Come on along and listen to the Lullaby of 23rd Street
Singer-songwriter Patti Scialfa was interviewed today on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Her new album, 23rd Street Lullaby, is only her second to date. It follows her first by 11 years. From what I hear of it, it was worth the wait.
In the interview, Scialfa provides entertaining anecdotes about her Rock and Roll Hall of Famer husband’s input into the record and about the difficulties of writing music at home when you have three small children. The Boss himself took a few years off between 1987 and 1992 to marry Scialfa and start a family. Glad to hear that even the heavyweights feel a little of my occasional frustration.
Patti Scialfa: But children—it’s so funny, with the children—well, they’re just so lovely but they are such intuitive creatures. If I go up to the third floor where my writing room is and really start writing, something must just start humming inside them, “It’s time to find Mom.” And, you know, they have an intuitive way of stopping you from doing things that aren’t about them. And actually I have this little setup in my writing room and it faces the wall so I can’t see behind me. And I put on—I have a little Fender Rhodes there and a guitar plug-in with a DAT player, and so I can sing and play and record what I’m doing on a little DAT. But they would always tiptoe up from behind me. And I had this little antique—you know those articulated hands, they’re all jointed, they were for artists to draw—they would take the wooden hand off my desk and lay it on my shoulder. (laughs) I would about go through the roof. They thought that was really funny.
