Long-awaited 'Lullaby'

Patti Scialfa returns with her first CD in 11 years

Sunday, June 13, 2004
BY JAY LUSTIG
Star-Ledger Staff

Patti Scialfa is talking about her father, a self-made man who owned a Long Branch television store, expanded into appliances and electronics, and then became a real-estate investor. And what did her mother do?

"My mom worked with him," says Scialfa (pronounced SKAL-fuh), 50. "It's a funny thing, because my mom did it all, but in those days, it wasn't in the language that they were doing it together. Your mom worked 'with' your dad, or 'for' your dad. But really, she was doing it right beside him."

Scialfa's working relationship with her own husband, Bruce Springsteen, is more clearly defined. Since 1984 -- four years before they became romantically involved, six years before they had the first of their three children, and seven years before they married -- she has been a member of his E Street Band, singing backing vocals and playing rhythm guitar.

Springsteen has, in turn, helped out on her solo albums: 1993's "Rumble Doll" and the new "23rd Street Lullaby," due out Tuesday on Columbia Records. But he has only played a small role.

He contributed guitar and keyboards to two "Rumble Doll" tracks, and was credited with "additional production" on those songs. On "23rd Street Lullaby," he plays on three numbers, and receives no production credit.

Scialfa could have asked him to do more, but didn't. Sometimes, wary of creating the perception that he was pulling all the strings, she even asked other musicians to duplicate parts he had originally played.

"Steve (Jordan, the album's co-producer) would say, 'No, this is a great bass part,"" she says, sitting on a big white couch in the living room of the Colts Neck farmhouse she and Springsteen own (they live in nearby Rumson). "And I would say, 'Steve, you have no idea how I can be crucified for this. I'd rather spend the money and fly somebody in.'

"Bruce did play on a few (completed tracks). He just played so beautifully on some stuff I thought, 'This is too nice, I'm not taking this off.'"

When Scialfa performed for contest winners and invited guests at the Hit Factory in New York April 18, Springsteen was not in the band, though he did guest on two songs.

To promote the album, Scialfa will make five television appearances over the next week. She'll be backed by a band that includes album contributors like producer Jordan, on drums; E Street Band member Nils Lofgren, on guitar; her longtime friend and recent Springsteen collaborator Soozie Tyrell, on violin; and seasoned studio musicians like bassist Willie Weeks, keyboardist Clifford Carter and cellist Jane Scarpantoni.

Scialfa says she would like to tour, but has no specific plans. The logical time would be in the fall, although if Springsteen reconvened the E Street Band at that point, that would be her priority. She says she does not know when he plans to release his next album, or tour.

She didn't tour behind "Rumble Doll," but that album's material -- mostly low-key, atmospheric ballads -- might not have worked well in a club or theater setting, anyway. The new album is more dynamic, and has more of an organic, "band" feel.

This is particularly remarkable because many different combinations of musicians are used: nine of the 18 musicians appear on just one or two tracks. The songs were pieced together slowly, over the course of several years.

"I've been extremely busy and she's been extremely busy, so we weren't able to work straight through," says Jordan, whose previous credits, as a drummer or producer, include The Rolling Stones, The Pretenders, The Neville Brothers and Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes.

"Sometimes we would work for three or four days and get a lot of work done, and then not see each other for three or four months, and then pick it up again. I don't think we ever worked more than a week and a half at a time."

Jordan says the songs didn't need to be "hashed out" by the musicians, or re-written as they were being recorded. Scialfa knew how she wanted them to sound.

Tyrell, who played on eight of the 12 tracks, agrees.

"Patti had very specific ideas of what she wanted to hear from my violin playing," she says. "A few times I'd come up with some lines here and there, but she had pretty clear ideas. She's really good at coming up with string parts, and arranging hooks, and knowing how to use my sound."

Although "23rd Street Lullaby" isn't a theme album, per se, many of its songs are bittersweet looks at Scialfa's own past. She focuses on the years she spent in New York as a struggling musician.

She's actually lived on 23rd Street (as well as 24th Street) on Manhattan's West Side, in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of her musician friends, including Jordan, Tyrell and Carter, lived in the city too during that time, and most had apartments in that area.

In the "23rd Street Lullaby" track "You Can't Go Back," she sings about returning to the city in 1988: "I'm looking for a piece of my past/On these streets that I once knew."

