Michelle Shocked

“I’m the most sophisticated hillbilly you’ll ever meet.”

When Michelle Shocked says this about herself, it’s hard not to crack up. ‘Hillbilly,’ after all, is no compliment. And frankly, it’s tough to reconcile that reflex image of a backwoods, overalls-and-a-smile hillbilly with this focused, erudite singer-songwriter. If such a creature exists, however, Shocked is its picture, sans Billy-Bob teeth. Come to think of it, she was born in or at least near the backwoods of East Texas — and get this —after being conceived, if memory serves, “in the backseat of my Uncle Huby’s Chevy at the high school prom.”

Her upbringing was more well-rounded. In her early childhood, Shocked logged thousands of miles as a military brat, living in Massachusetts, Germany and Maryland, before returning to Texas. She lived there until her early twenties, experiencing the stark contrast — and copious benefits — of being raised by a fundamentalist Mormon mother and Army lifer stepfather, and having a hippie teacher-slash-“ultimate autodidact” father. Eager to further expand her horizons, Shocked eventually decamped for San Francisco, assumed the peripatetic life of a community activist and, eventually, a touring musician.

Fittingly, there’s a phantom Texas taproot and that self-styled wanderlust in her music. Much like the work of her East Texas peers Willie Nelson, Victoria Williams and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Shocked’s songs hold fast to a definite core, but owe no stylistic allegiance — just like their itinerant, mercurial, utilitarian creators. Shocked identifies strongly with her musical compatriots, and not just because they’re from her neck of the woods. “My family was welfare class,” says Shocked, “and that makes you really, really, white trash. [These artists] helped remove class bias because they have all been given honorary middle-class value because of what they’ve achieved in their music.”

Shocked has likewise transcended class bias, while retaining the parts that make sense, in a 23-year career that has seen critical acclaim at every juncture. In 1996, she famously escaped major-label indentured servitude, subverting the artist-label relationship that helped lead to the current trend toward artistic self-containment. She has made good use of her independence, releasing more critically-acclaimed albums on her Mighty Sound label. Her 2009 album, Soul of My Soul, was the latest of these. In 2010, her efforts are focused on Roadworks, a 5 year tour to introduce new audiences to her estimable body of work and a new project, Indelible Women.