Michelle Shocked Cancellations [updates; 14 confirmed; statement from Telluride]

Update, April 1: Shocked on Piers Morgan tonight? (Yep - video here.)

(Thanks for the links,  NBC, Daily Beast, E! Online, NZHerald, and A.V. Club - and to Janis Freaking Ian for commenting!)
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Original post and updates follow:

Late update: All scheduled shows (per Shocked's website) through the month of June are NOW CANCELLED. (The latest was the Harmony Bar in Madiso, WI.) Worth noting that she has only THREE TWO confirmed gigs scheduled for the entire rest of the year.

Wednesday morning (U.S. Tuesday afternoon) update: Lots more happening. Looks like Telluride is cancelled. Michelle has scheduled a radio interview for Thursday morning (U.S.).

Page II: With several MS tweets.

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American singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked has just shocked and lost roughly 99.99% of her fans:

Michelle Shocked, known for living up to her surname, cleared out San Francisco club Yoshi’s last night, and shut down the venue, after she went on an anti-gay tirade, which she summed up by saying, ”You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.’”

Very, very depressing. (Shocked was one of my influences when I was still learning the ropes of songwriting back in the 1980s. "Memories of East Texas" and "Anchored Down in Anchorage" were two of my favorites.)

I'm going to list any cancellations of Shocked's shows I hear about here. First, here's her own tour schedule as of right now. (I've saved a screen grab of it, so we can compare if anything is deleted.)

In chronological order:

• Cancelled:

McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, CA, is getting pummelled by fans on their FaceBook page about this Saturday's show. No cancellation announcement yet that I've found. 

Update 3:30 PM Sydney (9:30 PM U.S. PDT): Cancelled. Thank you commenter.

• Cancelled: March 28, Santa Cruz, CA, Moe's Alley (thank you for the comment)

• Cancelled: March 29, Novato, CA, Hopmonk Tavern

• Cancelled: April 24, Winters, CA, Palm's Playhouse

• Cancelled: April 25, Portland, OR, Alberta Rose Theater

• Cancelled: April 26, Seattle, WA, Meander's Kitchen

• Possibly Cancelled: April 27, Eugene, OR, Cozmic. A friend in the radio business in Eugene told me this just a bit ago, I'll update when I have more; for now, Shocked's schedule shows the show - Cozmic's does not. Update: a tweet from Cozmic.

• Cancelled: May 3, Boulder, CO-based radio show eTown

• Cancelled: May 4, Madison, WI, Harmony Bar. My sister in Madison called the Harmony. Oy:

I just got off the phone with Harmony. He sounded a little stressed. They must have had a lot of calls. "The Show's Been Canceled." Even before I asked!

• Cancelled: May 5, Evanston, IL (fixed), Evanston Space. Thank you to Space for the comment below: "After looking into last night's incident in SF, we have cancelled our May 5 show with Michelle Shocked. Refunds given at point of purchase." Tweet here.

• Cancelled (Wednesday AU Update): June 23, Telluride, CO, Telluride Blugrass Festival. Hey Reverb says that Telluride has confirmed they have cancelled. It looks like this was a very hard decision for Telluride, as they have had whatthey call a 20-year relationship with Michelle, and they talk about the phone call with her:

Planet Bluegrass has told us that Michelle Shocked (Sister Shocked & The Campbell Brothers) has been replaced by Drepung Monks on the Telluride Bluegrass lineup. According to festival organizers, Shocked said on the phone “God loves everyone” and will do a lengthy radio interview this within the next few days to talk about the Sunday show in San Francisco.

Interesting. I've reached out to Telluride for a comment. They've responded:

Hi Thom- Thanks for reaching out to us. Yes, we have replaced Michelle Shocked's appearance at our Telluride Bluegrass Festival lineup with The Drepung Monks. They will be opening the 40th anniversary festival with a special meditation on love & peace open to all Festivarians as they begin the creation of a large mandala sand painting. Their powerful presence will be woven throughout all 4 days of the festival's tapestry culminating in a profound main stage set on Sunday morning (which replaces Michelle Shocked's previously scheduled performance).

We've known Michelle for 20 years and she has always been open and loving - and a thoroughly unique and inspiring artist. So we were very saddened and concerned by the reports from Sunday's show.

Best, Brian

• Cancelled: October 11, London, UK, King's Place Folk Union (via this message; this was listed as "tentative")

• Cancelled: October 13, Cork, Ireland, Triskel Arts Center

• Cancelled (14th confirmed cancellation):

    Late response from Germany (8 PM Tuesday, Sydney): I just got a response to an email to the Burg Herzberg Festival in Germany, where MS's website says she's performing on July 19. From Gunther:

Thanks for the e-mail!

