These gigs won her notice and, eventually, recording work with Southside Johnny and David Johansen.

Scialfa had a brief role in The Stone Pony's house band Cats on a Smooth Surface. For many years, she struggled to make her way in the songwriting and recording industry in New York and New Jersey before playing at Kenny’s Castaway in Greenwich Village, as well as Asbury Park's The Stone Pony. Together with Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell, she formed a street group known as Trickster. However, none of her songs were recorded and after graduating, Scialfa worked as a busker and waitress in Greenwich Village. While in college, Scialfa was submitting original material to other artists in the hope that it would be recorded. She has a music degree from New York University, earned after she transferred from the University of Miami's highly-respected jazz conservatory at the Frost School of Music. In 1994, she stated in a Lear's Magazine interview that she had little talent for anything but music and that she attended college as a way to further her ambitions as a performer while also satisfying parental expectations. Scialfa was writing songs from an early age and first worked professionally as a back-up singer for New Jersey bar bands after she completed high school. Her father was a successful local entrepreneur, who started with a single television store and became a real estate developer. She also has half-siblings from her father's second marriage. She was the middle child of Joseph Scialfa and Patricia (née Morris) Scialfa. (born July 29, 1953) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for being a bandmate and wife of Bruce Springsteen.

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