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With her third album, Captain Swing, behind her, and a three-month headlining tour looming large ahead, Michelle Shocked is finding out for the first time just what mainstream public acceptance is all about. It means being besieged by the media for interviews and having to juggle her schedule to adapt. It might also mean having to justify her new lifestyle to her expatriate friends.

One look at Shocked’s history and it’s abundantly clear that this 25-ish rebel’s unconventional style of contemporary protest songs springs from an atypical past, one which included running away from home at the age of 16, being committed to a mental hospital by her mother, living on the streets of New York’s East Village, being raped while hitchhiking in Italy, and being choked by police at a demonstration at the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco.

The latter event was graphically depicted on the cover of her second album, Short Sharp Shocked and, according to the Texas native, led directly to her choice of surnames, which aptly described her feelings at the time.

But Shocked, who is an original and wants to be considered as such, wants her old friends to know she hasn’t sold out to the establishment.

On May 11 at Westport Playhouse, she will perform a set of tunes ranging from acoustic ballads to swinging brass.