Due to the fact of nine hours difference we expect some words from Michelle, because this has come to a complete surprise to us. Anyway, if it is like it seems right now, we will cancel the show within the next 24 hours.

MAKE LOVE WORK,

Gunther

   I'm guessing that's a "No."

   Update, Thursday, 2 PM, AU: From the comments, Burg Herzberg now has this on their website:

We had to cancel Michelle Shocked. During a concert the last days in San Francisco she said things like: "When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilisation" and "You are going to leave here and tell people, 'Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots.'" Personally as well as the managers of a festival with the motto "Art of Peace" we can not deal with such crap.

Not exact quotes, but when it comes to parsing parsley, I ain't persnickety.

• Radio Interview: Michele is scheduled to do a radio interview on Thursday morning. Here's the Twitter exchange.

• Michelle has responded to a tweet:

@litthom @amyjomartin #TeamRenegades! #shortsharpshocked#truthvsreality Way to go! Quite an awesome feat for just one woman's opinion!
— Michelle Shocked (@MShocked) March 19, 2013

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Michele Shocked on FaceBook and on Twitter. (Standard request that if you leave her a comment, please be more respectful than she was.)

Petition: From the comments: Change.org has started a petition to get the rest of her shows cancelled.

Michelle Shocked in 2008 (h/t):

Q: Early on in your career, you were incorrectly assumed to be a lesbian. You once said that you were an honorary lesbian. Now that you’ve been married, divorced and found religion, why do you think many who claim to be Christians are so openly hateful toward homosexuals?

MS: In his time, Jesus was hanging out with the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, all the people that proper society had banished or had determined were underclass. Today, it is easy for me to imagine that Jesus would hang around those who have been scorned, abandoned and neglected. We live in a homophobic society. But homosexuals are a group of folks who Jesus would recognize. Jesus even says that he didn’t come here to be righteous. He came here for those who needed salvation.

Wo. Yoshi's cut her mic. And banned her for life. Good for them.

Janis Ian, from the comments (!):

Well, that's too bad. As a performer with 45 years of shows behind me, I've had walk-outs when I sang about interracial couples, and when I sang about AIDS, and walkouts more recently when I sang about gay marriage. I am the first to argue that I have a right to sing and speak about those things on stage, just as the audience has the right to walk out, object to the management, and ask for their money back if they feel deceived.

Our country is in large part founded on the concept of free speech - the right to speak your mind politically and socially. But there is a huge difference between "Free speech" and "Hate speech." It is sad when a talented person chooses to use that talent in the service of their own misplaced rage, and their disappointment in their own life. I often wonder if people like this die and meet God, who will smack them upside the head and say "Did I really LOOK like I needed your help?!"

And isn't it odd to see someone who was so woman-identified turn a 360 degree like this? Then again, "Hell hath no fury..."

Janis Ian

I know this post is already very long, but I have to add a comment that just came in from British recording artist Pete Lawrence:

For better or worse, I'm the guy who brought Shocked to wider attention through a recording I made at Kerrville Folk Festival in 86 - the meeting came about around the dying embers of a campfire shortly after encountering her for the first time, after walking up and asking if I could make a recording as part of my travelogue tape as I wended my way open-eyed around the States for the first time. A very intimate performance followed for an audience of one, a magical moment in my life.

That session subsequently became known as the infamous 'Texas Campfire Tapes' which was then released on the small indie label I had just started, Cooking Vinyl.

I knew from the first moment that there was a dark side to her, but still made the decision to move forward and contact her again as the recording was very special. She gave her unqualified support to the project (though later re-writing history by claiming it was a bootleg!) She soon moved to the UK, determined to give the singer / songwriter thing her best shot, touring it here, there and everywhere around Europe.

I quickly learned that Michelle was very calculating and also did things her own way, to the extent that she fell out with pretty much everyone she ever worked with, including her first manager, with whom she was locked in a five year legal battle with after deciding not to pay him any commission for the work he did in securing her deals with Polygram and Polygram Music and much more. Then she sued her record company by citing the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

There are many things I could say, especially about her re-writing the history around her Cooking Vinyl years, the supposed 'bootleg' we were meant to have released "without her knowledge" that she endorsed at the time, and years later, her 'bootlegging' a third generation copy of my campfire cassette recording I sent her for reference purposes, only to find she then released it on her label with not even a mention of my involvement, let alone an attempt to negotiate any sort of deal with me for the release, although she was happy enough to use my photo on the cover.

Enough for now. This really hurts to even think about all this stuff once more alongside the grief that she's causing so many people once again. This latest twist does not surprise me at all, much as I feel pity for this lost soul too. All very sad.

Pete Lawrence

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