Mercury
1991
Arkansas Traveler
About This Album
One may feel a certain pity for Mercury Records when it took delivery of Michelle Shocked's third album for the label, Arkansas Traveler. Mercury had signed the feisty country-folk singer/songwriter in the wake of the hoopla surrounding her first album, The Texas Campfire Tapes, an impromptu collection recorded on a cassette player at the 1986 Kerrville Folk Festival. Shocked eschewed a hefty advance in favor of greater artistic control and then delivered the well-received Short Sharp Shocked (1988), followed by Captain Swing (1989), something of a swing-band genre exercise. Both albums reached the Top 100 in Billboard and spent six-plus months in the charts. At first, Arkansas Traveler must have sounded like a breakthrough effort; it was certainly ambitious. Shocked was adapting old folk and country material such as "Soldier's Joy," "Frankie & Johnny," and "Cotton Eyed Joe" with new arrangements and lyrics, and she was conducting sessions around the world with a host of impressive partners. In Australia, she collaborated with Paul Kelly's backup band, the Messengers, on "Weaving Way," and she went to Ireland to record "Over the Waterfall" with the Hothouse Flowers.
Track List (try tracks 7,9,11,13 and 14)

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