Michelle Shocked Returns to the “O”

Grammy Award winner Michelle Shocked returns with her Roccupy!!-themed Roadworks 2012 tour.

In 2010, Shocked launched Roadworks, a five-year touring project that curates audience’s favorite songs while developing new, unreleased material. This tour introduces opener Jimmy Cabeza deVaca, an Angeleno who plays nylon-string guitar, accordion, banjo, electric guitar and piano. He will open the show with Shocked’s "Folkaoke" concept, accompanying volunteers from the audience who have a choice of singing "Blowing in the Wind" (à la Bob Dylan), "Deportee" (à la Joan Baez), "Do-Re-Mi" (à la Woody Guthrie), or "This Land Is Your Land" (à la Pete Seeger).

Shocked will then take requests, likely including old favorites such as "Anchorage," "Memories of East Texas," "Come a Long Way." Then the duo will perform new songs from the as-yet-unrecorded Indelible Women album, including "Algun Dia" (Frida Kahlo), "Take Your Time" (Billie Holiday,) and "I Will Be Loved" (Marilyn Monroe), and a few new compositions inspired by activism with Occupy Fights Foreclosures.

The closing "Roccupy" set will feature movement anthems such as "We Are the Many" (by Makana), "Hope in Hard Times" (by John Clark) and "Occupy" (by NOFX) as well as "The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore" (by Jean Ritchie) and Shocked’s own "Ballad of the Battle of the Ballot and the Bullet."

Michelle Shocked is a traveling troubadour whose musical talent is so eclectic it is difficult to categorize. As a young feminist, she left Texas to travel, Kerouac-style, and was caught up in Reagan-era grassroots politics. Her musical career was ignited by a bootleg recording made around a Kerrville Folk Festival campfire on a Sony Walkman. In a 24-year career that has seen critical acclaim at every juncture, she famously escaped major-label indentured servitude in 1996, 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 critically-acclaimed albums on her Mighty Soundlabel. Her 2009 album, Soul of My Soul, was the latest of these.

Shocked’s 2012 "Roccupy" theme asserts that "Art is Occupation" and also a critical element in the development of democratic movements. She is actively engaged as a member of Occupy Fights Foreclosures www.occupyfightsforeclosures.org.