Vonda Shepard is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She appeared as a regular in the television showAlly McBeal, as a resident performer in the bar where the show's characters drank after work. In 1998 she had a hit with the show’s theme tune and soundtrack "Searchin' My Soul". Her version of Kay Starr’s Christmas classic " The Man with the Bag", after it was featured on a season 4 episode of Ally McBeal, became a popular holiday song. She plays piano, bass, and guitar.
Life and career
Vonda Shepard was born in New York City in 1963. Her family relocated to California when she was a child. She played piano from an early age. Her father is Richmond Shepard, a mime and improvisational actor. Vonda has three sisters. She has released 15 albums, including eight solo albums, three live albums and four albums for Ally McBeal. Throughout her career she has played keyboards and sung with Jackson Browne, Al Jarreau and Rickie Lee Jones. Shepard has sold over 12 million albums and has won two Golden Globes, two Emmy awards and two Screen Actors Guild awards and the Billboard award for selling the most television soundtrack albums in history. While on Ally McBeal, Shepard was the “behind the scenes” music producer, producing over 500 songs for the artists Sting, Robert Downey Jr., Gladys Knight, Chubby Checker, Al Green, Randy Newman and many more. Shepard continues to tour the world, playing her original material and songs from her days on Ally McBeal. Her latest album is titled Rookie, and she is currently writing her next album. After performing as a backing singer for many years, she eventually got her own recording contract. Shepard's first chart appearance was in 1987, when she recorded a duet with Dan Hill entitled "Can't We Try." Before this, she had tried out for the part of Michael J. Fox's sister in Light of Day, but she lost the part to Joan Jett. She was also poised to sing on Peter Cetera's duet "The Next Time I Fall," but he picked Amy Grant instead. She released her first self-titled album in 1989, but with little fanfare. The album did yield one chart single, "Don't Cry Ilene," a middle-tempo piano-driven jazz-R&B flavored song dealing with the break-up of a relationship between a black woman and a white man, arising from adult peer pressure. The track is sung from the perspective of the woman's white female friend, who harbors a desire to have the man for herself, but keeps her distance out of respect for her friend. The song peaked at Number 11 on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary chart and stayed on the charts for 12 weeks. After her third album, Shepard was signed up to appear on Ally McBeal after the show's creator, former attorney David E. Kelley, spotted her performing in a nightclub. While on the show she recorded two full soundtrack albums and was featured on two other Ally McBeal compilations. The songs that Shepard recorded for the Ally McBeal soundtrack albums were mainly covers of old songs with lyrics that paralleled what was happening in the title character's life on-screen. However, "Searchin' My Soul," which became the album's biggest hit single after Kelley chose it for the show's titles theme, was an original selection jointly written and composed by Shepard and Paul Howard Gordon. Since her appearances in the show, Shepard has released two more studio albums and a live album. She married music producer Mitchell Froom in 2004; they had their first child in 2006. She is also the stepmother to Froom's daughter, Ruby, from his marriage to Suzanne Vega. She provided vocals for "I Need You," whose music had been composed by James Newton Howard, for the 2010 filmLove & Other Drugs, which starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.
