Photo courtesy of Melissa Etheridge/Concord Music Group
Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Etheridge
In 1989, Melissa Etheridge released her sophomore bow Brave and Crazy. In the subsequent decades, she’s certainly lived up to the first half of that album title, with the latter part of it reserved for her extreme NFL fandom.
Etheridge’s life journey has found her coming out as gay in the early ‘90s, broken relationships and a bout with breast cancer while forging a commercially successful and critically acclaimed career. The past five years have been creatively fruitful, and this rollercoaster ride of a life needed a global pandemic to have the Kansas native hit the pause button and assess the whole megillah.
Part of that artistic wave included a docu-series (last year’s “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken”) and a 2022 Broadway one-woman show (My Window-A Journey Through Life). For Etheridge, the latter was an opportunity for serious self-reflection, and a chance to grieve while still managing to express appreciation for the life she’s lived.
“The pandemic was actually the inspiration [for the one-woman show],” she said. “A lot happened. I lost my son to an opioid overdose, and I was starting to feel a lot of things. I’m at the halfway point of my life really. I gathered a lot of gratitude and appreciation for this life, what I’ve done so far and what I’d like to do and how much love is in my marriage and family. Entertaining-wise, I wanted to create something that would lift people up. And that every night I could go in and say, ‘I’m OK, I’m strong, I’m satisfied. I don’t have guilt or shame about any of this. This is just the story of how I’m here now.’ It was really very healing for me and my wife. We worked on it together. It was just a really great experience and one that I’m glad I went through.”
Music is a Refuge
Music has always been a refuge for Etheridge and playing live is a crucial component of the equation. Having hit the road last year with old friends The Indigo Girls for last year’s “Yes We Are” co-headlining tour, this year is seeing an encore. And while both acts have been best buddies dating back to the late ‘80s (… “we’ve known each other since we were all babies with our first albums,” Etheridge said), 2024 was the first time schedules lined up for this bill. Etheridge raved unabashedly when asked about the experience.
“We just never toured together,” she said. “We started last year and it’s just so great. It’s such a great night of music. They sound so great and so nice. I’m very excited and certainly in top form. What’s great is we’re doing all our hit songs for them and other stuff. It’s just an incredible night of music. And best of all, we collaborate with each other on stage at least once a night. People get that, but I’m not telling you what songs we’re doing together.”
While Etheridge has 16 studio albums under her belt, she’s nonplussed when asked about how she navigates exploring such a deep canon.
“I hope that I’m known for a different show every night because I do my hit songs every night, which I’m very grateful for,” Etheridge explained. “And then, depending on the show, whether I’m closing that night or if we’re inside or outside, I create the rest of my set list around that. Right now, I have a moving set list of about 150 songs that my band knows. If I’m in some place like Chicago, which may have seen me every year, I’m going to throw in that unusual song they know that they might enjoy.”
Brand New Album
The last time Etheridge hit the studio was for 2021’s One Way Out, a 2013 collection of songs she wrote earlier in her career that she felt she couldn’t release at the time they were written. Completed during pandemic downtime to fulfill a contractual obligation to BMG, she’s finally ready to drop a collection of new material with the working title of Rise.
“I can finally let the world know that I’ve recorded a brand-new album of all-new material I recorded this past March that will be released next March,” she excitedly shared. “We don’t have a date, but we have a month and a record company—Sun Records. I’m really excited. They are excited about it and are ready to get behind it. I think it’s some of the best songs and music I have ever made—or at least in a long time. I’m very happy about it and I think the fans will really dig it.”
In the meantime, Etheridge is riding this string of dates with the Indigo Girls for the next few months, when she gets to “…come home around November and watch football.” While she’s still licking her wounds over the 40-22 Super Bowl LIX drubbing her beloved Kansas City Chiefs suffered at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles, hope springs anew for her in the upcoming season.
“Things did not go the way I expected them to and it was really rough,” Etheridge admitted. “My children were looking at my wife saying, ‘Is mama going to be OK?’ I’m just obnoxious in my neighborhood because every time we go to the Super Bowl, I put up three flags. The minute it was over, I just walked out, took the flags down and didn’t mention it again and we’re not talking about this.”
She added, “But I’m kind of looking forward to a little Patrick Mahomes revenge tour and seeing what they’re going to do this year. It’s been hard for me to kind of get the feeling up for them. My wife has helped me and she’s a Green Bay Packers fan and she said, ‘You can do it.’ So, I’m starting to get behind it.”
Melissa Etheridge performs Tuesday, Aug. 19 at BMO Harris Pavilion at the Henry Maier Festival Grounds.
