Her Music Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Her musical roots center mainly on the rhythms of soul, she insists. And yet singer Vonda Shepard is trying a lot of everything these days, from the slickest dance music to the rawest folk blues she can muster.

“It just seems to work out that way,” says Shepard, whose new “Radical Light” album on Warner Bros. Records is released Tuesday. “I didn’t plan it, but the record just turned out to be very eclectic.”

Most of the album was performed by a core band that included guitarist Michael Landau, bassist Jimmy Johnson and the late drummer Jeff Porcaro, but filtered through the diverse production talents of Don Was, Richard Perry and Shepard. So while “Radical Light” begins with Shepard singing over a backdrop of folk-pop, it’s not long before she’s keeping pace with some programmed drumbeats or crooning an emotional rock ballad to the sounds of her own grand piano.

Making the record this way “was kind of confusing. On my next one I’m going to choose one route and stick to it. It was very difficult, and it took a long time,” she says.

Her first release, 1989’s “Vonda Shepard,” was an equally mixed collection, if less upbeat than the new album, and it took her to the adult contemporary charts with the song “Don’t Cry Ilene.”

“I’m most comfortable sitting at a grand piano, because a lot of my stuff is lyrically oriented,” she says. “But I try to make anything work.”

The daughter of a transplanted New York mime and stage director, Shepard grew up in Encino with her two sisters and parents in a “bohemian” atmosphere. By the time she was about 10, she was recording her own songs in a friend’s sound studio.

“They definitely cultivated our creative impulses,” Shepard says of her parents. “One time we had a big ugly boat of a car from the ‘60s, and my father came home with these acrylic paints. . . . We all painted the car psychedelic.”

She found a similar kind of creativity while traveling as a backup singer for Rickie Lee Jones during the jazz and pop singer’s 1984-85 tour. While Shepard’s early inspiration had come from the soul and rock of Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, the release of Jones’ first album in 1979 “was like I had found something I could really relate to.”

Shepard adds, “She seems to live in a state of inspiration. When we were touring we’d be on stage rehearsing and she’d always be adding things, dancing and choreographing. She would just keep honing it. By the end of the tour it was this full-on theatrical piece.”

She’s talking of trimming her music to its most organic elements, which could easily manifest itself with a record of mostly piano-based tracks. And yet, she’s been listening to a lot of blues lately, she says, leading to her own occasional experiments with the genre.

Thursday at the Mint Lounge, she will sing a few old blues numbers, some songs by Jimi Hendrix and a few originals to the guitar accompaniment of Landau, her boyfriend. She will be opening for his blues band, Burning Water.

“I get real tired of contrived pop. I just can’t even listen to that anymore. I don’t want to hear drum machines, even though I have some drum machines on this album,” she said.

Not that she has any regrets about her new record. “You record an album or write a book, and the minute you’re done you’re already onto the next place. You just have to say to yourself ‘That’s where I was,’ and release it.”

Vonda Shepard will sing the blues in a show headlined by Burning Water beginning at 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Mint Lounge, 6010 W. Pico Blvd. $7 admission. Call (213) 937-9630.

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MUSICAL HISTORY TOUR: Rocker, songwriter and radio personality Billy Vera will take UCLA Extension students on an exploration of pop music history beginning Sept. 30 in “The Roots of Rock and Roll: Evenings with Billy Vera and Friends.”

In weekly class meetings through Dec. 9, the host of KCRW-FM’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Party” is to present the scattered events and musical movements that led to modern rock and pop, from the country of Hank Williams to the be-bop jazz of Charlie Parker. Tuition is $250.

Other music courses offered by UCLA Extension for the fall include meetings on opera history, electronic music, concert promotion and music publishing. For information, call (310) 825-9064.