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 Michelle Shocked's trip takes off to a bad start. While waiting for an early flight, she and veteran music-journalist husband Bart Bull are getting some sleep – and are the perfect prey for an airport thief, who takes off with their baggage. The old Michelle would've panicked and seen this as an omen or bad karma, but the new Michelle is more serene, composed and realistic. After all, "They're just bags," she says. "Luckily, I had put my passport in my pocket." Michelle first shocked the world with her debut album, the Grammy-nominated Short Sharp Shocked, a mix of blues, rockabilly and punk. The album cover, depicting Michelle being arrested during a protest at the Democratic National Convention in 1984, was the image of a "soldier" fighting against the political and social woes tainting the land. She still continues to fight the same battles, but her "arms" have changed. Once an Army brat following the rigid rules of a military stepfather and fundamentalist Mormon mother, Michelle is the one who makes the rules now. She freed herself from her major label – Courtney Love, take note – and has since founded her own; she exorcised her demons and found the Gospel. "Wanna ride with us?" she suggests halfway through the interview. She must get to the rock station Oui FM for yet another interview promoting her new album Deep Natural. My tape recorder continues to roll as we leave the riverside bench and walk through a maze of Parisian streets, which eventually lead us to a taxi. Sitting between Bart and myself, Michelle Shocked, arguably one of the most engaging blues women since Janis Joplin, tells me of her newfound inner peace and how she's still a hillbilly at heart. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Deep Natural is less fiddly and more bluesy, grassy, folksy, country, rocksy. It's more everywhere else than... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Texas! (laughs) Although Texas also has deep roots with blues and gospel, which I think is a pretty prominent feature of the musical direction of this [album]. I cannot, in good faith, tell you it came out of Texas. But here's the story: I left Texas in the early '80s, did a lot of travelling around, exposed myself to a lot of different cultures, and my first three major albums were very focused, yes, on defining the early influences. And always I intended after that to leave the question open: Now what? And, of course, that's when I ran into all the legal problems with the label, the heartache and sorrow that comes from seeing your hopes and your dreams being thwarted. So I kind of went on a detour, but the good news is that in that detour, I went deeper into my blues roots – of course, I had plenty of blues to sing about – and I began a new exploration of a music that is not an early source, and that's the gospel. The explorations of gospel came both in Los Angeles and then in New Orleans, which is kind of two different types of gospel, but it all brings it back home. I feel like, because my foundation in the blues is so solid, and that's as Texas as it comes. Texas blues is a certain kind of thing. It's not Delta blues. It's a little bit of a country blues, but it's a shuffle blues that I just think you gotta live it, you gotta feel it. Jimmy Reed is a blues musician that was not famous anywhere but Texas. You know his music... (sings) "Bright light, big city/Gone to my baby's head." He was a superstar in Texas. Everywhere else – never heard of him. So you get that a lot in the atmosphere and the insolence – I've focused on that a lot with this album but also, as you say, brought in influences that were not Texan originally. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
You have a degree in Oral Interpretation of Literature. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | I am a very highly qualified poetry reader. I mean, what kind of hillbilly credibility is that? But that's the nice thing about being so confident about where I come from. My sense of place is such that I don't need to have a perfectly symmetrical story that fits all the expectations, preconceptions about what is supposed to be. I think it gives me a lot of reason to be cynical about manufactured commodities that they call music, that they call artists. That's not artists. Artists' job is not to get along with the machine. Artists' job is, if anything, to throw a sabot into the music machine and create disruption, cause the machine to stop long enough to consider the implications of what it's doing. That's my faith in culture, but it's proven to be a fairly naïve faith. This machine is doing just fine! (laughs) That's your faith too? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Absolutely. What do you think of the machine that manufactures all the Britneys and Christinas? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | I think it causes, especially for women of my generation, a lot of despair, because you see a giant step backwards where what a woman looks like is far more significant than what they do. But I guess maybe part of the problem is that [women] have not been given alternatives that clearly were compelling enough. I love Chrissie Hynde; I love the rebel chick that is bold and sassy. Yet apparently, it's just not compelling enough that women who want to find some middle ground, some sort of compromise, something that they can relate to their lives. And you know what? It's really marketing on girls. That's the sad part, right? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
But there are some rebel chicks working on creating an alternative. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | That's what a lot of women musicians have: the opportunity to present alternatives, 'cause clearly it's not going to come through fashion. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
You're very outspoken on social issues. What do you think of artists like Bono going to the level of action? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: |
