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    A Conversation with Melissa Etheridge

    I was probably ten or eleven years old when I first started listening to Top 40 radio on a regular basis; the little cassette player in my bedroom was permanently tuned to Winnipeg’s Q94FM – a station to which I’d remain faithful until I moved away to go to college. Kids my age didn’t have much disposable income to drop on new albums or singles, so radio was really the only way most of us found out about new music. Although streaming services and digital downloads are a godsend for audiophiles nowadays, there’s a part of me that really misses the anticipation of waiting to hear your favorite new song hit the air – and the feeling of pure euphoria when the first few notes finally registered in your ear.

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    I can’t say my musical tastes were overly refined at that early age. It was the spring of 1988, and the FM waves were frothing with pop confection. It was fun, pleasant, inconsequential – and I ate most of it up obediently. But even I could recognize when a song broke the mold. One afternoon, Q94 played a new single that was so clearly different from its usual rotation of synth-and-drum machine happiness. There was this voice – pungent, fierce, honest…and unmistakably soulful. Someone with a story to tell. And then there was the chorus:

    “Some-bod-y bring me some wat-er! Can’t you see I’m burning ali-iiive?!”

    And that’s when I heard Melissa Etheridge for the very first time. Many of those artists who were radio darlings in 1988 have come and gone, but Etheridge has managed to persist – and thrive – for three decades. And while much has changed in the industry since she surfaced with her debut album, her approach to songwriting and performing – authentic, revelatory, and solicitous of the heart – has remained virtually the same. “There’s been a lot of change (in the industry) – and that’s good,” she reflects. “I’m one to think that change is good. It’s been very difficult because the complete infrastructure of the whole music business has changed with it all becoming digital – and then, you know, the internet. Making records and actually physically producing records, and printing records and selling them to the public…myself don’t need the middle person anymore. I can make music, I can release it to my fans online and there you go! It forces the record companies to think differently and change – and it actually puts the power in the hands of the artist. We have more power now because we are truly the ones making the art…and the only money that’s really being made now is in live performance. And if you can deliver that – if you can be an artist that goes out and does it live, you can still make a living. So those are the changes, but I feel very empowered by them.”

    A week ago, she released “Pulse” – a song written and recorded in tribute to the forty-nine individuals who were killed (and an additional fifty-three who were injured) on June 12 in a violent mass shooting at a gay nightclub of the same name in Orlando, Florida. That voice – still pungent, fierce, honest…and soulful, is now comforting a nation deeply wounded by an unthinkable tragedy. An unfaltering advocate for the LGBTQ community, gender equality, and the environment, Etheridge’s compassion for the human condition has been an important – if not the – key to connecting her to generations of listeners.

    Etheridge will certainly share “Pulse” among the many hits and essential tracks from her esteemed career with her audience this Saturday when she joins the Columbus Symphony Orchestra on stage as part of CSO’s Picnic with the Pops series. We chatted while she was on a brief break from her current tour, which will take her through much of the Midwest and eastern seaboard this summer. “This is the only symphony gig I’m doing the whole year,” she explains, “so it’s a pretty unique and special gig. And Columbus has always been a special place for me – a good place. So I hope – even if you’ve seen me before, you won’t have ever seen me like this.”

    Preparing her roots rock compositions for symphonic interpretation has been an enlightening process, according to Etheridge. “Yeah, we started a couple of years ago – starting to make some charts, started with the Boston Pops. They made four or five charts and then I played with a couple of other symphonies – and they’d do some more charts,” she recounts. “So, now I have about twelve songs that I can perform with the symphony. It is a whole new way of hearing the songs, and it’s a whole new arrangement – it’s great. Because I’m the kind of person…I’ll go on stage and I’ll juggle a bunch of dishes and I’ll have it all going a certain way. And if something goes wrong, I can always go over here and do this – I can always fix it. When you’re playing with sixty other musicians, you can’t make any mistakes. (laughs) Because if you do, the whole thing will come crashing down. And so that’s the real challenge of it. But, boy, the arrangements can take the songs that people have known so well and just…they become so beautiful and so exciting. It’s always fun to make music with other musicians – you know, two, or three, or four on stage. But man – again, when you’ve got sixty people it’s so powerful. Everyone concentrating on the same sound – it’s really amazing.”

    While Etheridge continues to find joy in bringing her discography to life on the road, she is also ecstatic about her forthcoming studio album that will re-imagine compositions from the 1960s Stax/Volt Records catalog. “When you give any time to study the history of rock-and-roll, you understand that the force of rock-and-roll, the feeling, the roots of it – what the Beatles were listening to, what the Rolling Stones were listening to, what John Fogerty was listening to, what Janis Joplin was listening to – was the records coming out of Stax,” she remarks. “What was coming out of Memphis – that black R&B that was then infused with gospel. They would go home as kids and listen to the Grand Ole Opry, so you get this country and this gospel infused and it becomes soul music. And you know, you write secular lyrics to it and you’ve got Otis Redding singing, and you just wanna pass out! And you get this gorgeous color-blind, completely integrated business that Stax was until 1968. It’s this place that was the breeding ground for soul music that was then covered by all the great rock-and-roll acts, and they turned it into rock-and roll. So when I think of going back into my roots I’m going straight back to…it’s Otis Redding because (he) inspired Janis Joplin and inspired Robert Plant – and those people inspired me.”

