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BIO
An awfully authoritative-sounding internet rock guide insists
that Michelle Shocked's life must be fiction. But
if it seems like an incredible road movie, a tall tale, a legend,
it is no mystery. Michelle Shocked set forth on her adventure
ever so young but ever so determined to jump past, jump through,
jump beyond any boundary that held her back.
The soaking humid Piney Woods swamplands of east Texas at
the edge of the border with Louisiana was where she came from;
born in Dallas and schooled in Gilmer. Raised in a large, extremely
poor, strict fun dam entalist Mormon household, her escape
consisted of summers spent with her hippie-atheist father.
She left home for good at 16. Putting herself through the University
of Texas at Austin , with no financial support from her family,
she graduated with a degree in Oral Interpretation of Literature. "It
was the careerist '80s, and that seemed like the least practical
thing I could pursue," recalls Shocked. After graduation, she
hit the road, in customary Kerouac fashion. She rambled first
to California , playing mandolin and fiddle in street bands,
emerging as a staunch political activist first and foremost.
H er persona was unadulterated punk rocker with a spiky mohawk
and a ring in her nose. She hung out on San Francisco 's hardcore
scene with MDC and the Dead Kennedys. Arrested at the 1984
Democratic Convention, a front-page news photo of her struggling
with the police would ultimately serve as an album cover. H
er mother would eventually commit Shocked to a mental institution
against her will. "After 30 days, the insurance money ran out,
so I was 'cured' and they released me." Back on the street,
dazed by the chemical straightjacket drugs given her by the
mental health authorities, half-convinced that she was indeed
crazy, she headed for New York City . There she explored the
music scene at CBGB's and ate her one big meal of the week
at the Cottonwood Café in the West Village .
Caught up in the cycle of homelessness that swept across America
in the 1980s, Shocked searched for an alternative. She made
her way to Paris , and hitchhiked throughout Europe , busking
on the streets of Madrid , surviving on her wits, and a daily
ration of alfalfa sprouts. The vagabond lifestyle was far from
ideal. At an anti-cruise missile peace camp in Sicily , she
was raped by a Green Party comrade. Settling on Amster dam
for the interim, she worked for a pirate radio station and
shared a squat with a stranded British reggae band from Birmingham
. She was still poor, but she was free.
In 1986 Shocked returned to Texas , to the annual songwriters'
gathering at the Kerrville Folk Festival, to volunteer and
hang out with her friends, to listen to their new songs and
play her own. In those days (and for that matter, still today)
Shocked was determined to credit her inspiration from fellow
Texas songwriters Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. An Englishman
who said he was a journalist heard her one night out among
the campfires and asked if she would play her songs for his
Sony Walkman. H e never got around to mentioning that he was
actually a partner in a brand new British independent record
label. She played him some songs out there that night, his
tape recorder sitting on a log as the crickets sang bucolic
background vocals and the trucks downshifted, and she told
some stories. She did not know it at the moment, but just like
some of her heroes, Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, she was being "field
recorded." That tape of her music, made on a Walkman with weak
batteries so that it ran far too quickly when played back at
normal speed, got played repeatedly on the BBC.
It was a friend who owned a phone that got the call. "Your
record is on the charts," was the information the label, Cooking
Vinyl had to report. "What record?" Shocked inquired. It had
been named "The Texas Campfire Tapes" and it was to be her "debut" recording.
Figuring she had nothing much to lose, Shocked saw it as her
chance to offer up her two-cents worth. She had grown up in
a tradition of bluegrass and blues, of Texas swing and singer-songwriters,
and now Michelle Shocked was an authentic British pop phenomenon.
She played her first show, her first show ever, at London's
Queen Elizabeth H all. She had planned on activism, not a music
career. Over the next eighteen months, Shocked found herself
working for a manager who was also her booking agent and who
was also her record label owner. Shocked remembers, "the
label was shopping me to major labels, licensing my record
around the world, booking gigs, collecting commissions and my
royalties, and shipping me and my guitar C.O.D. It was as if
I'd fallen into a new job at the circus getting shot out of
a cannon." Despite the disarray, she had a plan.
Shocked risked signing with a major label (Mercury) for the
sake of attempting to change the system from within. She turned
down the label's advance for the sake of owning her work. And
she had another plan too. She had organized her songs into
a trilogy that was meant to show where she had come from --
not just show the listener, but to also remind herself as well.
