Michelle Shocked, at the Kucinich for President fund-raiser

The Arkansas Traveler is coming to help the New Hampshire traveler. Dennis Kucinich is likely to be crisscrossing the Granite State, searching for a big upset in the upcoming primary, when Michelle Shocked comes to Kucinich's home city to scare up some financial support for her favorite populist candidate. Shocked will be at the Beachland for a Kucinich fund-raiser on Sunday, with a $60 donation getting you a front-row seat and the chance to party with Shocked at a pre-show reception. For $20, you get to stand as Shocked plays the hybrid folk-blues-country-gospel tunes she learned while being raised in the music-rich East Texas piney woods.

It's appropriate that a fund-raiser for Kucinich, of Croatian decent, should be in a venue that was once a Croatian workingman's hall. And while it also seems appropriate for Shocked, an outspoken artist, to host such a soirée for the Democratic Party's most outspoken candidate, it must be noted that Shocked's criminal record includes an arrest at the 1984 Democratic Convention, an incident that prompted her strict Mormon mother to have Michelle committed to a mental hospital. A photograph of Shocked being subdued by police during the arrest graces the cover of her 1988 album Short Sharp Shocked.