A career to call her own : It has taken two decades, but Patti Scialfa is finally her own boss.

September 23 2004
By Susan Carpenter, LA Times Staff Writer


It has taken two decades, but Patti Scialfa is finally her own boss -- a solo artist who's moved to center stage after years of singing subordinate to Bruce Springsteen, her husband and father of their three kids.

In support of her new record, "23rd Street Lullaby," the 51-year-old singer on Saturday will play the fifth solo show of her career at the Roxy.

After 20 years as a backup singer with the E Street band, it has to feel good, but ask Scialfa how it feels to step out from the shadow of her superstar husband, and she just laughs and laughs. As Springsteen's better half, Scialfa may not have been subject to the same media scrutiny as her husband, but she's nevertheless cautious.

"It's very fulfilling to play your own music, and I've waited a long time to do it," she says, after a little prodding and even more laughter. "Bruce teases me: 'Once you get out there, you're not going to want to come back.' "

But that will be an unrealized fear. Less than a week after Scialfa's L.A. concert, her last scheduled show, she'll be rejoining the E Street Band for a handful of Vote for Change benefits, beginning Oct. 1 in Philadelphia. As for continuing her solo tour, she says, "We might go out again," but nothing's been set.

Wife. Mother. Singer. Songwriter. Collaborator. Scialfa wears each of her hats with grace and fluidity. In her 30-some years as a musician, she's learned the difficult art of balancing her own dreams with the needs and desires of those around her.

Her latest record traces that path, filtering the experiences of her early days as a New York City busker and waitress through the prism of the present. In country-kissed rock songs delivered with a lived-in, smoky tremolo style, Scialfa has penned a beautiful musical autobiography that turns back the clock to her life pre-Springsteen -- the late '70s and early '80s, when a twentysomething Scialfa's youthful optimism was frequently met with hard knocks.

"I've never really told my story," Scialfa said, explaining why it was important to revisit that time of her life. "I've been a freelance artist since I was a teenager. You're working for other people and you're always lending yourself over to complete some musical picture of somebody else's vision. That's a great thing to do ... but you're only asked to use a very specific piece of your talent. I wanted to have a record that told my story instead of lending myself over to help people tell their stories."

"23rd Street Lullaby" is the long-delayed follow-up to Scialfa's critically acclaimed 1993 solo debut, "Rumble Doll" -- a record that had also been delayed. After joining the E Street Band in 1984 to tour behind Springsteen's "Born in the USA," she quickly landed her first solo deal. But just as she was set to go into the studio, Springsteen asked her to tour behind his 1987 album, "Tunnel of Love."

That tour marked the beginning of their romance. Then kids, then marriage. Priorities shifted. Her first record didn't see the light of day until eight years after she'd gotten the deal. And then, pregnant with their third child, she was unable to tour.

In 1999, between mothering and touring, Scialfa again attempted to kick-start her solo career, but after writing and recording her second album, she shelved it. "The songs didn't have my fingerprints on them," she said. "Getting them on tape, it got diluted."

It took Scialfa running into an old friend from her earliest days in Manhattan to get "23rd Street Lullaby" off the ground. That friend was Steve Jordan, a drummer she'd played with in her early 20s. They, in turn, invited other musicians they'd worked with back in the day -- vocalist Soozie Tyrell, keyboardist Cliff Carter. For Scialfa, it made sense to assemble a band from the era she was writing about for personal, as well as professional, reasons.

"Steve played on a lot of my demos [when I was in my early 20s], so when I bumped into him, it was that thing of having somebody very clearly just see you," Scialfa said. "I work in a really large band, and it can take a tremendous effort just to separate. This is not by any means a poor-pitiful-me story, it's just a fact. You're in a big organization. People see you in that organization, and then I'm married to Bruce on top of it. So to try and get your work together, you need people around you who reflect back to you your independent vision. I needed people around me who reflected back my independent sense of artistry."

While Springsteen contributed little bits "here and there" to Scialfa's latest record -- an organ riff on the world-wise "Rose," a guitar solo on the romantic "Love (Stand Up)" -- it is very much her own album. Even so, you won't find anyone reviewing it without at least a mention of her Springsteen connection.

"I'm surprised by it," she said. "I forget because it's my life. Then I go, 'Oh, right.' A lot of people view it through the reflection off of something else, but that's OK. That's just part of it. I call that a luxury problem. That's not a real problem. That's just part of the package."