Photo by Mark Metcalfe
Michelle Shocked is 61 years old today.
A singer-songwriter, Shocked was born Karen Michelle Johnston in Dallas. Her stepfather was in the U.S. Army and the family moved from base to base. Her mother was Mormon and she was raised in that faith.
Her mother had her committed to a psychiatric hospital for a time during her teenage years. She went through a punk rock phase, wearing a Mohawk hairdo and squatting in abandoned buildings in San Francisco.
In 1984, Shocked adopted the stage name "Michelle Shocked," a play on the expression "Shell Shocked," as she explained in an interview with Green Left Weekly:
"The term 'Miss Shell Shocked' is a direct reference to the thousand-yard stare, which was a term that they first used to describe the victims of shell-shock in World War One. These people from outward appearances had survived the war quite well when in fact inside their minds were blown. I first used that name in 1984 at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco where I was arrested for protesting and demonstrating against corporations who contribute money to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party campaigns."
Shocked received her first international exposure after Pete Lawrence recorded her performance on a portable tape recorder at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. Lawrence released the tape in Europe as The Texas Campfire Tapes (1986).
The album's success brought major labels asking her to sign a contract. Shocked was resistant to what she saw as the machinations of the music industry, and worked to retain a degree of creative control.
Her first U.S. success came with the release of her 1988 debut album, Short Sharp Shocked, on college radio rotations around the country, which was met with strong acclaim from listeners.
On the crest of this independent momentum, her 1989 album Captain Swing on Mercury Records was released, followed by her 1992 album Arkansas Traveler.
In 1995, Shocked contributed an original song to the soundtrack for the film, Dead Man Walking, called "Quality of Mercy." In 1996, she released a studio version of an underground release Kind-Hearted Woman (black cover) on the short-lived Private Music label.
Starting in 2002 with the release of Deep Natural, Shocked established her own label, Mighty Sound. She reissued expanded versions of her entire catalog, made possible by having retained complete ownership of her work when she signed with Mercury in 1987.
An acoustic version of her song "How You Play the Game" was featured as the opening and credits soundtrack in the DVD of the 2004 documentary film Bush's Brain. Shocked continues to make music as an independent artist.
In June 2005, she released a trilogy of albums called Threesome (Don't Ask Don't Tell, Mexican Standoff and Got No Strings). In May, 2007, she released the album ToHeavenURide; in September 2009, Soul of My Soul.
Here, Shocked performs Arkansas Traveler