After her first taste of circus-cannon celebrity, she was leaving
something more substantial than breadcrumbs behind her to mark
her way back home, a trail of remarkable songs. The first part
of her trilogy was called Short Sharp Shocked (1988). She
was introduced to producer Pete Anderson, known for his commercial
success with Dwight Yoakum. The album they made together became
an instant classic, so much so that when they returned to the
studio a year later, most everyone presumed they would automatically
set forth on Short Sharp Shocked II .
Captain Swing (1989) was
a lot of things, but it was not Short Sharp Shocked II .
The album took advantage of her Texas roots to pursue her notion
that swing was more than just a style that the mere act of
music swinging shot past style. H er use of horn arrangements
emphasized Michelle Shocked 's diverse songwriting skills.
Categories now, did not apply. The final phase of her trilogy,
named Arkansas Traveler --before
she had even recorded Short Sharp Shocked --
had always been meant to be a tribute to the fiddle tunes she
had played with her father and brother on mandolins, banjos
and such. She pursued the hidden roots of that music and those
old familiar tunes. Writing new lyrics, trying out new ways
of playing the oldest of tunes, writing new tunes that sounded
ancient, she traveled three continents to play with her heroes
and her peers and a few rank strangers. Pops Staples, Doc Watson,
Gatemouth Brown, Jim mie Driftwood, Taj Mahal, and Allison
Krauss were part of the adventure. Recorded on steamboats,
in log cabins and even recording studios, Arkansas
Traveler (1992) was a triumph, and if even she
did not know what was next, she knew she had made her way back
home.
Following her instincts, she began exploring gospel traditions
while attending an African-American church in Los Angeles ,
where she was living on a houseboat. Shocked began writing
a gospel record. On the day her next recording was to begin,
she entered the studio to discover that her label was refusing
to issue payment before the session even started. Shocked recounts, "I
was taken into a closed-door meeting with the head of business
affairs, who informed me that the label was no longer going
to promote my music because I cut too good a deal for myself!" H
er catalog was continuing to sell steadily; the label wanted
the masters back. She left the office and she never went back
-- not until the day she arrived to collect what she had owned
all along.
Other labels tried to sign her; Mercury sent a cease-and-desist
letter that blanketed the industry. They would not let her
record and they were not going to release her. She recorded
a solo electric record called Kind Hearted
Woman and sold it exclusively at her shows in defiance
of her label's efforts to stop her. She toured relentlessly,
reconfirming her consummate talent as a stage performer. Pioneering
an artists' rights paradigm, she sued Mercury using the 13th
Amendment, the reform abolishing slavery. They settled the
day the trial was to begin and for the first time in years,
she was free again. She recorded a new version of Kind H earted
Woman (1996) with her band, releasing it on Private
Music/BMG, but this time the contract gave her the
option on them. Three months later, in a classic corporate
shake-up, Private Music was folded into a different entity.
She exercised her option and was spared the fate of so many
artists in recent years, trapped in the consolidation of the
recording industry. Michelle Shocked owns Kind Hearted
Woman and her entire catalog of music. It is difficult
to think of another major label artist who has ever been in
her position.
Shocked now spends time between her homes in Los Angeles and
New Orleans . Known at her church as "Sister Shocked," she
continues to work quietly for non-violence in the environmental
and global justice movements. Her current efforts also involve
support for "Save Africa's Children," a pan-African vision
that addresses the AIDS pandemic on the African continent.
She has written a cycle of songs Inspired by the brass band
scene in New Orleans . Shocked spent time wandering through
Mexico and Guatemala , creating another body of work, which
explores her Latin-American heritage.
Additionally, she has collaborated with Fiachna O'Braonain
(of Ireland 's H othouse Flowers) on material that presents
their vision for the new millennium. The first result of that
collaboration is her latest release Deep Natural .
Co-produced by O'Braonain, Deep Natural launched
Shocked's own label Mighty Sound (2002) in typically innovative
fashion. The release is book-ended with an alternate version
of instrumentals entitled Dub Natural .
By stripping away her voice and lyrics, Dub Natural emphasizes
the rich musicality that has always been part of Shocked's
work. Mighty Sound (Ryko Distribution) has planned a full schedule
of deluxe reissues of the Michelle Shocked catalog. The label
will also be a home for her forthcoming projects, as well as
new and developing artists. For some, that would be all the
story necessary; for Michelle Shocked , plainly it is just
one more step on her journey. Or as she states, "I can't tell
you where I'm going . . . but I can tell you where I come from."
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