Article Library

Her name is Michelle, but you can call her Captain. Introduced to the world in 1987 via the intimate Sony Walkman-recorded [The] Texas Campfire Tapes, Michelle Shocked (the clever pun of a name is a memorial to a colourful, if often ghastly, personal history) has released a brassy, bold new album. Eschewing the neo-post-folkie-feminist-singer-songwriter mode which yielded last year’s FM hit “Anchorage,” Captain Swing is a lively blend of Louis Jordan and Jerry Lee Lewis, with Michelle’s bluesy vocals storming and fandancing around horn arrangements by Tower of Power’s Lee Thornburg.

In advance of the Captain’s Vancouver visit—she’ll play the Commodore on Tuesday (May 22)—the Georgia Straight called Michelle Shocked in Philadelphia, where she was supervising a soundcheck and chewing on a bagel. “The decadent rock and roll lifestyle,” she calls it.

Shocked’s voice is pleasant and unexpectedly soft, considering the lusty vigour it can achieve on “If Love Was a Train,” from Short Sharp Shocked, or “Must Be luff,” from Captain Swing. Her East Texas drawl is mild and amused, smoothed out by three years on the road all over the world.

“I remember the first time I was [in Vancouver]. I played at the folk festival. I was real impressed with the way that was set up. So many countries, and the workshops—it was a wonderful chance to show the different sides of the music.”

That particular tour had been solo, a woman alone with her trusty guitar. Now aided by Jeff Donovan’s drums, Skip Edwards’ keyboards, Lee Thornburg’s trumpet, Jeff Pollock’s sax, John Graham’s guitar, and Taras Produniak’s bass, Michelle has been on tour since April 5, beginning in Houston.

That city reminds me of a thought I’d had while listening to the new record: Michelle started out with comparisons, valid or not, to Phranc and Suzanne Vega, both neo-folkies with little or no hair. But Captain Swing has more in common with roots acts like Angela Strehli or Marcia Ball, really gutsy Southern women with good lungs.

The Captain chuckles, “I enjoy those kinds of comparisons a lot more, because I think they’re being more accurate to the spirit of the music. Whereas the comparison to Phranc or Suzanne Vega was an attempt to sublimate the music to a category based on image.”

Her true musical compatriots are Louis Jordan and Professor Longhair. Or, more contemporaneously, k.d. lang and Lyle Lovett. In Shocked’s opinion, the success of these anti-fashion artists “debunks a lot of the conventional wisdom about marketing and style and so forth. I tend to believe that if you’re doing music that you believe in and love, then it’s going to be worth it.”

In terms of material worth, Shocked has been asked to, among other things, endorse Budweiser and sell her life story to a Hollywood producer.

Life is hectic enough, though. Recently, Shocked taped a show for National Public Radio in New York. She left her guitar in a cab. In a panic, she called the taxi company, and contacted the driver’s roommate. After much tense phoning around, the driver gave the guitar up, and may get a song written for him. “As a matter of fact, we named the guitar “Bad Penny” after that, because it came back. And that sounds like a good song to me.”

More seriously, Michelle acknowledges that in her short career she has “gone through lots of changes,” some of them surprising. “I really thought that the whole point to the exercise was starting out with a pre-conception and sticking to it no matter what I learned. And, unfortunately, I’ve tried to take the good, [and] leave the rest. It accounts for some changes in my attitude. For example, when I started out, I thought that this was really an opportunity to present my political agenda because I had the musical platform.”

But now?

“I tell ya, my general rule of thumb is that when anyone puts themselves into the role of spokesman, and says, ‘I have to raise people’s consciousness about that, and that alone is worth the effort,’ I tend to be really cynical, because my attitude is that by and large people know what the problem is. What they lack are the resources, the wherewithal, the tools for having any kind of effective change.”

Michelle Shocked laughs when I suggest that she has all the musical tools she’ll ever need. “I’ve just shied so far away from believing that because I’m a left wing radical that I’m the good guy. I just don’t wanna touch that tar-baby; it’s just too close to the truth of what I learned growing up, you know, raised as a fundamentalist with God on your side.”