Kenyon Hall Presents
Michelle Shocked
feat. Cintra Wilson
Saturday, March 21st 2026
Doors: 7:00pm / Show: 7:30pm
Seated
$30 General
Bootleg This! Truth vs Reality v2.0
For over 20 years, acclaimed picker-poet Michelle Shocked has been generating compelling lyrics and mnemonic melodies.
In the ’80′s, she was thrust into an inadvertent recording career when a bootleg tape was released in England. In the ensuing bidding war following the phenomena of The Texas Campfire Tapes, Mercury Records signed her and she produced a trilogy of Grammy-nominated albums over the next five years, launched by her signature song, “Anchorage.”
Michelle ultimately fought and won her master recording and publishing rights, which caused her to be Blacklisted from performing and releasing new music for 5 years.
As she worked to rebuild her recording and performance career in 2013, according to the Internet, Michelle was both ‘The World’s Greatest Homophobe’™ … and a closet lesbian.
But in reality, she was the target of a relentless, widespread defamation campaign, and this story of her 13-year struggle to survive is a fascinating tale of creative resilience that you’ll be interested to hear and share with anyone you know or meet who gets caught in this spider’s web of private surveillance and piracy-for-profit.
Michelle wants you to hear her story; one that has been told, so far, as profitable clickbait by digital tabloid media. Just wait until you hear how her 2013 cancellation was staged.
Onstage, I had boldly titled my performance “Truth Vs Reality.” But when my bootlegged epic exploit went viral, it became “The Bird Heard ‘Round The Word.” And in this life-or-death fight for artists’ rights … the first round’s just the warning shot.
CINTRA WILSON is a writer and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work deals with the economic and cultural murder of the middle class in an absurdist voice. Former NYT fashion critic, New York Review of Books. Cultural X-Ray. Author of "A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined As A Grotesque, Crippling Disease"
