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Michelle Shocked has seen the highs and suffered the blows in the music industry, but her tour here in March represents a new buzz…Australian style.

Shocked will be become one with an Australian great, Paul Kelly’s band, The Messengers, and the unique formation will appear at the Old Lion Hotel on March 13.

Probably best known for “Anchorage,” a song which takes the listener through a casual letter to a girlfriend, Shocked now has three critically acclaimed albums to her name.

Shocked took a sentimental tour of Australia last year with her dad (the man who inspired her musical ventures). Aside from the inspiration, she said she needed another crew member to join her in a week of sailing around the Whitsundays.

The debut Australian tour pushed her second album, Short Sharp Shocked. The album’s cover depicts her arrest in a somewhat brutal manner at a protest in the U.S. As she says, the arrest left her shocked – hence the surname.

The visit also was monumental in the fact that her boyfriend Bart (“not Bart Simpson”) asked for her hand in marriage when the tour ended. Although she accepted, she said engagement felt pretty weird.

This year’s tour is a belated promotion of her third album, Captain Swing, which sees a significant change in style to bolder, brassier, and light-hearted rhythms. The album carries an unusual mariner theme.

“There’s this stigma in the music industry which says that if an album does not succeed its predecessor, the artist is going downhill,” she said.

“So, I want to tour on a small scale for Captain Swing and get that out of the way.”

Shocked got her start in the music industry after years of voluntary work at folk and blues festivals. A London producer heard her playing guitar and singing at a campfire sit-in in Texas and like what he heard. The outdoor session was recorded on a Walkman and later transferred to vinyl.

Although some are yet to discover any of Shocked’s three albums, new material is on the way to hungry fans.

“I’m doing some new stuff with The Messengers, and I’d love to record with the band. I recorded the first track for the next album in Woodstock last week,” she said.

“I’m really dissatisfied with the fact that Paul Kelly and The Messengers has not had a good break in the U.S.”

Michelle Shocked and The Messengers play the Old Lion on March 13.