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Michelle Shocked has a special relationship with the audiences at her live shows. One is always treated to consummate songwriting and musicianship and usually uniquely entertained by Shocked’s give and take with each audience. But recently, live audiences have been even more integral to her music. They have been the only people able to purchase her independently recorded Kind Hearted Woman, Artists Make Lousy Slaves and most recently, Good News.

And for Shocked, each performance is about connecting with the audience. In the midst of unpredictable weather and power sources at the 1996 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Shocked’s set could have been cut short by a power failure that darkened the stage and silenced the speakers that provided sound for the nearly 40,000 music lovers who had converged on Telluride.

Shocked did not stop her show. Instead, she enlisted the audience that was within earshot of her voice to help her connect with the rest of the audience. The a cappella sing-along started in the area closest to the stage and furthered in wave after wave of people until the festival grounds filled the night with one song and countless voices. Michelle Shocked has faith in the power of music and that faith has often been rewarded.

But there have been times when it has not. Shocked’s unorthodox career began when her first album was recorded on a Sony Walkman at the Kerrville Folk Festival and subsequently released as a bootleg to commercial and critical success in the U.K.

Shocked remained in Texas for the next several years, writing songs in her bedroom and playing occasional live shows. She received word about The Texas Campfire Tapes success in the U.K. through a letter. She relocated to London and lived in an offshore community on the Thames River.

The success of The Texas Campfire Tapes eventually led to Shocked’s signing at Mercury Records at the onslaught of the “female singer-songwriter” movement that has gone unabated from that time unto the present. Shocked and her peers cracked the door even wider open than it had been by their predecessors.

Never one to be satisfied with any type of categorization, she released a trilogy of distinct and critically acclaimed records for Mercury over the next several years: Short Sharp Shocked, Captain Swing (both co-produced by Shocked and long-time Dwight Yoakum producer and collaborator, Pete Anderson) and Arkansas Traveler, a string instrument travelogue concept album produced by Shocked and including performances by some of the world’s greatest purveyors of string music. When she and her label differed in their expectations for her career, Shocked took her music on the road.

Though she had always been a touring artist, her live shows now offered something unique: new recorded music that was only available in limited quantities and from the stage at her concerts. Shocked sold out of two albums in this manner. She has recently completed a third, Good News.

In the intervening time, Mercury Records released a collection of her better-known works, Mercury Poise and Private Music re-released Kind Hearted Woman with major label distribution. After the release of eight records in such varied circumstances, a relocation to New Orleans and recent enlightening times, Shocked seems even more on the verge of artistic greatness. We spoke with her in January.

Can you tell us a little bit about Good News and how that record came to be?

Good News is a limited edition. It was available only at concerts that I played last year with my band, the Anointed Earls. That’s a Louisiana malaprop—it was actually something my pastor was saying one day talking about the “anointed eearrllll” so that became my band name. I saw that one right away.

The songs on it—the first one (“Good News”) was commissioned for a Greenpeace campaign in which they were highlighting environmental racism. It just happens to be no coincidence that most of the toxic landfills and dumps and polluting factories end up being located in minority communities. Or, in the case of Louisiana, not really a minority community, but communities that lack the power or resources to stand up to boards of corporations.

But the rest of the songs, well, I’ve been in the middle of a song cycle that is quite terrifying honestly, because I’m just convinced that it’s too awkward. It’s a very awkward song cycle and so I put this collection of songs together as a sort of holding action.

Are the songs on Good News a part of that song cycle?

Some of them are. Taking this as an opportunity to open up and talk about inspiration and creativity, I’m talking about spiritual forces—matters that are beyond our physical human ability to logic. So, the song cycle that I’m dealing with is that grasping, that yearning, that trying to attain.

I believe I’ve had a breakthrough very recently which is to finally get the idea, that all this stuff that you do in your life to be loved, it doesn’t matter. I can tell you I finally got it through my thick head—and I would think if I could get it through my head anyone can—you are loved. It’s just a fact. And through writing this very awkward song cycle I have been getting closer and closer to this fact.

