SANTA CRUZ — The past few years have been very busy for Melissa Etheridge. The seasoned rock singer has written a memoir, gone on the road with a one-woman show about her life, released an album of songs she had written decades ago but never recorded and continues to speak out about a variety of causes.
And like many touring artists in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw numerous concerts canceled or postponed for the first few years of the 2020s, Etheridge has gotten back into the groove of playing her songs in front of live audiences. She began by playing smaller venues, state fairs and cruises in 2021 before moving on to bigger venues and festivals in 2022 and 2023.
“It’s been a slow pickup, but I think last year, there came a point when it tipped over back into, ‘Yeah, we can go to concerts and scream and holler and stand shoulder to shoulder and we’re OK,’” she said. “It’s good to get back out there. It’s starting to feel normal this year.”
Now, Etheridge is going to embark on her “I’m Not Broken” tour, which will see her play at many venues throughout the United States, Canada and Australia between March and August, being joined by indie folk rockers The Avett Brothers on one date and fellow ’90s folk singers The Indigo Girls and Jewel for most of the summer.
She will be kicking it all off with a show at Kaiser Permanente Arena on March 14.
“That will be our opening night of the whole cruise of the whole year,” she said. “I’ve been doing my Broadway show last year, so I’m ready to get back on stage and just rock and roll.”
Since her 1988 self-titled debut album, Etheridge has been a force in the folk-rock movement and beyond. Her hits include “I’m the Only One,” “Come to My Window,” “If I Wanted To,” “No Souvenirs,” “I Want to Come Over” and more. She has won two Grammys, an Academy Award for her song “I Need to Wake Up” from Al Gore’s climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” five GLAAD Media Awards, five ASCAP Pop Music Awards, a Pollstar Concert Industry Award for Small Hall Tour of the Year and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Since coming out in 1993, she has been a vocal gay rights advocate, performed at the LGBTQ+ themed Triangle Ball during Bill Clinton’s first presidential inauguration and received a Stephen F. Kolzak Award from GLAAD for her efforts to promote equal rights.
Etheridge’s most recent album is 2021’s “One Way Out,” a collection of songs she had penned in the ’80s and ’90s but had never recorded until 2013 as she was planning a boxed set that never materialized.
“Because of COVID, the record company was looking for something to put out,” she said. “We were looking at this big dead space in the year, and I had recorded those a couple years before for what I thought was going to be a boxed set, but I ended up scrapping all that.”
The songs are reflective of the heavy blues she had played early in her career, and Etheridge enjoyed performing them in that style.
“It was really fun,” she said. “I did it with the original band members. These are songs that never made other albums, and it was fun to get back into that ’80s kind of rock and roll feel and record those songs. It’s been fun playing them and adding them to the repertoire.”
In 2022, Etheridge debuted her one-woman show “My Window — A Journey Through Life,” which tells her story through music, from her childhood in Kansas to her multiple marriages to her breast cancer diagnosis in 2004. The show debuted at New World Stages in New York that October and had a two-month run at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre in late 2023.
Playing Broadway has long been a dream for Etheridge, who had played St. Jimmy for a few dates during the 2011 run of “American Idiot,” the musical based on the hit Green Day album.
“Broadway to me has always been, and I believe still is, the pinnacle of live performance,” she said. “You really have to be for real to get on that stage night after night after night and transport people emotionally. That’s really what I was after, and it was very intense doing my life story night after night after night.”
Etheridge said it was also a lot more technical than her live shows.
“I like to keep it really loose and in the moment and connect it energetically,” she said. “This show’s very much had to connect technically and yet keep the energy the same and lifting up people.”
Although Etheridge said it was a wonderful experience, she does not plan to do it very often.
“I did it, I loved it, but playing concerts is really my comfortable shoe,” she said.
“My Window” is not the only way Etheridge has told her life story in recent memory. In September, her memoir “Talking to My Angels” was released to critical acclaim and a No. 9 debut on the New York Times Best-Seller List.
Etheridge said a few things prompted her to write the memoir, including the death of her son, Beckett Cypher, to an opioid addiction in 2020, which resulted in her establishing the nonprofit Etheridge Foundation to support scientific research toward alternative treatments to opioid use disorder.
“It just seemed like the pandemic and losing my son really gave me the time to think about my life and how I got where I was and where I’m going and how I’m going to hold myself through it all,” she said. “Last year was very introspective into my life. It was good to put it all out there, the answers, and now I can move on and go to the next half of my life.”
Etheridge has played a few shows in Santa Cruz before, including at the Civic Auditorium in 1992 and the Santa Cruz American Music Festival in 2017. She also co-founded the company Etheridge Organics alongside her wife, Linda Wallem, and Santa Cruz couple Jozee and D’Angelo “Cricket” Roberto. The company was issued a cannabis retail license in 2019 and sells tinctures and other ointments infused with cannabis.
Etheridge has been an advocate for cannabis legalization since using it in her chemotherapy treatments following her breast cancer diagnosis.
“I really connected with the cannabis industry in Santa Cruz, which is very strong and very organically based,” she said. “The whole Santa Cruz field is really centered around that.”
Etheridge has taken a step back from the company but is supportive of the Robertos.
“I still hope to someday grow the business, but there’s a great family there in Santa Cruz that runs it for me, and they’re just really awesome,” she said.
Although primarily serving as the home arena of the Santa Cruz Warriors, the Kaiser Permanente Arena has played host to UFC fights, a comedy show by George Lopez and concerts from the likes of Willie Nelson. Etheridge said her set will consist of her hits, songs off her most popular albums and even some deep cuts.
“I do love getting out front and singing with my guitar,” she said. “It’s just a great night of music and songs you love.”
The concert is 8 p.m. March 14 at Kaiser Permanente Arena, 140 Front St. Tickets can be purchased at TicketMaster.com.
+ There are no comments
Add yours