the (Springsteen) tour ended," Scialfa said. "I would get up really early in the morning, before the children got up, and I would sit there and write. Or, if we had two days off from the tour, I'd record. I'd be like, 'Wow, two whole days to myself, better get going.' "

The album was recorded at her home studio in Colts Neck.

"I had to do it at home, it was the most practical way," Scialfa said. "Recording in the home studio means you're not watching the clock -- 'Hmmm, I'm paying for this and that.' And you don't have to travel anywhere and you can take your time.

"It was frustrating because -- in between birthdays and whatever else with the kids -- I couldn't make it a priority. Steve and I knew what we had to get, so after we got off the road, we just worked and worked."

Scialfa co-produced the album with Jordan, who was musical director for the PBS series "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues" and has produced albums for Keith Richards, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and others. Jordan also drums on Scialfa's album. Other performers on the album include Lofgren, vocalist and fellow E Street Band member Soozie Tyrell, bassist Willie Weeks, keyboardist Clifford Carter, guitarist Marc Ribot and cellist Jane Scarpantoni.

"I needed a team. You write a ton of music on your own -- I like writing and I can work really hard -- - but it is collaborative, you need others to help bring it to life," Scialfa said. "I have trouble getting it on my tapes -- the music and lyrics are fine, but I could never get the bottom right, a really nice rhythm. Steve knew me well enough to do that, and Mark Ribot, he's a great player with an individual voice on the guitar. Mark was instrumental in setting the moods."

Scialfa still looks a good decade younger than her 51 years. She is trim and stylish; this day she's wearing a lot of chunky silver jewelry, an "NJ" charm among her accessories. When she's on stage with the E Street Band -- a colorful bunch, to be sure -- she stands out, chiefly because of her long, red hair, which hangs like a curtain as she plays guitar.

She also looks young because she's so bubbly. She has a ready smile and an animated manner, even when she's talking about exhaustion ("Am I making sense? Because I was up at 5 a.m. and my daughter had exams . . ."). She's especially lively when talking about her album.

"I wanted it to be a celebration, to feel the joy of independence in the songs, that singular joy that you've made your mind up, regardless if you have a terrible job right now, you will find something to celebrate," she said. "You can feel all these things, like you're not complete, or good enough, but it's OK. I wanted it to be like something you would tell your kids, something reassuring -- it's OK, there's a place for you."

Scialfa, a graduate of Asbury Park High School who grew up in Deal and Oakhurst, was the type of person who always knew what she wanted to be. "I sang in glee clubs in school and was always singing with bands," she recalled.

She also had the work ethic and the business savvy to help move her career forward. Scialfa studied at a jazz school in Miami -- her classmates included Pat Metheney and Bruce Hornsby -- before transferring to New York University, because she was itching to explore a major city.

"I was very single-minded; I was taking demos to labels by the time I was 18 or 19, and I got very close three or four times," Scialfa said. "My goal was to have a record in my 20s.

"But once I was in the city, I got more into living that fantasy of the Bohemian culture and learned to live a little and have fun -- we played Tracks, Kenny's Castaways and, I think, Folk City -- and I learned the value of just doing that."

Her family was supportive of her pursuit of a life in the arts, but Scialfa said the business was so different then that everyone's expectations were also different.

"Music is so much more visual now, and a big business," Scialfa said. "You can't break into it the way you used to be able to do. I think they thought I would sing in clubs or whatever and build a life that way.

"I got my deal at 32, much later than I wanted to. I remember at the time thinking, 'Oh, God, I'm so late.' But then again, I never thought I'd sing back-up, and I'd been singing with Southside Johnny and then when Bruce asked me to join the tour -- it just takes a lot of time."

The years she spent living and playing music in New York as a young woman -- with pals Tyrell and Lisa Lowell -- inspired "23rd Street Lullaby." These were formative years -- Tyrell's own solo album, "White Lines," also includes a song about those days, "Out On Bleecker Street."

"The past is always a great source of inspiration," Scialfa said. "It's a great vehicle to tell your point of view. And that's such an important time in your life. You leave your small town and your sense of confinement, and a large city lets you reinvent yourself. You can lose pieces of yourself and test yourself.

"I don't think it had to be in New York City by any means, but I lived here for 10 to 15 years. I was trying to get my music heard. You're young and testing yourself and absorbing the culture. When I was in music school, there was a community inside the school, but we were insular; we weren't really a part of what was going on outside of the school. That's what I liked about the city -- you were always a part of it. Music was always a sanctuary, whether you're successful monetarily or not didn't even matter, it was a powerful experience anyway."

Scialfa, Tyrell and Lowell supported themselves through waitressing and through donations plunked into their guitar cases while they busked in the Village. Scialfa acknowledges that this would be a real feat today, with Manhattan studios easily renting for $1,600 a month.

"Oh, I think I paid $180 in rent -- it was really a different time," she said. "You could actually get by doing what we did."

While many street musicians find subway stations a satisfying venue, with a captive audience, Scialfa and her friends preferred to be above ground.

"I found the subway hard," she said. "I liked the experience of being outside more, getting people to stop and listen. Christopher Street, with all the gay people, that was always a supportive place for us. And Bleecker Street. Being outside, you really had to be inside your music to get people to stop and listen to your stuff. Once you could get people to connect emotionally, and listen to your lyrics -- this was sweet, intimate music, and with all the competing sounds of traffic, it was still possible to carve out this space where you could connect with people."

During a concert a couple of years ago with the E Street Band at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, Scialfa debuted "Rose," a song that appears on the new album. Frequently, when Springsteen turns over the microphone to a guest performer or even to one of his E Street bandmates, many audience members head for the lobby to grab a beer and wait 'til it's time for "Born to Run" or another familiar song. This time, however, Scialfa managed to hold the crowd. "Rose" is one of her strongest songs, a tale of female friendship and mentoring, told without sentimentality.

Scialfa wrote "Rose" when she was still a waitress in New York, and the real Rose worked with her.

"'I took some of the songs I wrote back then that, I felt, still stood the test of time," Scialfa said. "If I had had a contract then, I would've wanted to record it, but I don't think it would've come out the way I did it now."

In the song, Rose is a real character, a hard-working, no-nonsense cookie who retains her joie de vivre throughout a long shift at the restaurant.

"She was probably 49," Scialfa recalled. "There was a bunch of us younger women working there and she was a wonderful role model of resilience for us. Her husband was the chef in the back. She was the big mama lion and she put us under her paw and filled us in on everything we'd need to know.

"I took that moment of sitting at the bar with her, remembering what she'd tell us, and I thought it would be a great way of telling the story through her. She was this lovely Italian woman with that beautiful toughness that women of her age and background sometimes have.

"I don't like to think of the record as memorabilia because it still feels like the present to me, even 'Rose.' And it's not just about the specifics of what happened, because being stuck on a graveyard shift can mean you're fighting for what you need."

Another vivid track on the album is "You Can't Go Back," which finds the narrator returning to New York years after moving away, and wondering if she's viewed as an out-of-towner, someone who doesn't belong.

"You can't go back into that time period, you can't go back to that sense of innocence, that lack of malice," Scialfa said. "When Soozie and I were singing on the streets -- will you still feel the emotion of that spot, that time? You pick up a reflection of that experience, I think, but it's not the same as actually going back.

"Really, I was thinking about Tom Wolfe and 'You Can't Go Home Again,' and that yearning to return to some place of safety. Really, that's the funny thing, because I left home to go to the city, but the people I played with over the years, most of them were from New Jersey, and now, a lot of us are back here.

"It's basically about innocence and a lack of guile, just being fresh, and how much did you take with you to where you are now."