"Don't the world look pretty, when you're young in the city ... Don't you sometimes wonder why it all goes by so fast?" she sings in "Young in the City."

Nostalgia plays a part in songs like these, though Scialfa says she doesn't romanticize that period of her life.

"People say, 'Wouldn't you like to be 20?' Absolutely not! It's just, I had a few of the songs around. I lived there for a long time, and I was able to express some of my ideas through that period.

"You always take from the past, and mix it up with the present and the future. There are a lot of songs on this record that were written right as the record was being made, but fit in really well."

Scialfa grew up in Oakhurst and Deal. After graduating from Asbury Park High School, she studied music at the University of Miami, and then NYU; she received a B.A. in music from NYU in 1975. Before joining the E Street Band, she sang in clubs with many different bands, and under her own name.

Teaming with Tyrell, she also worked as a street musician. "I had always wanted to do that," Scialfa says, "but I was scared. On your own, it's pretty intimidating, but you get a couple of people out there, and it's liberating."

Scialfa toured and recorded with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes in 1981 and 1982, and her album credits outside the E Street Band include The Rolling Stones' "Dirty Work" (1986), Keith Richards' "Talk Is Cheap" (1988), Buster Poindexter's self-titled debut album (1987), and Emmylou Harris' "Red Dirt Girl" (2000).

She says she first tried out for the E Street Band in the 1970s -- she's not sure what year it was, though. The band was looking for a female singer to tour with them, and took out an ad in The Village Voice.

She remembers singing the Crystals hit "Da Doo Ron Ron" at the New York office of Springsteen's manager, Mike Appel, then being sent to audition for the band in a warehouse somewhere in Monmouth County, on Route 36.

After she sang for the band, "Bruce said, 'That's nice, but we're not sure if we're even going to take anybody,'" she says.

As it turned out, they did not add a singer at that point, and Scialfa, who went on auditions all the time in those days, forgot about it. Until years later.

"I remember being on the 'Born in the USA Tour' and (keyboardist) Roy (Bittan) saying to me, 'Didn't I meet you before? Didn't you come down to that place on Route 36?' I said, 'Oh my God.' It was hysterical. I had forgotten, but then I remembered."

Scialfa and Springsteen became friends in 1982, when both would stop by the Asbury Park rock club The Stone Pony to sit in with the club's regular Sunday night band, Cats on a Smooth Surface.

"He heard me singing, and came up later and introduced himself, and just chatted," she says. "We just became friends -- strange as it seems now in hindsight.

"We'd hang out. We knew all the same people, and then the night would be over ... I don't think I had a car ... and he'd always give me a ride home. I'd go out with him and (another friend), and have a hamburger."

She said she did some singing for him during sessions for his 1984 "Born in the USA" album, but the tracks didn't wind up on the finished product. She was then asked to join the band just a few days before the start of the tour. All of a sudden, she was the lone female member of the world's most popular rock band.

"That was a big learning experience," she says. "Bruce's thing ... it's very focused. There's no fooling around. You just go in and do your work. It was good to realign myself inside that and go, 'Oh yeah, this is how you do it. You have to be this focused to be able to go out and do what you want.'"

Her attitude toward the band is still pretty much the same.

"I always feel lucky to be a part of that, because I worked freelance for so many years, and it's lonely out there -- and it's lonely in general, no matter what business you're in. To be a part of something that's larger than yourself -- forget even that it's successful -- and to feel that you belong somewhere, is a great thing."

Where to see Patti Scialfa

Patti Scialfa's "23rd Street Lullaby" album comes out on Tuesday, but her media blitz begins tomorrow. Here's a run-down of some of her upcoming appearances.

Tomorrow: "Late Show with David Letterman" (11:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., Ch. 2)

Tuesday: Outdoor concert on "Today" (7-10 a.m., Ch. 4)

Tuesday: CD signing session at Tower Records, 1961 Broadway (at 66th Street), N.Y. 6 p.m. No admission charge. Call (212) 799-2500 or visit www.towerrecords.com.

Wednesday: "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (12:30-1:30 a.m., Ch. 4)

Thursday: "The View" (11 a.m.-noon, Ch. 7)

June 20: "CBS News Sunday Morning" (9-10:30 a.m., Ch. 2)

July 7: Outdoor performance on "The Early Show" (7-9 a.m., Ch. 2)

Updates available at www.pattiscialfa.net.