I Vonda Be a Star

Vonda Shepard is still getting accustomed to the trappings of success. Lackeys fetching her water. The temperature on the tour bus adjusted to her comfort. Back-up singers singing her lyrics.

Calling from a stop in Phoenix on her two-month "grueling" concert tour, the singer/songwriter known to fans of the Fox hit series "Ally McBeal" as the blond piano bar chanteuse and theme song belter, is marveling over the success of the album "Songs from Ally McBeal," which has been lodged in the Billboard Top 10 since its May release and hit gold (500,000 copies sold) last week.

"I feel the same," says Shepard, who stops here tonight for a sold-out show in the Railhead at Boulder Station. "The weird part is to have everyone else acting differently around you. I feel really this humility because I know how hard it is to get here -- it doesn't just happen overnight for some people."

In fact, Shepard's theoretical "overnight" success actually took her 20 long, hard years.

Born in New York and raised along with three sisters by her father in California, the 34-year-old was making her first club appearance at age 14. She describes her musical style as soul mixed with folk -- "Joni Mitchell meets ... some soul singer."

After a moderately successful run -- during which she sang backup for Rickie Lee Jones and Jackson Browne, scored an 1987 hit duet "Can't We Try," with Dan Hill, and recorded two albums -- Shepard was dropped by her record label, Reprise Records.

She was back playing to crowds skimpier than Ally's skirts.

"I felt discouraged and thought, 'maybe this is never going to happen,' " she recalls. "I just went back into my own songwriting -- and that saved me. it's like alchemy, where you take that pain and put it into something and it comes out ... with a gold record."

That next album, 1996's "It's Good, Eve," was what she was promoting when TV producer David E. Kelley ("Picket Fences," "L.A. Law," "Chicago Hope" and "The Practice") came to an appearance and got the idea to use Vonda singing a couple of songs for his new pilot.

"Mainly, what I thought, aside from being honored, was, 'Oh my god, I'm going to be able to pay my rent,' " Shepard says with a booming laugh.

Shepard's music quickly evolved into the musical counterpart to Ally's emotions, the theme song hit the playlists, the album went gold, and the rest is musical history.

"It's funny," she says of receiving the gold album, "it's not the physical accolade, I'm not going to hang it up in any room. It's this feeling of accomplishment that's hard to describe. It does mean a lot actually, to sell all those records after all this time."

And Shepard admits she still gets a thrill when "Searching My Soul," the song plucked off her 1992 album to become the TV show's theme song, comes on TV.

"I played it in front of 46,000 people and it's obviously very anthem-atic, with people standing up and singing it," she says.

The hardest part of the tour, she says, hasn't been getting used to the large crowds after playing intimate venues and a closed soundstage.

"The adjustment has been in trying to balance the songs I slaved over for years, and giving people what they really want -- the cover tunes," she explains. "I don't want to feel like I'm selling out. Only doing cover tunes would feel really weird to me."

Naturally, she doesn't want to be remembered only as the singer on that "Ally McBeal" show.

"I hope that it does open the door to my other original material," she says, "and people discover that, so they have more to listen to."

To that end, as soon as her tour ends in July, Shepard plans to get back into the studio this fall to complete another as yet-untitled album of her own work. "I have 40 working titles -- coming up with titles is one of my hobbies," she admits.

Still, with the success of the "Ally" album, a Volume II is already in the works.

Shepard recorded 75 tunes for the show's first season alone, of which only 14 songs were chosen for the album, including covers of "Hooked on a Feeling," "Walk Away Renee," "Tell Him," and "I Only Want to Be With You." The next album will likely feature some of those leftovers and new recordings from the next season.

Speaking of next season, are there any plans for Vonda to step out from behind the piano -- maybe hire the attorneys at Ally's law firm to represent her for copyright infringement or pirating?

Not likely, says Shepard, who wouldn't mind an acting role somewhere down the line.

"David wants to keep me subliminal in her consciousness," she explains. "It would take away from the power of it if I were too present, it would be too weird, too interactive if, say, Ally and I went to a movie."

What the unmarried Shepard does hope for in her five-year plan -- just like Ally, her single, neurotic counterpart, with her visions of the "Dancing Baby" -- is to be "in an amazing relationship and have a couple of kids."

Her whirlwind tour isn't leaving room for much right now -- besides a squeezed-in blind date and chatting up reporters from an empty hotel room.

Then again, she adds, "If I had gotten into a relationship and had a family, I wouldn't be pursuing my career as heavily -- and this is really gratifying to me.

"I'm a really spiritual person, and it makes me think there's a reason things happen," she says. "Maybe I couldn't have handled it when I was 21. I think it's possible all my experience has prepared me for this phase."

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