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Audiences had ample opportunity to see Michelle Shocked last year when she backed up Billy Bragg on two tours around the state.

But her show at the Paramount Performing Arts Center in Springfield Saturday will be different because she’s headlining.

“I want to take a long, slow train ride,” she said over the phone from her publicist’s office in New York, using her favorite metaphor.

“If Love Was A Train” is one of the delicious songs from her popular, Short Sharp Shocked album.

And in addition to being longer, the show will take a different approach than the soapbox used by Bragg, she assured.

“His approach is: ‘Let me tell you how it is,’” she said of the political British rocker. “I like the opportunity to teach people to do it for themselves.”

Shocked, the Texas-born troubadour and former squatter, is already a star in England. Last year, her native country started to appreciate her work as well, both on her unusual audition work, The Texas Campfire Tapes, and the eventual studio LP, which spawned the single, “Anchorage.”

She says it’s no big deal; anyone can create a song. “If I can do it,” she said, “everyone can do it.”

“I want to create opportunities. I’m a big convert to [Marshall] McLuhan, who says the medium itself is the message.”

Shocked has gotten critical accolades for her engaging stage manner, which brings to mind the unaffected charm of another offspring of Texas, Buddy Holly, as well as the political populism of Woody Guthrie.

She was even nominated for a Grammy this year for Best Contemporary Folk Recording. And had it not been for a lock on the awards by Tracy Chapman, she might have won it, too.

Which galls the would-be revolutionary to no end.

“I don’t want to put myself on top—I want to take the top and pull it down,” she said. “The thing that kills me is that you get into the system to bring it down and then they nominate you for an award.