Article Library

WHATEVER has happened to Michelle Shocked? Gone is the runaway, the protest singer with fire in her belly, put there by Woody Guthrie.

Here she is, with the broadest of smiles on permanent hold, introducing the band. “Alison, this is Gary. Gary, Alison.”

Wearing a floral print dress and a straw hat, fiddle, banjo and accordion to the fore and with a little picket fence around the footlights, Shocked whooped and stomped.

Mid-way through you were left thinking, “barn dances were never like this.”

The smile only slipped when she sang “Graffiti Limbo,” about an incident of police brutality, dedicated to Rodney King and L.A. “where there’s no justice.”