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Becoming a musician didn’t just mean a change of jobs for American soul singer, Michelle Shocked, but a change of lifestyle.

The former squatter who has worked as a waitress and towel washer is still coming to grips with handling international fame.

“Think of a cat that is picked up and held upside down and then tries to land on its feet,” she said. “That’s what it feels like.

“When I was a squatter, we needed our survival skills daily. We didn’t have many resources of our own and so we lived in abandoned buildings.

“We didn’t have much power, but we would always support each other if one of us was threatened with eviction.”

Today, Michelle is signed to an international record company and has toured most of the world.

She entered music by accident when she was discovered at a 1986 folk festival by an English producer who taped her singing original tunes on his Sony Walkman.

The album was released, The Texas Campfire Tapes, and it soon topped the independent charts. She has since released the album, Short Sharp Shocked.

But Michelle said she was still feeling her way in the music system which often put profits before people and ethics.

“I am wary about getting into debt to people who are selling my resources. Especially in the beginning I didn’t trust people in the industry,” she said.

“I have made a lot of mistakes in judging people as I only looked on the surface at people’s political beliefs and ideologies.”

Born in 1962, the eldest of eight children, Michelle ran away from home at 16 and in 1979, went to live in Dallas with her father who was a hillbilly and blues specialist.

This was her first introduction to music beyond the fundamentalist environment of her mother’s house.

Michelle has devised a unique way of recording her next album – she will use a mobile recording system.

For a month she will visit dozens of places, spending several days in each, recording with blues and hillbilly artists like Norman and Honey [sic] Blake.

Since the early 1980s, Michelle has written politically based songs especially when she became involved in squatters movements.

She will be supported by The Messengers for her Wednesday night performance at Brisbane Mayne Hall.