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It is a measure of Michelle Shocked’s … [ illegible] … keep it rocking that she did so even for this reviewer, anchored down in disgruntlement over the concert’s organization.

The Town Hall doors were not opened until five to eight. After a 10-minute crawl through a claustrophobic passageway into the [illegible] there was a free-for-all scramble over seating and another long wait for the concert to start at 8:25.

The still affable audience warmed quickly to a good performance by supporting artist, Guy Wishart. Not every word Wishart sang was clear, highlighting that Shocked’s always are. Dressed in black dungarees and a striped shirt, a relaxed and grinning Shocked came on to a stage that was oddly back-dropped with three triangular sails.

Accompanied by fiddle and guitar-playing Australian, Wayne Goodman, Shocked played her own acoustic guitar and sang two new and unrecorded songs.

She moved on to “Cement Lament,” “On the Greener Side,” and “Silent Ways” from Captain Swing, and then returned to the earlier Short Sharp Shocked with “When I Grow Up” (a near full Town Hall audience sang along too) and “V.F.D.”

Another [illegible] song, the “Campus Crusade,” was more of a storytelling with guitar backing. By “Hello Hopeville” and the [illegible] version (convincing despite the [illegible]) of “[(Don’t You Mess Around With)] My Little Sister,” the audience was rocking and whooping. In a curious reminder of 60s folk music, Shocked sang an unaccompanied ballad about a Vietnam War widow.

Even a radical like Shocked showed her true American colours by having the widow tear up her war pension cheque, refusing welfare from the state. Somewhat surprisingly, sometime activist Shocked made virtually no references to the Gulf War, sticking instead to her avowal to “entertain the troops.”

She seems to have moved completely away from those more playful, quirky Texas Campfire Tapes numbers and there is now never a hint of cute. She was in powerful voice and the amplification produced a remarkable level of guitar sound.

In brimmed hat and glasses, down country Goodman made a fine partner for the girl from Texas. Though bad management and limited venue marred the early part of the evening, Shocked and Goodman gave us a great night of folk songs, love songs, blues and laments in a Texan tradition, and a surprising amount of swing.