Vonda Shepard: Music and life beyond Ally McBeal
Vonda Shepard will play in Dublin in autumn, Picture: Pamela Springsteen
Working on blockbusting legal dramedy Ally McBeal was the experience of a lifetime for songwriter Vonda Shepard. It was often a surreal one, too. She met Sting when he famously guested on series four. She collaborated with Robert Downey Jr, who blazed a trail during his season on Ally McBeal before falling spectacularly off the wagon and appearing to sabotage his career for good. Looking back now, Shepard – who penned the show’s theme, 'Searchin’ My Soul' and was the on-set musical producer – it was all a blur.
“He [Downey Jr] wrote songs. I wrote with him on this one song called Snakes. It was very intense working with him. It was the last [Ally McBeal tie-in album]. It was right at the end, right before he crashed [Downey Jr. was fired from Ally McBeal after being arrested in possession of heroin, crack and an unloaded gun]. It was intense. Working with someone like that, so talented. It was fascinating. To watch it all explode was kind of crazy and shocking and all that.”
Downey Jr has turned his career around, his transformation sealed earlier this year when he won Best Supporting Oscar for Oppenheimer. Shepard, too, has moved on from Ally McBeal. In 2022, she released her tenth album, Red Light, Green Light – and will dip into the record when she plays Liberty Hall, Dublin, on October 5. She will also play songs made famous by Ally McBeal – including the aforementioned Searchin My Soul and Walk Away Renée, originally by the Left Banke but introduced to a new generation when Shepard brought it to Ally McBeal, where she both played on screen and worked on the soundtrack behind the scenes.
She acknowledges that getting the setlist right can be tricky. She has to please both fans of her music and devotees of Ally McBeal – while feeling that she is expressing herself creatively. It’s a tightrope she walks every night.
“I do some of my own songs that are my favourites – people want to hear the ones I wrote. Like Maryland [from her 1996 solo LP, It’s Good, Eve]. I do a smattering of songs from all of my albums. And usually, towards the end, I bring the Ally McBeal party. I know people want to hear that. But my hardcore fans who never watched Ally McBeal just want to hear songs from me. It’s a balancing act. It’s been challenging over my career making setlists. But I think I’ve figured it out. I weave in a couple here and there and save the party until the end.”
They don’t make shows like Ally McBeal any more. Off the air for more than two decades, fans still have strong feelings about the series – in which Calista Flockhart played a young lawyer with a disastrous romantic life and which became famous for its surreal humour (among other milestones, Ally McBeal birthed the “dancing baby” meme - a clumsy metaphor for the lead character’s concerns about her biological clock). They also have fond recollections of Shepard’s music, which were essential to the feel-good vibe.
For Shepard, Ally McBeal was a bolt of lightning that came from out of nowhere. Born in New York and a resident of California in the mid-1990s, she was a songwriter on the up. In 1997, she booked to play Hollywood’s Key Club, performing material from It’s Good, Eve. In the audience was high-powered TV producer David E Kelley and his then-wife Michelle Pfeiffer. Kelley was struck by the emotional quality of Shepard’s songwriting and decided she should write the theme tune to his next project – about a young lawyer in the big city. That collaboration continued throughout Ally McBeal – with Kelley enthusiastically using Shepard’s songs for big emotional scenes.
“One of the songs I get a lot of requests for is called 'Soothe Me'. It ended up being on By 7.30 [Shepard’s big 1999 solo record] – not the Ally albums. I gave David Kelley the demo one day. He drove home after filming and listened to it in the car. He said, ‘oh my god that’s perfect for an episode I’m working on’. And so that song made it onto a very important episode of the show [season one’s Boy to the World, a groundbreaking instalment about a trans sex worker]. And then on to my own albums.” She respected Downey Jr, But she was closer to Calista Flockhart.
“I’m about a year and a half older. She’s a lovely person. We are both friends after all these years. We both felt the connection early on and still have it.”
Shepard began her career in the late 1980s when singer-songwriters were out of vogue. This was the heyday of pop stars such as Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. Only when the 1990s came around did the industry begin to appreciate artists who prioritised songs over spectacle.
“I started making records when I was about 24. My first record came out in ’89. That was a certain era – where it was Madonna, Paula Abdul, Prince. I was on Warner Brothers with Madonna, Prince that whole scene. Then it switched in the 1990s, it was more Liz Phair, Bjork. I grew up more on Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones… that was more my foundation. In the 1990s I was in the middle of that Ally thing. It’s all a blur to me.”
Shepard vividly remembers the Sting episode, which ends with the one-time Police frontman duetting with Downey Jr. on Every Breath You Take at the Ally McBeal bar.
“I was the producer of the music. I didn’t work with Elton [John] unfortunately [Elton pops up in series five]. But I produce Sting and Robert Downey Jr – and also Al Green, Gladys Knight, Bon Jovi, Randy Newman. It was a long list! I was on the set a lot. Most of my work was done behind the scenes. When I was doing the bar scene I was on set all day – 5 am until who knows, 11pm sometimes. It’s crazy. I would co-ordinate the song with my band. Then Sting showed up, for example. ‘Come on in Sting’. He was very nice. He heard the track and said, ‘yeah that sounds good’. Then he went out and sang some vocals. And I was at the mixing board saying , ‘that sounded great – let’s do a couple more’. That was my job. It was cool.”
She enjoys playing to Ally McBeal fans. Her music reminds them of happy days – when, just like Flockhart’s character, they were young and carefree.
“It was a good time in their lives,” she says of the fanbase, adding that those bar scenes at the end of each episode (where Shepard was invariably belting out a tune) are especially beloved. “There was a time at the end of the show where everyone would go to the bar and seem loose and relaxed. And so people want to connect with that. I guess for my entire career it will be that way. I will happily play Tell Him [the Exciters tune which Shepard covered for the Ally McBeal soundtrack] at the end of the show. It’s my destiny if I want to keep performing. And it’s fun.”
- Vonda Shepard plays Liberty Hall, Dublin, October 5
