There are interviews where you arrive with a notebook, a list of questions and a vague sense of professional composure. And then there are interviews where you are speaking to someone whose music has been part of your life for three decades.

I was 13 when I first heard Vonda Shepard. Thirty years later, I found myself sitting down to interview the artist whose voice, songs and Ally McBeal performances had become such a huge part of my musical and cultural landscape. I was super excited — and, if I'm honest, super nervous. So were quite a few of my friends, who were deeply envious that I was getting the opportunity to speak to her. Such is Shepard's cultural impact.

Thankfully, Shepard is exactly the sort of person you hope she will be: funny, candid, warm and completely game for being asked questions from something I rather grandly called "the pencil case of Vonda Shepard".

"Are you feeling brave?" I asked her at the start.

"Always," she replied.

That seemed like a good sign.

Before getting into the serious stuff, I wanted to find out about the Vonda Shepard skills that don't necessarily make it onto the CV.

What's the strangest job you're secretly good at?

"Besides cooking, I'm a pretty good cook," she says. But there was another answer, one considerably more theatrical.

"My father was a mime, professional mime, and I used to get hired to do parties, private parties, and I would show up and do actual mime."

It is a skill she has apparently consigned firmly to history.

"That's a secret private skill that I never wanted to do again for the rest of my life."

Mime: retired. Permanently.

The imaginary Shepard biopic produces another wonderfully unexpected answer. Asked who should play her, she suggests a combination of Meg Ryan and Cate Blanchett — "slight sophistication, but also really silly and goofy."

And what would the story actually be about?

She thinks for a moment before landing on something that goes to the heart of both her music and her worldview.

"I'm extremely, hyper aware of how people, what people are thinking and their impressions," she says. At the centre of her life, she explains, is a desire to see the good in people, avoid judgement and remain open to creativity and the world around her.

"I try to live in a state of creativity and openness to the world and to art and make the most of every day, work hard."

It's a philosophy that crops up repeatedly in her new music, particularly in Boxer in the Corner, which contains the wonderfully simple declaration: "Love is my religion."

With the 30th anniversary of Ally McBeal approaching, it seemed only right to ask Shepard what her own theme song might be.

Her answer?

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

It's not necessarily her favourite song, she admits, but the sentiment fits.

"We all have these moments of anxiety or fear or worry, but actually the overriding thing we all want to achieve is just happiness."

And, importantly, she adds that happiness shouldn't be something we keep for ourselves.

"We're allowed to have it as well."

That generosity of spirit is particularly striking when you consider how long Shepard has been working. She has spent decades in an industry that can be obsessed with reinvention, image and nostalgia, yet she seems remarkably comfortable with simply being herself.

Perhaps that is why the next question hits a nerve: what's the biggest misconception about Vonda Shepard?

She thinks it comes from Ally McBeal.

"I think some people haven't dug deeply into my own material and realise how dedicated I am as a writer."

For Shepard, the television show was never the beginning of her musical story. It was a hugely important chapter in an already long career.

"Before Ally McBeal, I had three albums out, two on Warner Brothers, and I had been playing clubs since I was 14. So I've been doing this forever."

Forever, in this case, really does feel like the right word.

When Shepard first became involved with Ally McBeal, there was no guarantee it would become the cultural phenomenon it ultimately became. She was living in New York when David E. Kelley chose Searchin; My Soul as the show's theme.

Then she saw the pilot.

"I said, holy shit, I have to move back to L.A. Because this is going to be a big hit."

So she packed up her life in New York and moved back to Los Angeles.

"I left the guy I was in love with, though we never got together anyway. So who cares?"

That was the beginning of what she describes as a "whirlwind beyond belief".

What is sometimes overlooked in the nostalgia surrounding Ally McBeal is just how much Shepard did behind the scenes. She wasn't simply the musician who appeared in the bar every week. She produced much of the show's music, working with a parade of extraordinary guests including Jon Bon Jovi, Sting, Randy Newman, Robert Downey Jr. and Gladys Knight.

"I was the producer," she says. "So I had to focus 100% on that job."

She still toured during the show's summer hiatuses, heading to Europe and the UK as soon as filming finished, but there was little time left for anything else.

"I had no time to think about writing."

By the final season, though, Shepard sensed the end was approaching. She began writing Chinatown, pouring the emotions of that period into the album.

"But man, yeah, I just had to be in the moment there with Ally."

Three decades later, she still understands the strange balancing act created by the show's enduring popularity. Her concerts have to satisfy the fans who discovered her through Ally McBeal while also celebrating the huge body of work that exists outside it.

"I'm not a fool," she laughs. "I'm going to give the Ally people what they want."

The trick is to build towards it: a couple of Ally songs in the middle, then a healthy dose towards the end.

"Those people get to have their full-on Ally experience."

And judging by her description of the constantly evolving set lists — crossing songs off, moving them around and occasionally deciding, "That didn't work" — keeping everybody happy is something of an ongoing science experiment.

