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It wasn’t easy getting in touch with Michelle Shocked. She is not getting along with her record company, has no official manager and has just signed on with a new booking agent. A trail of messages, however, led to a call from Shocked in Philadelphia, on her way to this area. She and her new band, the Casualties of Wah, are at the Bottom Line in Manhattan tonight and tomorrow night and at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amangansett on Monday.

“I like to think I’m cleaning house in the positive sense,” Shocked said. “I am taking responsibility for my own creativity, and realized I’m not making music to make a label, manager, or agent happy. I’m doing it for myself. I wanted to be around people who care about me. So I hope it’s not coming from a neurotic need to clean out the barn.” One also hopes the record company tribulations work out amicably. Shocked says she’s been granted her release from Mercury Records. Not so, says the label. “As far as we’re concerned, she’s still a Mercury artist,” said Mercury spokeswoman Dawn Bridges.

From the time she was discovered performing at a folk festival in Texas, in 1986 (the ensuing debut album, The Texas Campfire Tapes was recorded on a Sony Walkman), Shocked has pursued unpredictable directions, mixing punk and folk, bluegrass and swing, politics and spirituality, storytelling and self-discovery. The new band is named after wah-wah pedal, and reflects Shocked’s current interest in funk.

“We don’t have enough material to make it a complete funk show,” according to Shocked. (The new band played its first show just a month ago.) “We’ve taken some old material and rearranged it. ‘When I Grow Up’ was inherently unclassifiable; we just brought up the funkier side.” Shocked also plays a good deal of electric guitar, which is a recent development. “I always thought of the guitar as a percussion instrument, which is why I have had a penchant for playing acoustic. But I’m a pretty good rhythm player, so it works pretty well on electric guitar.”

Shocked’s new songs show the influence of important changes in her life: marriage to writer Bart Bull, and a return to church. Shocked was raised in a fundamentalist environment which, she said, “convinced me that God was a narrow-minded bigot.” Even recently, she was startled to hear a Sunday school teacher say, “The Bible says Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Said Shocked: “That kind of hate-mongering has no place in church; my own beliefs tell me that God is about the transcendental power of love, and that’s why I went back to church.

Michelle Shocked and the Casualties of Wah. Tonight and tomorrow night at the Bottom Line, 15 W. 4th St., Manhattan. Shows at 7:30 and 10:30 each night, tickets $15. Monday night at Stephen Talkhouse, 161 Main St., Amagansett. Show time 8 p.m., tickets $40.