    While the classics have clearly played a major role in Etheridge’s evolution as an artist, I asked her if she’d been particularly moved by any new music she’d heard recently. “Umm…hmm…maybe. (laughs). You know, I have a funny listening…I’ll catch stuff here and there that I like. I listen to the pop radio station and it’s kind of like fast food or something. I just pass by it. I enjoy it – it’s all fun and good. But…let’s see. I actually worked on this new album I have coming out with a writer called Priscilla Renea. She’s had great success as a writer – she wrote “California King” for Rihanna and…she’s written a lot of hits. And she’s such a talented artist herself. So, I would keep an eye out for her. But me – I’m listening to (Beyoncé’s) Lemonade from front to end, because I love, love a woman singing. That’s what I did. You take what’s happening to you and you fuckin’ make lemonade out of it. That’s right – you put it out there. People want to hear that – people want to know. That’s transformative. I love that. I just love it.”

    Etheridge has accumulated a wealth of accolades throughout her career, achieving a milestone that only a handful of musicians in history have by receiving a 2007 Academy Award for Best Original Song for “I Need to Wake Up” from the the film An Inconvenient Truth. Despite writing and recording several songs for motion picture soundtracks herself, Etheridge has acknowledged that women are significantly underrepresented in that facet of the industry – especially in composing film scores. Earlier this year, she joined forces with actress and producer Rita Wilson (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) to assist advocacy group Women in Film in launching a music committee focused on creating equal opportunities for female artists. Etheridge hopes that the committee’s “…end result is ‘oh, we don’t need organizations like that’; that it would seem ridiculous in the future…’oh, there was a time when it wasn’t equal?! Oh!’ So that’s the goal is to not be needed anymore. What it’s doing now is shining a light on…I think people don’t think ‘oh, I’m not going to hire a woman, I’m only going to hire a guy.’ That’s not the thought in their head; the thought is ‘well, this is the guy that always does it and I’m just going to hire him’. It’s about opening your thoughts – it’s about going to the people who are hiring those people. It’s about mentoring. It’s about giving people experience – that a woman can stand up next to any guy and be a viable candidate for a job. It’s just about an equal opportunity.”

    For context, the tragedy in Orlando had not yet transpired when Etheridge and I discussed her perception – as an activist and as a proudly out lesbian – of the progress society has made over the past several years in the support and acceptance of the LGBTQ community. “Oh, society is definitely moving right along – and it’s like a book,” she proclaims. “We just keep turning the pages and it keeps getting deeper and deeper. And it’s not even so much about LGBT – it’s about humans. This is the humanist movement. It’s about understanding that you can divide his pie up – we are so different…every single person is so different. There are so many differences – and we have to stop looking at each other through our differences. We have to stop dividing ourselves through our differences. And that’s what it’s teaching us – it’s getting into our bathrooms and our bedrooms and it’s, like, come on. The differences are deep – we have to start looking at what is the same. And what is the same is that we’re all different. And to not fear the other – that’s where we’re going as a society is to not be so fearful of the other, but to feel community no matter what the definitions of the people within those communities are.”

    Later this year, Etheridge will host her “Rock the Boat” concert cruise on board Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Delta Rae, and Olivia Lane are among the artists who are scheduled to perform with her on the five-day round trip excursion from Tampa to Cozumel, Mexico. The cruise will emphasize health, wellness, and spirituality – all of which came into focus when Etheridge received a breast cancer diagnosis in 2004. I asked what those three ideals looked like to her when they were in sync. “Ah – you know it’s funny because rock-and-roll was never synonymous with health.” she joked. “You know, it just wasn’t the same thing. Having discovered that – for me to survive – I need to understand health. It might be outside of rock-and-roll, but that’s definitely the future. And I would rather live longer than to die of unhealthy things. So my own health crisis twelve years ago – I’ve been cancer-free for twelve years now – was about understanding my own health and my responsibility in it. That’s where the spirituality comes in – that’s the health and wellness and the wholeness. And rock-and-roll is a part of that – rock-and-roll is a spiritual expression and it’s about understanding our emotions and the power of our emotions. And the power of our thoughts and how we think about ourselves and our bodies. Just getting on that path and that journey to understanding ourselves and our health.”

    As our call came to a close, I asked Etheridge what she has learned as an artist over the past thirty years. “Ha! You know what? I am so…happy that I’m still doing what I love. That I’m now in my fifth decade and that I’m still making music and playing music and moving people. That’s…I’m thrilled about that. So as I look back on my career now, I can see that it’s just a constant up and down…a wave here, back and forth. And it’s just this ride – and I’m on it. I don’t look anymore to think ‘oh, I need a hit on the radio, or a number one’ or to be on some chart or something. I don’t look to that anymore, which is a big relief and a nice way to just go ‘okay, I’m in the moment and I’m just gonna do my best work and my best art I can every day and challenge myself and grow’.”

    Melissa Etheridge will appear with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra at Columbus Commons, 160 South High Street, on Saturday, June 25 at 8:00 pm. Tickets can be purchased through the CAPA Ticket Office, 39 East State Street, 614-469-0939 (tickets range from $25.00-$85.00), or they can be purchased via Ticketmaster.

    To find more upcoming live music events, CLICK HERE to visit our Event Calendar.

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    Grant Walters
    Grant Waltershttps://columbusunderground.com
    Grant is a freelance writer for Columbus Underground who primarily focuses on music and comedy. He's a Canadian transplant, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and schooled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grant is also the co-author of two internationally acclaimed books: "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1960s" and "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1970s." He has also penned numerous articles and artist interviews for the nationally recognized site, Albumism.
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