Over the course of Michelle Shocked’s 23-year career — and it’s hard to believe she has now been making records for nearly a quarter-century — she's never been afraid to step outside of her musical comfort zone.

Raised on folk music in East Texas, Shocked has, over the years, also plunged headfirst into such styles and traditions as jump-blues, Appalachian fiddle tunes, Mexican music, Disney songs, black-face minstrelsy, Western swing and gospel.

Most of her fans recall that her 1986 debut, “Short Sharp Shocked,” was fueled by some raucous roots workouts, prodded by Pete Anderson, the Detroit-native guitarist/producer who was Dwight Yoakam’s right-hand man for many years. On “Short Sharp Shocked,” Anderson fired off some muscular rocking-blues runs.

Well, Shocked seems to have again hooked up with a guitarist/producer who has those instincts. Because on her latest disc, “Soul of My Soul,” some of the strongest tracks are anchored by the brass-knuckled, rocking-blues riffs of producer-guitarist Devin Powers. In fact, Shocked was so taken by Powers’ musical instincts that she co-wrote some of the tunes with him.

“This whole thing of collaborating with the producer, in terms of writing songs, is definitely a first for me,” says Shocked, who, in the mid-‘80s, was initially so opposed to doing a “produced” record (“Short Sharp Shocked’) instead of an acoustic-folk disc that she read a prepared statement to a Rolling Stone writer, over the phone, stating that she took a dim view of it and that the whole idea was foisted on her by her record company.

So, it seems she has, to borrow from one of her more popular songs, “come a long way,” indeed.

“As I’ve gotten older, what I’ve learned about producers — at least the good ones — is that they usually can get a pretty good sense of ‘how it should be,’ so now I’m more inclined to just let ‘em go with it,” says Shocked, who comes to The Ark on Sunday.

“And Devin is just very talented — I love what he did with the songs on this record, and I love what he contributed to the songs he wrote with me.”

The album has a theme, says Shocked: that of being able to let go of old wounds and “jettison my anger, without losing the ability to feel strong feelings” — like love, for example. Shocked has been in love for a few years now, with visual artist David Willardson, who painted the portrait of Shocked that adorns the cover of “Soul of My Soul.”

Shocked became a born-again Christian in the ‘90s, but if there’s such a thing as a “typical” born-again Christian, Shocked ain’t it. Politically, she is a fiery liberal, and has never been shy about bringing the verbal hammer down on the right wing — and especially on former President George Bush and his administration.

But, through prayer and meditation, she says, “ever since I stopped drinking [in 2002], I’ve been able to let go a lot of the old anger.” Part of that anger was planted as a child, when, first, her parents divorced, and then she was raised by a strict, fundamentalist-Mormon single mother. When Shocked was a teenager, she ran away from home, and her mother responded by having her committed to a mental institution, where she was forced to undergo shock treatments — which inspired her to change her name. (Her birth name is Michelle Johnston.)

Before separating in 2003, Shocked had been married to an alcoholic, she says, “for many years, and it was a very dysfunctional relationship. I’m aware that I’m neurotic, and I had some rage that was fueled by insecurity and self-pity, and I was very co-dependent. So, to cope with his drinking, I drank.”

But she says her faith, and her prayer, has been “totally transforming. I know there is a higher power, and a spirit inside of me that is running the show, because without that, I am still the same knucklehead I used to be.”

Shocked also attributes her current, comparative serenity to the power of the love she says she has experienced with Willardson. In fact, the most striking and revealing line in the first song on the disc, “Love’s Song” is “Love’s song lingers, on the lips of other singers.”

Watch the video for “Love’s Song”:

That line is Shocked confessing that she’s never really written love songs over the years. “I’ve been much more likely to write about cities,” she jokes, referring to her songs that have name-checked New York; Amsterdam; Los Angeles; Gladewater, Texas — and, of course, Anchorage, Alaska (in her breakout 1986 hit, the poignant and pensive “Anchorage.”)

Watch the video for "Anchorage":

But Shocked doesn’t go all gooey on us. Framing those words on “Love’s Song” are Powers’ bristling, sinewy riffs, which also provide grit, crunch, and some occasional snarl to tracks like the hard-rocking “Giant Killer,” the suggestive “Paperboy,” and the otherwise tender “Heart to Heart.”

And Shocked still engages in a bit of genre-hopping, serving up some simmering Memphis soul on “Liquid Prayer,” and some infectious Latin polyrhythms on “Waterproof.”

But no Michelle Shocked story or interview would be complete without talking a little politics. One song, “Other People,” which she wrote in ’08, before Barack Obama was elected, at first sounds like a weary song to an ex-lover who has let her down.

But it’s really Shocked singing about what she believes were “the ugly and war-mongering tendencies of ‘Bush’s America.’….I used to rant about Bush and the Right……But now, in this song, I’m saying, ‘I love you, America, but I think we should see other people.’

And even though the presidency has since passed from Bush to Obama, Shocked is still passionate in her opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is disappointed that Obama is, in her estimation, “a corporate centrist, which is really the only way you can get elected president in this country anymore — unless, of course, you’re a conservative Republican.

“So, ‘Other People’ is really a love song to my country, but it’s also about a dysfunctional relationship — and I know one when I see one. Let’s just say that me and my country are not getting along right now.”

Then there’s the rousing, foursquare folk-rocker with the admirably alliterative but unfortunately unwieldly title: “The Ballad of the Battle of the Ballot and the Bullet.” It was also written while Bush was still president. “So, I know some people might hear this song, and come up with what I think would be a dumbed-down reponse, like, ‘Michelle, that train has already left the station.’ But I’m trying to address the bigger picture there,” says Shocked. “I know a lot of people who were anti-globalization activists, but once we went to war in Iraq, they shifted their focus and became more involved in the anti-war movement.

“So what I wanted to convey in that song is the battle that we must still wage against globalization — because, 80 percent of the people on the planet do not live in freedom.” (Many who oppose economic globalization — the increasing economic inter-connections between nations — believe that it threatens democracy in the Third World by eating away at a poor nation’s ability to manage its economic and social affairs in ways that are in the best interests of its people.)

“These people can’t speak out without fear or some sort of physical reprisal, and they live under the screws of some sort of political oppression,” says Shocked emphatically. “That’s wrong, and we have to keep up the political fight on behalf of those who don’t enjoy basic, fundamental freedoms.”

Kevin Ransom is a free lance writer and critic who covers music for AnnArbor.com, and who first interviewed Michelle Shocked in 1995. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.

PREVIEW
Michelle Shocked
Who: Outspoken, politically active singer-songwriter.
What: Generally, Shocked’s shows cover the roots-music waterfront, alternately drawing on folk, swing, roots-rock, blues, gospel, bluegrass, country and Mexican-music styles.
When: Sunday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Ark, 316 S. Main St., Ann Arbor.
How much: $25.
Details: 734-761-1451 or The Ark web site.