Michelle Shocked protests her own Saratoga concert

Saratoga Springs

A bizarre incident unfolded outside the Putnam Den bar and music venue Thursday night when controversial singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked staged a musical protest against what was to have been her own concert inside.

Shocked, whose touring career was largely derailed three years ago after she made what were interpreted as antigay comments during a show in San Francisco, was supposed to play a 9 p.m. performance at Putnam Den as the second of a three-concert series at the venue, each dedicated to one of her first three albums.

Instead, according to witnesses and participants in the events, after a falling-out with her musical and business partner, Josh Chambers, she sat in the back of Chambers' Jeep, playing songs and refusing to get out. After police convinced her to exit the vehicle, witnesses said, Shocked put up a banner in the alley behind the club and began to play again. Putnam Den owner Tiffany Albert backed a truck into the alley and began blasting heavy metal music to drown out Shocked, Chambers said.

A photo posted late Thursday on Shocked's Twitter account shows a dozen fans in front of a hand-painted banner that says "Michelle Shocked Busking on Broadway." The accompanying tweet says, "I occupied my gig tonight in the alley outside Putnam Den."

Shocked answered her cellphone Friday afternoon but refused to comment, referring a reporter to her Twitter account. The feed says Shocked intends to "continue my Saratoga residency all weekend. 9pm, Broadway @ Gardner Lane." It further says she will play a previously scheduled concert next week at Newberry Music Hall in Saratoga next Saturday, July 23. The third planned Putnam Den show, scheduled for Thursday, has been canceled, according to the club's website.

Also evident on Twitter is Shocked's dispute with Chambers, a Washington County native and Skidmore College graduate who has worked in theater, music and journalism, mostly in Los Angeles and New York City, for more than 15 years. After being introduced earlier this year by a music promoter, Shocked and Chambers became artistic and business collaborators. According to Chambers, who was interviewed Friday and whose account is backed up by a joint interview he and Shocked gave The Daily Gazette last month prior to the first Putnam Den show, the pair were working to relaunch Shocked's performing career with a small upstate tour centered on Saratoga, followed by a trip to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Thursday's Putnam Den concert was to have been their third performance, after the earlier show at the Saratoga venue and one in Syracuse. Since early June the pair have been living in Chambers' parents' Greenwich home and rehearsing with area musicians.

According to Chambers, events that led to Thursday's scene started earlier in the week, when Shocked texted photos to Chambers that suggested she had gone through his parents' house and found a number of bottles of medications that had been prescribed to him as part of treatment for mental-health issues. One photo shows the bottles, another a handwritten list of medications from 2014, a third with several empty bottles of alcohol. Shocked later posted them on Twitter with the caption, "Addiction: A Triptych," and texted them to Chambers' mother.

When he returned to his parents' home that evening, Chambers said, Shocked was locked in her room. She later left on foot, he said, and refused to get in the car when he followed her.

After two days of no communication from Shocked, Chambers said, he and his fellow band members, drummer Sam Zucchini and bass player Luke Ruedy, decided Thursday evening to perform a free show of Chambers' music at Putnam Den and to refund presold tickets for what had been billed as an evening showcasing all of Shocked's second album, "Captain Swing," from 1989.

"The doors were about to open and the sound guy told me, 'I just ran into Michelle. She said she's going to have a mic check in the alley in five minutes,' " Chambers said. He said he went outside and found her sitting in his Jeep, playing music.

Michael Eck, a local musician who was scheduled to play the July 21 concert with Shocked and who also was the contractor hired to assemble other band members for her, said he saw Shocked in Chambers' Jeep when he arrived to watch Thursday's concert. Eck said he got a mandolin from his car, at her request, and played a few songs with Shocked but went inside when she refused to get out of the vehicle and police were called.

"It was a bizarre scene," said Eck. "Since Day One she has been a provocative artist, and that reputation always precedes her. ... She's a phenomenal musician, and in the brief time I worked with her I became even more impressed." However, he said, as events progressed Thursday night, "I became very uncomfortable with what was going on."

Chambers previously had strongly defended Shocked against charges of antigay bias, arguing in a long open letter on social media, addressed to the arts community, that her 2013 San Francisco comments were taken out of context and actually were social satire. He said Friday he was saddened by the apparent end of their professional and artistic relationship. (Chambers, who is married, said he and Shocked have never been romantically or sexually involved.)

"I championed her and celebrated her eccentricities," he said, "but when they started to land in such a way that was personal and abusive — when she was verbally abusive to my mother, who had given her a place to live and had been feeding her for more than a month — it crossed way over the line."

The Chambers-Shocked war escalated Friday on Twitter, with Shocked seeming to refer to him as a drug addict and Chambers responding with insults and, in apparent reference to what he see as Shocked's hypocrisy, photos showing her support for socialist politician Bernie Sanders juxtaposed with an ATM receipt listing a bank balance of more than $81,000. By midafternoon, Chambers deactivated his Twitter account. He said he felt Shocked was baiting him, adding, "I just can't respond in a civil manner."

Howard Glassman, who books the concerts at Newberry Music Hall, said he has not been told to cancel Shocked's July 23 show.

"It's still on as of now," he said Friday afternoon, "but as far as I know, she doesn't have a band. Maybe she's going to play solo. ... I've seen a lot of crazy (stuff) in my time in the music business, and this ranks right up there."

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