Now comes a new chapter.

Nine Songs, Shepard's 14th studio album, arrives on September 25, and she is refreshingly enthusiastic about it.

"I fucking love it," she says, before adding, "It's one of my best ones."

There is no sense that this is the standard pre-release enthusiasm of an artist obliged to promote a record.

"I know it's good. And that's the best feeling."

The album took around two years to write, partly because Shepard wanted new material that would inject fresh energy into her live shows.

"If you just even do two or three songs live that are new that you love, it really infuses the show with a ton of energy and excitement."

Her sister offered a particularly appealing assessment of the finished songs: even if you'd never heard them before, they somehow feel familiar enough to sing along with.

"I thought, I like that."

The album is produced by her husband, Mitchell Froom, and Shepard says the record manages to move forward without abandoning the musical identity that has always defined her.

There are the familiar complex chord changes and melodies that are sophisticated without becoming inaccessible.

"We are who we are in our souls," she says. "I still am drawn to the same kind of chord changes, the same kind of complex, but yet deep and graspable melodies."

Her process is instinctive at first, meticulous afterwards. She sits down and lets whatever is lurking in her subconscious emerge — then spends months editing each song.

"I guess I like what I like, and that's how it comes out."

That continuity is something Shepard recognises in her Ally McBeal work, too. David E. Kelley was drawn to exactly the same qualities in her songwriting, using her original material throughout the series, including songs from It's Good, Eve.

One of the album's current singles, Hallelujah Anyway, captures Shepard's determination to find light in difficult circumstances.

The song looks at the state of the world while also considering the way technology and screens have invaded the lives of younger generations.

Yet the response isn't despair.

It's Hallelujah Anyway.



That phrase could almost serve as a mission statement for Shepard at this stage of her career: acknowledge the chaos, acknowledge the anxiety, acknowledge that the world can be overwhelming — and then look for the good anyway.

It's also a philosophy that makes sense when she talks about performing.

Shepard will be taking Nine Songs on tour, with three or four singles due out before the shows begin so fans have a chance to get acquainted with the new material.

But the live set will, naturally, be a journey through the whole story.

The challenge of performing for audiences around the world is that every country brings its own energy. British audiences, Shepard says, can initially be a little reserved.

"But by the end, I just basically tell them, get up. And they all get up."

Spain and Italy, meanwhile, tend to arrive ready to dance. Japan can be extremely quiet until the end.

The lesson, she says, is not to judge an audience by its immediate reaction.

"You need to just forget about performing, quote unquote. And you just have to get deep into the song, into the emotion of the song. And just let it rip."

That is also her cure for the moments when nerves creep in.

Her biggest onstage nightmare isn't some spectacular technical disaster. It's getting trapped inside her own head.

"Music should be relaxed and loose and easy," she says. "Once you've worked your ass off, getting to the point where you have the confidence to do that, that's what it should be. It should be letting go."

For someone with 14 studio albums, decades of touring and a list of collaborators that includes some extraordinary names, Shepard still has a few things on the wish list.

Tour Dates:

4 October Edinburgh Voodoo Rooms
6 October Aberdeen Tivoli Theatre
7 October Glasgow Òran Mór
9 October Gateshead – The Glasshouse ICM
10 October Sale Waterside Arts
11 October Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room
13 October Shrewsbury Theatre Severn
15 October Leeds City Varieties Music Hall
16 October Lowdham Village Hall

Tickets for the above shows are available here.

Nine Songs is out September 25th. More information: www.vondashepard.comStevie Wonder is high on it.

"I always wanted to sing with him."

James Taylor and Seal are also names she'd love to work with, while Brandi Carlile is another artist she could imagine collaborating with again.

And there is one more ambition that predates almost everything else: writing a book.

She has been keeping journals since she was around eight years old.

"I have about a thousand journals."

The material is therefore already there. She simply hasn't had the time to go through it properly.

She did revisit some of it during COVID, discovering "incredible material", but her career, writing, family and new album have kept her moving forwards rather than backwards.

Eventually, though, she wants to sit down and write a memoir.

"I've had a very fascinating life, if I do say so myself."

She wants it to contain plenty of humour and the crazy stories that inevitably accumulate over a life lived in music.

It sounds like a book worth waiting for.

Given the current fashion for artists revisiting their back catalogues, there is one final question: would Shepard ever re-record her old material?

The answer is a firm no.

She believes the original recordings should retain their integrity and exist in the time and circumstances in which they were made.

"That was then. And that was the best version of that thing."

Unless, she adds, it's a great live show.

"In which case you put out a live album."

It's a suitably Shepard-like ending: respect the past, keep moving forward, and don't overcomplicate something that already works.

Thirty years after a 13-year-old kid first heard her voice, Vonda Shepard is still writing, still touring, still experimenting and still searching her soul.

And, judging by her enthusiasm for Nine Songs, she's having a pretty damn good time doing it.