What motivated your previous independent release Kind Hearted Woman?

[illegible] Kind Hearted Woman was a cycle of ten songs, seven of which were about death. Now, I don’t think that’s anything new. Death is a part of life. But I guess that as a writer you aspire to take on the big subjects and so I took on death and it took on me and we both came out a little older and wiser.

There were no love songs?

This love business, you know, I haven’t even bothered with those immature love songs. I really have had only one love song—“If Love Was A Train”—and that was saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about so I’m going to shut up,’ but here I am and I’ve gone through these dark song cycles about death and come out of it saying, ‘life goes on, you learn to live again’ and for me the point of it all was that I discovered happiness was a choice. Once I chose to be happy and disciplined myself to make that choice on a daily basis, then I felt like the message that was there, that is, “you are loved,” could finally get through my head.

The process you just described reminds me of your song, “Forgive to Forget” on Good News.

That’s the beginning of that cycle. “Forgive to Forget” is not the greatest brainstorm that ever existed but I was finally getting some kind of foothold on the idea that this kind of redemption and love could start to crack the door open.

What do you like about that song particularly?

I like the conceit of the song and the way it sets itself up. The opening lyrics are: “You remind me of someone I once knew/I don’t know who/I don’t know who/Who could it be?/Let me see/Ah, yes, I remember now/I think it was me.” I like that because it reminds me of that song, “Just My Imagination”—I love the conceit of that kind of thing.

That song came to me inspired. There is nothing like writing an inspired song. You can sit around, and scratch and scrabble and you can plot, and you can manipulate to write a song, but when inspired songs come to you all you can do is say thank you.

What does all this inspiration lead to?

I think one idea that I have to offer is that the level past inspired songwriting is “vision.” I would say there’s inspiration and there is vision. As an artist, I sometimes wish I didn’t have a vision because it’s been a pain in the ass.

I don’t want to sound self-aggrandizing to put it on this level. A vision can be a burden. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but to be honest it is the thing that artists strive and pray will come to them. It’s something that takes you past even just inspiration.

How so?

Inspiration will get you from song to song and that starts making you feel like a gambler or like a superstitious baseball player. You think I’m doing something right so the inspiration’s flowing or I’m doing something wrong, and it’s all dried up. But once you have a vision! Strive for vision and the inspiration that nurtures and sustains vision gives you a feeling from time to time that you’re on the right track and that will help you suffer through the pains of being a writer.

There are real pains in standing by a vision and being in a business that requires a certain commerciality. Can you talk about that?

The biggest pains I suffer are confusion, disorientation, possession by spirits not my own, becoming like some kind of vehicle. I hate creativity because creativity means being open. It means being receptive.

It’s always a wonderful and blessed gift but you don’t know that as you’re going into it. There’s a very clever part of our mind that is very capable of doing all the contrived manipulative things that we know are about crafting. To not let that part of our minds just totally take over is hard because it’s so tempting. Commerciality means writing songs that make money, but if you think that all music is good for is making money then you are certainly selling the power of music short.

How can a songwriter balance their vision with their sense of commerce?

First, you have to ask, ‘Do I have a vision? Am I the only one who can carry this vision through? Is the vision counting on me to be the vehicle?’ Because you’re going to look quite foolish in many circumstances and you’ll have to go on.

Have you felt so strongly about your vision from the outset of your career?

I couldn’t say that I had a vision as an early artist, but I think that’s a groovy thing that you’re young and immature and that you actually may grow into your vision. They paint this business as so cold and callous and cruel, but the great thing is that it understands. The general architecture is that you help artists mature into themselves.

And that’s not easy.

I feel like I’ve received that even though it’s been a school of hard knocks.

