Michelle Shocked's Americana

IT'S BEEN more than five years since Michelle Shocked became an international star by sitting around a Texas campfire and singing her songs into a stranger's walkman that needed fresh batteries. With the release of her third studio album, Arkansas Traveler, she's now a veteran of major labels, of corporations, bureaucracy, and all the bullshit that she never dealt with when she was a homeless person squatting in a condemned San Francisco building.