Michelle Shocked - The Texas Campfire Tapes (1986)

"The Texas Campfire Tapes" is the first album by American singer and songwriter Michelle Shocked. It was originally a bootleg recording made on a Sony Walkman of an impromptu set performed by Shocked around the eponymous campfire and was released without her permission. It was then released by Mercury Records in 1986.

This disc contains recordings of Michelle Shocked during a serendipitous meeting between English music enthusiast and wannabe record label exec Pete Lawrence and Shocked. The story goes that they were both attending the 1986 Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas when, during a walk around the campgrounds, Lawrence heard Shocked playing and asked if she would sing some of her songs for him. He produced a Sony Walkman cassette recorder and off they went. Shocked apparently thought nothing more of it until she received word that her new album had charted in England. She made the most of the opportunity and performed her very first professional gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The album's lo-to-no fidelity actually works in favor of overall ambience as it creates a palpably organic backdrop for Shocked's uniformly enchanting tales. Her honestly executed material provides stripped-down authenticity that perfectly matches the singer/songwriter's original voice. The ultimately informal performance allows Shocked to effortlessly segue songs together into mini-medleys and give brief spoken explanations of tracks such as "The Incomplete Image"  which seems to be more of a description of the fragmented work than an arbitrary title. Musically, Shocked seems to deeply draw upon the ramblin' imagery of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie on tracks such as "Down on Thomas Street" or her Bay Area ode "Fogtown."

Track listing

01.  5 A.M. in Amsterdam  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:10 

02.  The Secret Admirer  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:29 

03.  The Incomplete Image  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:30 

04.  Who Cares?  (Michelle Shocked)  - 3:36 

05.  Down on Thomas St.  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:20 

06.  Fogtown  (Michelle Shocked)  - 3:33 

07.  Steppin' Out  (Michelle Shocked)  - 1:50 

08.  The Hep Cat  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:35 

09.  Necktie  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:20 

10.  (Don't You Mess Around With) My Little Sister  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:03 

11.  The Ballad of Patch Eye and Meg  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:42 

12.  The Secret to a Long Life (Is Knowing When It's Time to Go)  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:21 

13.  The Chain Smoker  (Michelle Shocked)  - 2:49 

14.  Stranded in a Limousine  (Paul Simon)  - 1:41 

15.  Goodnight Irene  (Leadbelly / John A. Lomax)  - 2:25 

Released:  1986

Recorded:  live at the Kerrville Folk Festival, Texas May 1986

Label:  Cooking Vinyl

Genre:  Alternative Pop, Folk Rock

Length:  30:24

Engineer:  Howie Weinburg, Tony Engle

Producer:  Pete Lawrence