musicOMH.com: Deep Natural is less fiddly and more bluesy, grassy, folksy, country, rocksy. It's more everywhere else than...
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.

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"Take your passion, take your idealism. Maybe rock 'n' roll can't change the world, but go for it."
- The Gospel according to Michelle Shocked

musicOMH.com: You have a degree in Oral Interpretation of Literature.
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. 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.

musicOMH.com: What do you think of the machine that manufactures all the Britneys and Christinas?
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?

musicOMH.com: But there are some rebel chicks working on creating an alternative.
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.

musicOMH.com: You're very outspoken on social issues. What do you think of artists like Bono going to the level of action?
Michelle: I can only imagine the cynicism, that people look at it as self-promotion, the arrogance the self-grandeur, the ineffectiveness. But I don't feel that way. I'm a true believer. I'm like, you go! Take your passion, take your idealism. Maybe rock 'n' roll can't change the world, but go for it. And of all the self-serving motivations that I see out there in music, I give him the credibility of being the least self-serving.

musicOMH.com: "I write about cities the way some people write about lovers." Did you have a love affair with each city you lived in?
Michelle: 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.

"You look for peace, peace finds you."
- Michelle Shocked

musicOMH.com: Judging from the gospel influences present on your new album, you're a believer. Was it gospel who "led the way"?
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.

musicOMH.com: You are a self-proclaimed Army Brat. I've noticed that Army kids are very emotionally charged, like yourself and Jim Morrison, for example.
Michelle: Interesting. There are a lot of them like that. You encounter a level of authoritarianism. The Army is only hierarchy. 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. 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).

musicOMH.com: 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?
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 realising 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...you look for peace, peace finds you.

musicOMH.com: What would you be doing if you weren't singing?
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.

musicOMH.com: Aren't you tempted to get into politics?
Michelle: It's only tempting because it's so challenging, but no. Politician, no; activist, yes.

musicOMH.com: Where is home for you now, New Orleans or L.A.?
Michelle: New Orleans is my home and Los Angeles is where my label is.

musicOMH.com: Why did you choose the name Shocked?
Michelle: 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.

musicOMH.com: You were once a punk....
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.

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