But it wasn't until one evening when Scialfa ran into an old friend that she was able to turn those songs into a new album, "23rd Street Lullaby." Drummer Steve Jordan, known for his work with Keith Richards and others, met Scialfa at a recent benefit and asked when her next album was due.

More like overdue. Scialfa's solo debut, "Rumble Doll," came out in 1993. But with Jordan's assistance and gentle prodding, album No. 2 was finally completed. It was released last week.

"What sparked the whole thing for me was hooking up with Steve Jordan," Scialfa said, sitting in a Manhattan recording studio. "That was really important. He said, 'Let me come down and help you.' "

The pair were once neighbors in Manhattan's Chelsea section, a connection that proved perfect for this project. Scialfa, now 50, had written a series of songs about her life in the neighborhood during the '70s and '80s.

"I realized as I started putting the songs together that a lot of the songs had to do with that time period," the redheaded singer-songwriter related. "I like writing a body of music that has a cohesive, emotional thread through it."

From the title track through album closer "Young in the City," Scialfa provides a tour of the hideaways and hangouts of a transplanted Jersey girl in the Big Apple.

"I had a very naive, romanticized vision of the city," she recounted. "Definitely. But that's what you do when you're young."

Scialfa can provide a good explanation — several, in fact — for the delay between albums. There were the three kids; she was pregnant with No. 2 when "Rumble Doll" was released, and the oldest recently turned teenager.

Then there's her husband of 13 years: Yes, that would be Bruce Springsteen. She joined him and the rest of the E Street Band for a pair of world tours in the past five years.

Fitting in her album around birthdays, and sick kids, and playing sold-out shows from Boston to Barcelona ... well, it got a bit tricky.

"It's matter of finding the time," Scialfa said with a laugh. "That was not easy."

The new album is populated with characters drawn from her past: a motherly waitress named Rose, a street-corner preacher working Salvation Park, a lost love dubbed Romeo.

But songwriting is not a competition in the Springsteen house.

And besides, there's the occasional unexpected bonus when you're married to the Boss. Working on the track "Rose," Scialfa decided the song could use a B-3 organ riff — but she was alone in their home studio.

She picked up the phone and put in a call to Springsteen next door.

"So it was, 'Could you do me a favor and run over?' " she recalled. "He'd come over and put something down."

Springsteen contributed a guitar solo to another song, "Love (Stand Up)," but the band's core came from Scialfa's decade of Manhattan living.

Drummer Jordan, keyboardist Cliff Carter and violinist/vocalist Soozie Tyrell were friends from her early days in Chelsea, when the young musicians forged a bond.

She and Tyrell somewhat famously began performing outdoors in Greenwich Village, earning their dinner money a cappella in Sheridan Square.

"I was drawn to the city for the reasons people are always drawn to it: to test yourself, find yourself, lose pieces of yourself," she said. "You come to the city, and you have a chance to find out who you really are."

The Asbury Park High School grad grew up in a home where the radio played Sinatra on Sunday, received a degree from New York University and studied jazz in Florida.

But she wound up singing in rock 'n' roll bands, doing backing vocals in the studio or onstage for the Rolling Stones, Buster Poindexter, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

With her new album, Scialfa hoped to tour as a solo act for the first time; tentative plans call for a 15-to-20 show itinerary starting in September.

Expect things to stay a lot more low-key than on her first major tour. In 1984, she joined the E Street Band just in time for the "Born in the USA" extravaganza, recruited as a vocalist when guitarist/singer Nils Lofgren came down with laryngitis.

Reminded it's been two decades since then, she laughed in disbelief and shook her head.