I’m somewhat amazed that you’re sympathetic to the architecture of the industry. If you had to characterize the trilogy of Short Sharp Shocked, Captain Swing and Arkansas Traveler as part of your development, where does it land? Halfway there? A third of the way?

I can speak real clearly on those three records. The trilogy was an artificial way in my mind of separating out my oeuvre and saying, ‘I’m this, and I’m this, and I’m this.’ Short Sharp Shocked was the singer-songwriter record—which for me was always about the Texas singer-songwriter—influences like Guy Clarke and Townes Van Zandt.

Captain Swing was a nod to retro. If you come from Texas, you’re going to have the blues no matter how it gets expressed, but for me it was quite retro/swing/jump. I artificially separated Short Sharp Shocked from Captain Swing though there were flavors of both in both.

And Arkansas Traveler was stone country. More country than country. It’s all the bluegrass and string band influences. It probably would have been a wiser commercial move to put all of those influences together and then have three consistent albums that they couldn’t then as easily categorize.

Do you regret not doing that?

If I’d done that I probably would have been pigeonholed as some kind of country-folk thing, whereas this just left them guessing. Short Sharp Shocked had the biggest splash. So, I was pressured to make another one of those. That was what I encountered, and I was hard-headed enough to say no and that led to five years of lawsuits and fighting to get off a label that didn’t support me in that decision, and out of that came a song cycle of death and despair [Kind Hearted Woman].

I should mention The Texas Campfire Tapes because it got everything started. I got a letter in the mail saying your album’s on the charts in England. And I said, “What album?” It was a bootleg that did really well for some people.

After that you moved to England?

Yes, for about two years. It was a good time to be doing that new artist business and a great way to break, especially for such a strongly identified American artist. The Texas Campfire Tapes gave me a little bit of the exotic hillbilly flair.

Which is sort of reinvigorated on Arkansas Traveler. Once the trilogy was complete, what did you want to do?

I was still living in Los Angeles and started going to a church called West Angeles Church of God in Christ. I got invited to perform on a few programs and I did a program doing my very best gospel-gospel and afterwards church members came up to me and said, “We just love country music.” But I realized I had a willingness to take a leap into the unknown.

And living in New Orleans I’ve gotten into the real New Orleans jazz sound and the gospel music of that area. Once I jumped off that deep end, I started growing more into my own and became not something that I wasn’t, but more than what I was. That’s what a vision will sustain you and help you do because at times it felt like I had fallen through the cracks and was no good to anybody and was now no good to myself.

Thinking particularly about your songwriting, how would you describe the process that leads to songs like “Memories of East Texas?”

“Memories of East Texas” was drawn from one of the oldest writing tricks in the book. Use detail and it will convince people that you are speaking with such authority. I made up some of those details, some I drew from poetic images I liked from other people. They say everyone’s got one novel in them—their life story—and that was in a sense, my novel, my life story.

It was a poetic time in my life where it was very effortless to bring in those kinds of details to life. To try to stand where I am today and bring that sense of authority to my work is quite frightening and challenging because I don’t know if I’m capable of looking at my present with such perception and poetic ability as I was able to look at my past.

“Come A Long Way?”

People say that I write about cities the way Joni Mitchell writes about lovers. Like I said, I don’t do love songs, but I’ll talk about cities and my relationships with cities—I’ve got songs about Amsterdam, New York, Anchorage, Los Angeles.

But that song isn’t very well structured. It goes on and on and on for too long and the lyrics are too playful. It was a very calculated song. I handed in the album and the label asked, “Where’s the hit?”

I felt a catharsis writing the song, though, because I had fallen in love and what I was really trying to address with that song—and I don’t think I hit on the nut of it—is that love is so big that you can run for miles but not escape it. And I had finally found a love that was holding on for dear life, I could not shake this man loose for anything.

“Come A Long Way” was not originally part of Arkansas Traveler

No. Arkansas Traveler was truly a concept album. I took all these fiddle tunes and told strong band melodies that I had grown up playing with my father and put my own lyrics to them and hopefully passed them along to the next couple of generations.

