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Fans of can more than likely recall the melody of , "Searchin' My Soul," sung by Vonda Shepard. The singer-songwriter, who played a fictionalized version of herself on the hit TV show as the performer at the bar where McBeal and her fellow Boston lawyers drank, still sees the show's star Calista Flockhart regularly. "I just actually saw her two nights ago," Shepard told Yahoo Entertainment.

"She's a dear friend. I love her." Long before she became instantly identifiable with Shepard was just another New York kid growing up in an unorthodox household.



Convincing her parents to allow her to perform in the city's music clubs was far from a challenge. "It was not hard. They were total bohemians.

It was a very unusual childhood," said Shepard, whose father worked as a mime and theater director. When a music journalist was crashing on their couch for about a year, he got Shepard her first club gig at age 14. "My dad recognized I had this propensity for songwriting and singing, and my obsession with music.

So it was a natural progression." In her 20s, Shepard paid her dues in the industry. She spent several years doing artist development with Warner Bros.

, and scored a break on the adult contemporary charts with 1989's " ." Her first album, which was self-titled, came out when she was 26 and featured "Ilene" alongside another one of Shepard's cult hits, "Baby, Don't You Break My Heart Slow." (That one went on to be by many years later.

) During a bit of a career lull in 1995, she too.

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