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NYROCK: |
He got into the White House. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | He got into the White House; he got Congressmen to go with him to Africa. He brought the debt-relief movement to mass consciousness in a way that I don't think anyone else has. So I'm rooting behind him. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Why the title Deep Natural? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | My husband came up with that phrase. He was trying to describe someone and he was saying that she's the worldliest hillbilly you'll ever meet. She's a deep natural, which is to say, sort of what I was saying at the beginning, I'm an idiot savant. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
"I write about cities the way some people write about lovers." Did you have a love affair with each city you lived in? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | True. Since I've said that, I've noticed a couple of other artists, and in most cases women, who have a typical tendency, if they're not writing about their lovers, they're writing about the metaphors of their love and cities become that. But, in my case, it was the romance of the cities. I could give you a pretty good description of my relationship to Paris, which is that kind of lover that you don't have the confidence to approach, you worship from afar, you think, Oh, he would never be interested in me. I'm not this way with most cities, but I think because of the language, because of the history and the culture and being so different from Texas, it's like, Paris would never be interested in me. Sad, but true. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Judging from the gospel influences present on your new album, you're a believer. Was it gospel who "led the way," so to speak? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | I am, yes, and that's something that I've been taking on the challenges of trying to talk about in a mass media, since it's got so much luggage to it. But, fortunately, like the music, the faith came in a very organic way. I was pursuing an interest in gospel music, not because I'm a gospel singer and not because I was a believer, but I thought that the music itself was one of the deepest roots music. And so because it was one of the deepest roots music, having explored my own roots, I thought it really was natural then to explore what I both perceptually and then intuitively felt like is the deepest root of American style. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
"Peachfuzz" is a song full of heavy symbolism. It touches faith and homosexuality... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | "Peachfuzz" is a way of addressing, like I say, this whole load of baggage that comes with talking in a public way about this Christian fundamentalism and, of course, one of the glaring contradictions in fundamentalism is their tenet that homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of God. And the way I look at it is that beauty is in the beholder's eye. I don't think we would be given an appreciation for someone else and find them beautiful if there was not a truth in that beauty. I trust that, I really trust it. So I had to find a way to express that [in a way] that wasn't really polemic. Homosexuality is okay with Michelle Shocked, but I did have to find a way artistically to say beauty is in the beholder's eye. I thought it was like a stereotypical joke to talk about how narrow-minded fundamentalists were when they go, "In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." But I heard the preacher actually say that and I'm thinking to myself, This is a doctrine of hate. This is a doctrine of narrow-minded bigotry, and I've been brought up in that. I know what that leads to. That means that there are a lot of homosexuals in the black church, but they're all in the closet. It's accepted, but you have to live in denial. It's contradictions again and I asked the pastor, "What's your position on this?" And he said something that I couldn't really accept. It's almost like saying all my best friends are homosexuals. He didn't really say that. He said, "As a man, I believe that everyone has to find their own way, but as a minister of God, I'm obligated to preach what it says in the Bible – homosexuality is an abomination." And I couldn't accept that explanation, so I found a place where I said, you know what, it takes all kinds of people to make a world, it takes all colors to make a rainbow. Why would a church be any different? I have to believe that within that church, although they don't have the power to speak their truth, there's people who know that there's bigotry. It's got to change. 'Cause the Bible has been used to justify slavery. That's why it surprised me that in a black church, they would use the Bible to justify bigotry against homosexuality. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
I think part of the problem is that some writings no longer apply to modern life. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Well, that's why they're called fundamentalists, because they hold on to very conservative truths, tried and true, and they believe that change is, if at all, very, very slow to come about. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
That's another barrier: change is viewed as an evil. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | For the most part, yeah, it's viewed as progression is a lie, that the human spirit doesn't progress. But I think God is way too mysterious for us to be able to say, "Oh, this is what He means. See, it says right here." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
