Michelle Shocked
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Michelle Shocked (born Karen Michelle Johnston on February 24, 1962 in Dallas , Texas ) is an American folk singer and songwriter .
Life
Michelle Shocked spent her childhood and adolescence under the care of her mother, a devout Mormon , and her second husband, a member of the United States Armed Forces . In Gilmer (the administrative seat of Upshur County in East Texas near the border with the US state Louisiana ) she attended high school. At the age of 16, she ran away from home and in the following time lived with her father, a hippie , declared atheist and musician. Through his record collection she got to know the music of blues musicians like Big Bill Broonzy , folk singers like Leadbelly and songwriters like Randy Newman .
Michelle Shocked began studying at the University of Texas in Austin and lived temporarily with her father, with whom she went on more or less extensive forays through the USA during the semester break. The first own songs were written in the early eighties. The budding folk singer first played the violin and mandolin and trundled through California with various street musicians. There she got to know the hardcore punk scene around the bands Dead Kennedys and MDC and then took the stage name Michelle Shocked - a play on her nickname 'Chel' and 'Shell Shock' for 'war trauma'.
In the 1980s she took part in various autonomous and left-wing political activities. For a short time she returned to live with her mother in Texas. Because of her “godless activities”, she initiated an admission to psychiatry, from which the artist was released after 30 days as “cured”. She moved to New York and got involved in the squatter scene there. The following years took her as a traveling political activist to Europe, including Paris and Madrid. She was also active in the squatter movement in Amsterdam and occupied a house together with a reggae band from Birmingham. In addition, she worked temporarily for a Dutch pirate broadcaster and was a participant in the 1983 Anti- Cruise Missile peace camp in Comiso , Sicily.
In 1986 Michelle Shocked returned to Texas. She helped organize the Kerrville Folk Festival and became interested in the music of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt . Peter Lawrence, an employee of the British independent label Cooking Vinyl , posed as a journalist to her and recorded some of her songs with his Walkman. Despite the relatively poor recording quality, the label released the tracks as a record called The Texas Campfire Tapes . The record, recorded without the knowledge and consent of Michelle Shocked, placed in the independent charts. The musician found out about her successful debut by chance in a telephone conversation.
After a club tour through England Michelle Shocked got a contract with the major label Mercury Records . Her second record (Short Sharp Shocked) , released in the same year, was recorded within two weeks by Peter Anderson, producer of country musicians like Dwight Yoakam . Shocked's straightforward and no-frills mix of folk , rock and blues elements, as well as engaging and personal lyrics, resonated with the music press and a wider audience. The single Anchorage stayed in the charts for weeks. Her next two Mercury albums, Captain Swing (1989) and Arkansas Traveler (1992), were stylistically accentuated differently. While Shocked with Captain Swing of Swing -music proved from the forties their respects, she traveled to Arkansas Traveler by three continents to different artists such as Taj Mahal and Gatemouth Brown folk-based Roots songs take.
In the early 1990s she moved to a houseboat near Los Angeles. She played her fourth studio album, Kind Hearted Woman , solo, only supported by producer Tony Berg, and only sold it at concerts. The reason for this were disputes with her label Mercury Records, which got worse and worse. The record company did not want to accept the musician's stylistic changes. On the one hand, the company refused to publish material that had already been produced; on the other hand, it did not want to release the artist from the contract. In order to break out of her artistically and existentially troubled situation, Michelle Shocked finally filed a lawsuit against the record company. She relied on the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits slavery, as well as a California law that limits personal service contracts to seven years. The dispute ended with a victory for the artist. She was released from the contracts and also received power of disposal over her back catalog .
A newly recorded version of Kind Hearted Woman produced by Bones Howe, a friend of Tom Waits , was released on the Independent in a band with members of the Hothouse Flowers , with whom she has been on friendly terms since working on Arkansas Traveler -Label Private Music. After this was dissolved as part of a sale and restructuring, Michelle Shocked founded her own label Mighty Sounds . This was followed by a double album with folk, blues and gospel- inspired pieces and instrumental dub versions of the songs (Deep Natural / Dub Natural) . In 2005 the trilogy Threesome , consisting of the three single albums Don't Ask, Don't Tell , Got No Strings and Mexican Standoff , came out. While many critics saw the first CD of the trilogy as a consistent sequel to Short Sharp Shocked , the second offered classics from Disney films in a Western Swing style. Finally, in Mexican Standoff , Michelle Shocked presented Latin American sounds as well as mariachi pieces from northern Mexico and her home state of Texas. Another trilogy with jazz , blues and swing recordings was tackled before The Threesome was finished , but not yet published.
Their first four albums, including the Texas Campfire Tapes , now renamed Texas Campfire Takes , were also re-released on Mighty Sounds as deluxe editions, expanded with numerous bonus tracks. Her albums Good News and Artists Make Lousy Slaves , previously only sold in limited editions as self-presses at concerts , the latter a joint effort with Fiachna O'Braonain from Hothouse Flowers, can be obtained as self-burned CDs in the Internet store on her website or in the Mp3 Format to be downloaded. In 2003 Shocked played a purely gospel set at a bluegrass festival, which was released on CD in 2007 under the title To Heaven U Ride .
