Vonda Shepard

When David. E. Kelley was formulating a new dramedy called Ally McBeal, he envisioned the show's star, Calista Flockhart, pouring out her emotions through songs at the end of each episode. That is, until he heard Vonda Shepard perform the song "The Wildest Times of the World" at an L.A. club.

"It was the proverbial lightbulb going off when he saw me up there," Shepard told Songfacts. And that was the song that made him realize this was the voice - I was the voice, I was the sound for the character's emotional make up."

The two were actually already friends through Kelley's wife, actress Michelle Pfeiffer. Shepard appeared on every episode of Ally McBeal, which ran from 1997-2002.

Vonda Shepard describes her childhood as "incredibly left-of-center." Richmond Shepard, who raised the singer and her three sisters, was a mime who brought home clowns and other circus performers the way other people might bring home stray dogs and cats.

The future singer was also exposed to the theater world through her father's additional work as a director and producer, but it wasn't a welcoming place for such a shy girl. Shepard explained in an interview with Paul Freeman: "I was incredibly shy and the thought of performing was terribly frightening. What I did lean towards, from a very young age, was music. I started to write solid songs and make demos at the age of nine. I put my shyness, my fear, into the music."

Vonda Shepard's name was linked to Mitchell Froom's long before the pair married in 2004. Froom - a noted music producer who has worked with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Crowded House and Elvis Costello - first appeared alongside Shepard as a guest artist (organist) on her 1992 album, The Radical Light. Froom's credits widened to producer and composer for Shepard's other albums, including By 7:30, Chinatown, From the Sun, and Solo.

Shepard doesn't have a problem working with her husband, but she has to be a little more careful about her lyrics, she tells Songfacts: "My relationship is great. So I'm going back and I have to say to my husband, 'This is not about you, honey,'" she laughs.