You are a self-proclaimed Army Brat. I've noticed that Army kids are very emotionally charged, like yourself and Jim Morrison, for example. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Interesting. There are a lot of them like that. You encounter a level of authoritarianism. The Army is only hierarchy. The generals dump on the captains; the captains dump on the corporals; the corporals dump on sergeants. And my stepfather, being a low-ranking non-officer, would come home and dump on my mother, dump on us. And it was almost as if we all served in the military. For example, he had to get up at five in the morning to polish his boots, iron his uniform, shave and he decided that we, too, had to get up at five in the morning. And you can imagine as an adolescent teenager (sic) when your body is just nothing but sleeping. I couldn't ever go to bed early at night – I'd stay up until one or two, I don't know, my cycle just worked that way – and then having to get up at five is like constant sleep deprivation, which kind of made me "out there," you know? That's just one small example, but it becomes this whole lifestyle and I think the fundamentalism was also a part of that – the rigueur of church, not for the liberation and the joy and the freedom, but for the performance and the perfunctory, achieving the demands being made of you. That was my experience of being raised a Mormon. It's like all week in the Army and then on Sunday in the Army (laughs). The only little nuance I would add to it is the culture in the military had a surprising effect on me, because it was one of the few places that the government was able to affect all of its immigration policies. It couldn't do it in private society. And so to grow up in Army schools, to live in Army housing, it was evenly, evenly divided racially – black, white, Latino. So I grew up in that environment. But that made it all the more of a shock when we moved back to East Texas and things were so segregated. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Are there still signs remaining from the period of segregation? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | "Whites Only" painted over...The school bus would pick us up and all the black kids were already in the bus, 'cause they lived in a different part of the hollow. And no one, even at that date – this was 1978, 79 – thought to question it 'cause it had been that way for generations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
It's still the same way? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | I feel the same way. You go to church and it's almost like people living in this denial that is so intense. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
In "Go in Peace," you say, "It finds you in the cold and the dark and the lonely and the filled with despair." Is it based on personal experience? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Yeah, and I think it's a really good poetic description of at least my experience. I wasn't looking for peace. When I was going to that church, I was looking for gospel music, little realizing that my heart was having a dialogue with God, even at that point, saying, "Help me; find me; I'm lost; I'm lonely." So, in a way, I was the last one to know. Otherwise, why would my feet make that walk down the altar unless my heart was already there. Peace finds you. That was my experience and I like the poetic twist on – you look for peace, peace finds you. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
What would you be doing if you weren't singing? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | I would be a political activist. I was a squatter at the time that the Campfire Tapes found me. And [Bart] has gone back and found some of my old diaries. Even as late as 1985, I had a good instinct about something that I think is going to really come to the forefront. It has started already in global politics, which is water privatisation. I wanted to go to port cities – that's been kind of the common thread of a lot of my travels and my romance about cities – and I wanted to take my experiences dealing with politics and human duplicity and say, "Okay, you need a clean water supply. These people have the water resources. How are you gonna get them?" and try to use my experiences to go build some of those bridges and also be aware of alternative technologies that could clean water. There have been some that have come forward. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Why is the element of water so important to you? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Because I wanted to live on a sailboat. That was my kind of vision for myself. I felt like on a sailboat, I wouldn't have a lot of personal possessions. It would keep me kinda' light, portable but it would also keep me tied to ports and making a contribution there. And that was as far a vision as I ever had for myself. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Aren't you a tad tempted to get into politics? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | It's only tempting because it's so challenging, but no. Politician, no; activist, yes. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Where is home for you now, New Orleans or L.A.? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | New Orleans is my home and Los Angeles is where my label is. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Why did you choose the name Shocked? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | It's my name on the passport, but that doesn't imply that I was born with it. It was the name I gave myself when I was arrested in the photo you see on the cover of Short Sharp Shocked. It was a political name, a nom de guerre. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
You were once a punk.... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHELLE: | Punk in spirit, punk in culture. But always the music was this very naive roots music. Three chords, man three chords, and it tells other people to play it. Punk is about saying, "C'mon, don't consume this music. Make this music." People would start bands, left, right, all over the place, girls, guys, everybody. It's folk music. And now I'd say, gospel is the most powerful music. That's why for ten years that's what I wrote and celebrated. December 2002
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