Michelle Shocked was upfront at the outset of last night's first of a three-night residency at Joe's Pub.
Asking for a show of hands of those who hadn't seen her perform before, she told those who had to verify that she indeed likes to talk a lot during her shows--so newbies might neither be frustrated nor disappointed.
And talk a lot Shocked did during a splendid set that also featured plenty of new music and Shocked staples, a brief political interlude (seeking support to overturn the Supreme Court's affirmation of "corporate personhood" via constitutional amendment)--and a near-religious lesson in Facebook forgiveness.
Her allotted stage time running out, she nevertheless digressed to relate a deeply personal story deriving from a recent Facebook friending.
"You know how you get 'Friend' requests from people you never knew in the first place?" she asked. Well, she got one of her own out of the blue from someone she knew long ago--back in high school. His request presented a moral dilemma.
The Dallas-born Shocked, who had earlier related her stay in a mental hospital, made it clear that she was hardly the prototypical Texas high school girl. She didn't have big hair, she said, and classmates weren't sure if she was a boy or girl. Yet she did get asked to the senior prom and would have gone had the brother of her date not talked him into blowing off what he said was "a dog like me," Shock recalled.
And it was this person, the prom date's brother, who put in the friend request!
"What would Jesus do?" rhetorically asked Shocked, (whose Facebook "Basic Information" self-describes her as "your average anarchist skateboard punk rock born again Christian" along with "I'm the most sophisticated hillbilly you'll ever meet!"). "Confirm or ignore?"
"Ignore!" was the decidedly dominant crowd response.
"That was a long time ago!" Shocked smiled in the spirit of forgiveness. "I'm over it."
She put the question to the room again, and this time the shout-outs were pretty even.
"There's no consensus!" Shocked declared, but then left no doubt as to which action she eventually decided upon: "If you friend me on Facebook, theoretically you can go to [his page] and give him a piece of your mind!"
The crowd satisfied, Shocked had to drastically (but engagingly) speed up her promised closer "Come A Long Way" (after apologizing), then hurriedly brought out a surprise guest, her mandolinist father "Dollar Bill" Johnston and his fiddler girlfriend to join in on "Strawberry Jam."
Shocked returns to Joe's Pub on June 12 and June 19. Her father, incidentally, plays in a band called Dollars, Taxes.
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