Under the motto “No Bush War” Michelle Shocked toured Europe with her backing band Perverse All Stars in 2002. Her husband and manager at the time, Bart Bull, from whom she has since separated in private and business terms, was also there. Michelle Shocked has been explicitly committed to Christianity since the mid-1990s, which also led to some Christian-inspired texts. Apart from her musical work, she is involved in various social projects, in particular aid projects for HIV- infected children in Africa . The song Good News , published on Deep Natural / Dub Natural , is used by the environmental group Greenpeace , with whom Michelle Shocked works to raise awareness of environmental damage from PVC poisons polluting the Mississippi River in Louisiana. She dedicated the song Butterfly Hill to the environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill .
Style and reviews
Strong leaps in style and a pronounced aversion to commercial marketing techniques have become a trademark for Michelle Shocked. Most of their albums are designed as components of trilogies. Their straightforward, clear presentation style, which is interrupted again and again at concerts by little stories about the respective pieces, mainly uses traditional styles such as folk , country, swing, western swing, rock , blues, gospel and reggae . The success of songwriters such as Michelle Shocked, Tracy Chapman , Tanita Tikaram and Suzanne Vega in the late eighties brought more feminist impulses to rock music and helped improve the position of women in the rock business. Because of her folk songs, which are reminiscent of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in some respects , Michelle Shocked - together with the politically also strongly committed Ani DiFranco - is considered a forerunner of anti-folk .
About her personal motivation, she told the daily taz in 2002: “My plan was to become an activist, community organizer, vagabond, aimless bohemian . It was a response to a culture that increasingly tended to value us only to the extent that we make an economic contribution to society. I was looking for a way to live my life completely free of such criteria. ”The German music magazine Musik Express described her as a“ lone fighter and anti-star ”. The Boston Globe characterizes Shocked's style as raw soul singing with the frankness of a folk singer and the blues guitar of a delta punk. The Musician saw her as "Woody Guthrie's long-lost daughter".
Discography
Albums
- The Texas Campfire Tapes ( Cooking Vinyl / Mercury / Reprise, 1986/1987)
- The Texas Campfire Takes (Mighty Sounds, 2003; 2-CD deluxe edition including bonus tracks)
- Short Sharp Shocked (Mercury, 1988)
- Short Sharp Shocked (Mighty Sounds, 2003; 2-CD deluxe edition including bonus tracks)
- Captain Swing (Mercury, 1989)
- Captain Swing (Mighty Sounds, 2004; deluxe edition including bonus tracks)
- Arkansas Traveler (Mercury, 1992)
- Arkansas Traveler (Mighty Sounds, 2004; Deluxe Edition incl. Bonus tracks)
- Kind Hearted Woman (private pressing, 1994; solo version)
- Artists Make Lousy Slaves (private pressing, 1996; with Fiachna O'Braonain)
- Kind Hearted Woman (Mood Swing / Private Music, 1996; tape version)
- Mercury Poise: 1988-1995 (Mercury, 1996)
- Good News (private pressing, 1998)
- Dub Natural (Mood Swing Private Pressing, 2001)
- Deep Natural / Dub Natural (Mighty Sounds, 2002)
- Threesome: Don't Ask, Don't Tell / Got No Strings / Mexican Standoff (Mighty Sounds, 2005; also available as single albums)
- To Heaven U Ride (live album recorded in 2003; released: Mighty Sounds, 2007)
- Soul of My Soul (Mighty Sounds, 2009)
Titles on compilations
- Sgt.Pepper Knew My Father (NME, 1988): Lovely Rita (Tribute album for Sgt: Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from the Beatles )
- 'Til Things Are Brighter (Red Rhino, 1988): One Piece at a Time (tribute album to Johnny Cash )
- Christmas Guitars (Green Linnet, 1989): The Christmas Song
- A Child's Celebration of Folk Music (Music for Little People, 1996): See the Sea
- Big Blues (Music for Little People, 1996): Flying Lesson
- Lounge-A-Palooza (Hollywood, 1997): Wichita Lineman (Glen Campbell & Michelle Shocked with Texas Tornados)
- Dead Man Walking - Music from and inspired by the Motion Picture (Columbia, 1996): The Quality of Mercy
- Blue Haze - Songs of Jimi Hendrix (Ruf Records, 2000): House Burning Down
- Shout, Sister, Shout! - A Tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe (MC Records, 2003): Strange Things Happen Every Day
- Beautiful Dreamer - The Songs of Stephen Foster (American Roots Publishing, 2004): Oh! Susanna
- Creole Bred - A Tribute to Creole and Zydeco ( Vanguard Records , 2004): Paper in My Shoe
- Give Us Your Poor (Appleseed / in-akustik, 2007): Becky's Tune
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Web links
- Michelle Shocked's website
- Background post. In: taz , November 1, 2002
- Michelle Shocked at Discogs (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Shocked, Michelle |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Johnston, Karen Michelle (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American anti-folk singer and songwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 24, 1962 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dallas , Texas |