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In the middle of an era of high technology, noise-free digital recordings, perfect music electronics, Michelle Shocked stormed the British independent charts with an album that seemed to ignore all of that. In February, “The Texas Campfire Tapes” was number one.

SONGS FROM THE ROOTS

The crickets chirping in the background are real. And so was the campfire. Every now and then a truck drives by on the highway.

Peter Lawrence, traveling talent scout, was impressed by Michelle's songs at the Kerrville/East Texas Folk & Country Festival and simply sat down at the campfire and recorded it on a recorder. At home in his studio he must have still been so fascinated by the songs that he had them pressed onto LP on a spur of the moment and without Michelle's knowledge.

Michelle Shocked is now considered a singer/songwriter along with Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega. Michelle's musical roots lie in her native Texas, where blues and country are still a way of life. At 16, she ran away from home to look for her biological father. She found him in Dallas as a “prototype of the radical anarchist hippie.” Her father dragged her to all sorts of folk festivals. That left its mark. Michelle tried out a wide variety of lifestyles. She was a squatter and worked in a telegram office. When her mother finally tracked her down, she had Michelle sent to a mental hospital for "possession." Luckily the mother ran out of money and that was the end of the stay. A lot of material remains for Michelle Shocked's songs. When she heard about the new festival idea and the organizers' major financial worries, she spontaneously declared that she would take part.