Given that that was the focus of the record, you can understand why there wasn’t necessarily a hit song on the album. But I’m respectful of the medium I work in, so I know the basic elements of a hook for a song and Arkansas Traveler was essentially a travelogue so “Come A Long Way” fit right in.

After you parted ways with Mercury, you made Kind Hearted Woman. What was that like?

For Kind Hearted Woman, I went with my guitar into a garage and recorded the ten songs front to back and printed 5000 copies initially and started selling them at shows. When you come from a background where your first record was a bootleg on a Sony Walkman with weak batteries it kind of gives you permission to not take the medium too seriously.

How was making independent records different?

What I learned was that if you keep your creative head above water, it doesn’t matter if sharks come and attack the career body. They can chaw off a leg or arm or whatever, but if the creative head is still floating above water your career will have an arc that no one can predict.

Did having a vision of your artistry help?

The amazing power of inspiration and being the conductor of a vision is that it’s got to get out there in the world. You have been born for this purpose. You are the only one who can deliver this vision and somehow one way or the other if you just don’t drown you will survive, and it will sustain you.

Is it hard to write songs for specific projects like “Dead Man Walking?”

The way that they approached me was so great. They sent me the full-length video of the movie and said, “if the movie inspires you, if it moves you” please feel free to contribute a song. It was the classiest thing. It was such a respectful way to approach songwriters.

I watched the movie. It totally moved me—how could it not? —and to tell you the truth, I prayed. I said, “Ok God, I’m ready for a song now. Please give me a song.” He said, OK. Take notes.” And that’s why there is nothing like inspired writing. But, again, if you think music is only good for making money, you are vastly underestimating the power of music to move people’s hearts.

What kind of music moves you?

Bill Withers at the moment. And I like Lauryn Hill.

What are you currently working on?

I have a song cycle that’s about five or six songs deep that is just moving more in [sic] more in the direction of the question, “What did I do to deserve to be loved?” I have a song called “Go In Peace” and one called “I Know What You Need,” and “Forgive To Forget” is in it as well.

Are these songs coming easily for you?

I went to New Orleans to collaborate with Allen Toussaint and he gave me a great gift early in our collaboration. We only wrote one song together, but he told me that his life was a junkyard of spare parts of songs and that he wouldn’t let that happen to me so before we could move forward on even one song, he insisted that I finish each and every one of those songs just dangling around. What a gift for a statesman of songwriting to pass along to me. I was so blessed to receive that.

I let each song have its own life. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll let it come back around but if I can’t remember it I basically figure it wasn’t memorable and I don’t try to hang onto it.

How was the collaborative process for you?

I like it. I’ve had the best and the worst kind of structured collaborative experiences. Collaboration is such an easy thing to manipulate. Where the heart and soul of it is probably everyone’s balance to find.

How is your writing different now than it’s been in the past?

Now, I could care less if it’s literary. I could care less if it makes sense. If it conveys the truth of this vision that I’m responsible for seeing through, I don’t care if people think that woman is illiterate and couldn’t handle a sentence if her life depended on it.

I used to be so proud of my cleverness and detail but as I’m coming into my own that is starting not to be important. Like John Lee Hooker just going, “hmmm.” He just hums and that conveys the idea.

And now that you’ve gone the independent route for a couple of records are you a die-hard independent?

I don’t like independent for myself. I love the mixing of commerce and art. To me that is an awesome, amazing, and beautiful life and death struggle. I don’t want to be a precious little artiste.

This is culture we’re talking about and capable of moving great swaths of society and moving their minds and changing and affecting them with the power of song. So, I like working inside corporations, I like getting screwed over by corporations, I like giving them the finger. I like it all.

Major record label or not, what’s next for you?

We’re calling it soul. But that’s a real tired term for “you are loved.” I’m finally getting away from the cleverness and the marketing and want to put something forward that’s just as pure as it can be.