Pegi Young

Pegi Young has been writing and performing music for so long, she can’t exactly pinpoint when she started. She knows exactly when she sang in public for the first time, though — March 21, 1994, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where she delivered backing vocals on the Oscar-nominated song, “Philadelphia,” during the 66th Academy Awards broadcast.

Talk about an auspicious debut. Twenty years later, she’s releasing her fourth solo album, Lonely in a Crowded Room, her first with New West Records, and hitting the road once again with close friends and longtime bandmates the Survivors: keyboardist Spooner Oldham, guitarist Kelvin Holly, bassist Rick Rosas and drummer/percussionist Phil Jones.

Though she started recording these10 tracks last year, there’s a reason Young chose to release the album in conjunction with yet another high-profile annual event: the Bridge School Benefit Concert for the special-needs school she co-founded. In its 28 years, the all-acoustic concert has grown into a two-day extravaganza attracting the biggest names in rock, pop and country, along with a slew of rising stars who have become headliners.

Young is not trying to make a clever play on words when she says music provides the bridge between her worlds. Citing her piano-playing childhood and longtime love of girl groups and harmonies, she explains, “I remember dancing around in the living room with my older brother and sister to early Motown tracks. I’ve always been drawn to that wonderful sound. And then my other passion is to do what I can to promote greater independence and participation in the lives of people with severe physical and speech impairments. The way those two align is the concert to raise operating funds for the school.”

On Lonely in a Crowded Room, produced by Niko Bolas, Young’s love of Motown and soulful, bluesy vocal leanings blend with a strong rock ‘n’ roll foundation that dates back to her first album purchase: the Stones’ High Tide and Green Grass.

“I thought Brian Jones was just amazing,” she says, traces of a long-ago schoolgirl crush still lingering in her voice. But she professes appreciation for the Beatles, too, as well as Cream and other more elemental rockers, and she remembers devoting significant chunks of her Northern California youth to singing Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Tim Hardin and Dylan songs with friends. (She is, she notes with pride, a rare phenomenon in California: a third-generation native; her kids with Neil lengthen the chain to four.)

All those influences come into play on these seven originals and three cover tunes, which Young regards as a stylistic expansion from her previous solo efforts: 2007’s self-titled album, 2010”s Foul Deeds and 2011’s Bracing for Impact.

With a dusty alto that also suggests time spent in the company of Marianne Faithfull and Peggy Lee, Young gives a Memphis/Muscle Shoals vibe to “Ruler of My Heart,” written by a pseudonymous Allen Toussaint and made famous by Irma Thomas. And she gets downright “Fever”-ish on “Better Livin’ Through Chemicals,” which points a jazz/blues-dipped finger at big pharma’s marketing ploys.

She goes for that smoky jazz/blues groove again on “In My Dreams,” in which she works in a reference to the Dalai Lama, a hero “for his compassion, love and tolerance.”

Spooner Oldham and Frederick Weller co-wrote the could-be-classic honky-tonker, “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers,” one of several songs employing the harmonica talents of Willie Nelson sideman Mickey Raphael.

That one, she says, was the result of casting about for another song to cut, Young asked Oldham if he had anything. He handed over several tracks.

“I can tell pretty quickly if it’s something that I think I can do,” she says. “I’d hear the first little bit and go, ‘No. No. Nope.’ And then we got to ‘Lonely Women Make Good Lovers,’ and I was like, ‘Ohmygod, that is so perfect.’ I think that vocal is my first take. I just slipped into the pocket.”

Oldham’s wife was a bit less enthused about the 1972 tune. Young says she told her, “‘Think about it this way: The guys go out on the road and they come back, and we’re the lonely women. We’re the ones, so it doesn’t have to be about some affair or some other thing going on out on the road. It’s about coming home to your own lonely woman.’ I think that helped.”

Oldham, FYI, has not offered his interpretation. “Spooner’s a man of few words,” Young says. “But boy, is he a genius.” He played a major role in arranging the backing vocals contributed to several songs by gospel-singing sisters Paula and Charlene Holloway. The sisters’ vocals, and Oldham’s Farfisa-playing, provide just a few of the album’s many charms.

Oldham also provided the album’s title, which doesn’t directly reference any song, but captures the tone of several, including the Jerry Ragovoy/Diana Haig composition, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.”

“From time to time, Spooner will just slip me a piece of paper with some words written on it,” Young explains. They tried repeatedly to work these particular ones into a song, but couldn’t seem to nail it. Then Young realized they encapsulated the overall concept perfectly, as did an illustration her artist daughter gave her that became the album’s cover.

As for the fact that even the breezier cuts here seem to carry melancholy tones, Young confesses, “I like to say I write downer songs to a perky beat. People have a lot of different sides to them, and you have your private, inner stuff, and you’ve got your public outer stuff. I am attracted to melancholy songs. I don’t know how to write a really happy song, to be honest.”

But happy or not, they’re finally flowing freely after years of being locked away in a little brown suitcase her mother had given her. Not until she was recording that first album did they start coming out, nudged by accompanist Anthony Crawford, who had gently chided, “Come on, Peg, when are we gonna start hearing your stuff?”

She did a few, they were well received, and her confidence blossomed. And now, she says, “My music speaks for itself.

“When I try to dissect it, it’s always a little challenging, because music is so amorphous,” she demurs. Dissectible or not, she’s already got more waiting to be recorded. When she’s not busy trying to build an endowment for the Bridge School in preparation for its post-concert future, she says, “I’m out there doing my thing, making music that feels true and honest and real to me, and comes from the heart. That’s what I do.”