SOUNDS FAMILIAR: The daughter of Electric Factory co-founder Jerry Spivak, Betsy grew up in a musical household. She went on to study classical at Temple. : Michael T. Regan

An hour earlier, the little ones—6 months to 4 years old—danced and sang along as she led their music-enrichment class. It can be a tough room, but Spivak's up to the task. Toddlers are a lot like hecklers—or vice versa—and she loves them for it.

"I actually don't mind hecklers at all," says the 30-something guitarist-pianist. "Which I think is part of the reason why I've become so comfortable. Because it's really just someone to instigate conversation with."

When you're born with one foot on each side of the continent, you often find yourself in strange conversations with people who have funny accents. Spivak's lost track of how many times she's shuttled between the coasts. "Little Plastic Boxes," from The Scratch on My Vinyl Soul, Spivak's second self-released mini-album, is a movin' out manifesto set to a playful trot; "Trailer Trash" mates Eastern directness with '70s El Lay groove. She was born in Philly and has been here since 2000, with a couple of stints in between. By her own reckoning, she's spent more than half of her life here, but she still feels like a Californian. "Up until two, three months ago, my stuff was still there. I left everything there because I thought that I was gonna come back. But for now I'm gonna stay here."

One thing she brought from Los Angeles is her penchant for writing songs in traffic. "It's very dangerous," she says. "It's so bad. And it's one of my favorite places to write, because things seem to flow more in the car." Not everyone would seek inspiration on the Northeast Extension. But then again, Spivak's not like everyone else.

"It was not normal, the lifestyle that I had, at all," she says. "Which makes me what I am and how I perceive things and how I see things. … I'm fascinated by freaks and weirdos."

Electric Factory co-founder Jerry Spivak's five children were brought up in houses that were filled with peace, love and music, but number four wanted more. "All I wanted to do was to have a Snoopy lunchbox and to wear clothes from Kmart. … How can you take an avocado and sprout sandwich to school in Pennsylvania?"

Spivak played around with several instruments as a child, but after both of her parents died when she was in her teens, music became a refuge. She was set to major in songwriting at Berklee College of Music in Boston, but instead she moved back to Philly to study classical music at Temple and put her plans on hold while she focused on opera. When she returned to California, she found that songwriting was the best way to process her emotions. "That's when I found my voice," she says. "Because I was singing my own songs in my own way."

Spivak's first release, 2000's Belly Sweet, was born of her grief and confusion, but her voice has a comic lilt that keeps things from getting too dark. The songs on Vinyl Soul are lighter, but the most melancholy, "Midnight at the Whirly Bar," shows up twice among its eight tracks. Spivak started writing it soon after 9/11, while catering a concert in Washington. Ever the people-watcher, she was fascinated and repulsed by the way life carried on. "It was Friday and people were looking for dates. But you could see the hole in the Pentagon, and the dichotomy of that and that was like so fucked up."

She started working out her observations on a napkin, but a final verse eluded her for a year. Once it clicked, Spivak couldn't decide whether to sugarcoat it or strip it down. So she did it both ways. The first version, produced by Pete Donnelly at Palais Royale in Bryn Mawr, floats on textured percussion. The second, recorded with Jesse Honig at Manayunk's Miriam Audio, boils the song down to its essence, with Spivak in a one-sided conversation until the band finally kicks in.

The countrified "Hot Dog Breath" is funny (and not as silly as you'd think), and Spivak's cover of "Ol' 55" borrows from Tom Waits at his most optimistic. But even when her lyrics are dark, Spivak keeps her audience entertained.

"Sometimes you're like, 'You know, I just wanna rock. I don't wanna listen to your melancholy songs,'" she says. "I would kind of always do that thing where I'd sing this really sad song, but then just make jokes the whole time. Talk and laugh and make an ass out of myself."

A time-tested strategy for dealing with kids. And hecklers.

Betsy Spivak's record release show, Thu., June 8, 8 p.m., $10 (includes admission and CD), L'Etage, 624 S. Sixth St., 215-592-0656.