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By Lookout Staff

July 30 – Roots-music singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked brings her "Mighty Sound" to the Pier’s free Twilight Dance Series Concert Thursday night, along with the first ever performance in Los Angeles by Mike Farris.

A highly touted Texan singer-songwriter, Shocked has been hailed as one of the true originators of what is now commonly referred to as “Americana” music.

An artist known for her iconoclastic, restless and adventurous creative spirit, Shocked burst onto the scene two decades ago and built a loyal following with a revolutionary folk blues sound that was less about politics than it was a personal declaration of independence.

In the beginning, Shocked writes, “I was moved by the power of rock ’n’ roll. And if you follow the trail from rock ’n’ roll, it always leads you back to the blues, sweet soul music and finally to the churches and gospel music.”

Shocked’s career took off after the highly-touted release of a bootleg recording made around a Kerrville Folk Festival campfire on a Sony Walkman. Released in England as “The Texas Campfire Tapes” without Shocked’s authority, the recording led to a contract with Mercury Records.

In 1988, Rolling Stone wrote, “With an ear to the ground and a thumb to the wind, she has taken the oral-tradition torch handed down by troubadours like Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan and recast its male vocabulary in a post feminist light that erases sexual dividing lines.”

Shocked -- who launched her own Mighty Sound label in 2001 -- will release "Soul to My Soul," a collection of all new songs, this fall. The new album is the follow-up to her 2007 live gospel set "ToHeavenURide," recorded at the Telluride Festival.

Joining Shocked in a series of engagements that include Bonnaroo, Strawberry Music Festival, Hardly Strictly in Golden Gate Park and Austin City Limits will be Mike Farris, whose roots are also in Americana.

Farris’ journey brings him from lead singer in the Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies to his tent-revival of an album "Salvation in Lights."

Recorded at the same Nashville house-studio where White Stripes/Raconteurs leader Jack White recorded Loretta Lynn's award-winning Van Lear Rose album, "Salvation in Lights" uses the musical language of spirituals, timeless stories of struggle, some of which are centuries-old slave spirituals, and soul to tell a uniquely redemptive story.