National Post, June 26, 2002
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Etheridge pain-free
The singer-songwriter of hurtin' music has something to smile about
these days: two children and a new muse in her life
Barrett Hooper, National Post
Melissa Etheridge writes breakup music. Not sappy odes to the
lovelorn. Not wussy, self-pitying pap like Chicago's Look Away ("But
if you see me walking by, and the tears are in my eyes ..."). Not
songs to wallow by.
No, Etheridge writes deceptively sexy, tear-your-heart-out,
pound-the-wall rebuttals to the pain of bad relationships. Wounded,
angry, she lashes out against the loneliness, her tear-stained growl
becoming a full-blown howl of vocal and acoustic aggression.
But the Melissa Etheridge who will play the Molson
Amphitheatre tomorrow night is not the same Melissa Etheridge to be
found on her self-titled debut album of 1988. To borrow a phrase
from one of the heartbreakers on that near-perfect collection of
songs, this Melissa Etheridge has similar features but longer hair.
For one, this is a happy Melissa Etheridge, someone who seems
positively euphoric about her life and about being a mother. She has
two children, daughter Bailey and son Beckett (their donor-father is
singer-songwriter David Crosby), with her ex-girlfriend Julie Cypher
and she gushes when she talks about them, using words
like "wonderful, amazing, gorgeous." And about the new love in her
life, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels (TV's Popular). She'll even be
treating fans at the concert to a new song inspired by Michaels, whom
she calls "the new muse in my life."
"It's called Secret Agent and it's a celebration of the new
love and it's just the sexiest craziest song I've ever written," she
says with a schoolgirl giggle.
Etheridge does a lot of that – laughing, giggling, punctuating
sentences with the word "cool."
"Things are incredible. I'm so lucky and fortunate to have
found all this even as I'm 40," she says on a cellphone from the back
of her tour bus, en route to her concert in Boston.
That doesn't mean she's stopped being the hard-edged heartland
blues-rocker from Leavenworth, Kan., who can at times evokes Janis
Joplin and Bruce Springsteen. Far from it, as the new tour shows.
The last time she rolled through town, in the fall, when she
played to a sold-out audience at Massey Hall, it was for the bare-
bones Live and Alone tour; just her, a microphone, a piano and a
couple of dozen guitars. Ostensibly in support of her last album,
the Cypher breakup-inspired Skin, that concert was more about
embracing and being embraced by her fans, taking comfort in the
closeness afforded by the smaller venue.
This time around she's got her band backing her up, and
Meredith Brooks as the opening act. "One thing about this tour which
makes me very happy is that I didn't have a hit from this album and I
don't have a song on the radio but I'm still able to do a full-on
stadium tour," she says.
And that's because of her highly devout fan base, which, she
says, is 90% gay. "They are so loyal, especially with record
companies and radio getting so far from the people, and I love being
in touch with the people who are buying my records and coming to my
concerts and supporting me.
"I would love to have mainstream radio play and hits, and I
think I will again, and I do periodically, but I wouldn't change the
core audience for those hits," she continues, joking that her Web
site is the No. 3 place on the Internet for gay people to meet.
"It's become a social thang," she says with a put-on southern
drawl. "And that's fine with me. But I don't want to ignore it, I
want to nurture it."
And that's the thing about Etheridge. That being a lesbian
does not define her identity as a musician, but merely informs
it. "I think I've found a way since I was very young to put my
personal experiences into music and get therapy and catharsis while
also making it digestible to the masses," she says.
"Oh, this one's gonna hurt like hell," she sings in Lover
Please, the opening cut on Skin, her seventh album. But after a few
more contemplations about lost love and the hard truth that "sooner
or later, we all end up walking alone," we begin to hear a bit of
Etheridge as she is now, as she proclaims: "Something inside is
coming alive."
And by the last song, Heal Me, she has moved beyond the pain
to rediscover hope: "My battered heart will make a new start / Let
everyone know I'll be coming home again."
Which is exactly how she feels when she's onstage. "It's
where I feel really comfortable in my own skin."