Try to find a non-red-carpet photo of Melissa Etheridge without a guitar in her hand. You’re going to be scrolling for a minute. Which is hilarious, because until she turned 50, Etheridge didn’t have the guts to play lead guitar. (And because we chose a guitar photo, too.)
Decades into her career, her wife asked her why she was never the main one shredding on the stage, and Etheridge had to admit she had simply never learned to play better.
“I thought — I really had a deep belief — that at age 35, that’s as good as you're going to get,” says Etheridge. “There's some sort of a belief that's planted in us that that's all as good as you're going to get at something.”
She says the pandemic presented more opportunities to boost her skills. With venues shuttered, Etheridge pivoted to her own streaming site, EtheridgeTV. Without a band, she learned to create percussion and background guitar loops, giving herself plenty of time to rock out on the lead guitar.
“So I started with solos here and there, learning more, practicing more. And it was thrilling. Now I'm at the point where I get going in front of an audience and you’ve got to pull me off the stage,” she says.
But nobody’s going to rush a woman off the stage who’s been making albums since 1988, and been a bonafide rock star since the ‘90s.
Music maker, music fan
Etheridge says the Beatles were the first group she heard on the one radio station her transistor radio could pick up in her small town. She can’t remember if that first song was “She Loves You” or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” but she does recall how the music ignited a feeling she wanted to relive, and to create herself. Now when she steps into the recording studio, the invisible influences in the room with her cross the spectrum from Peter Gabriel, to Marvin Gay, to Tammy Wynette and Aretha Franklin.
And Etheridge is still listening and loving new acts.
“I'll give you two that are just blowing my mind,” she says. “One is H.E.R. Her rhythm and blues sense with a very modern sound, it's so refreshing. And lyrics that I love, that are catchy. And she can play the guitar so well! When you find all that talent in one person — she's like today's Prince, she just really is.”
Another act who has captivated Etheridge is the Grammy Award-nominated Yola, the singer-songwriter who traverses country, soul, R&B and Americana. The fandom is unsurprising given Etheridge’s own forays into country music. “Yola has a beautiful voice. And she writes these classic, Jimmy Webb-style songs, you know? Absolutely authentic. I'll listen to anything Yola and H.E.R do. I think they're going to be around for a long time.”
On the road again
EtheridgeTV was a fun growth opportunity, but Etheridge wasn’t born to be a one-woman garage band. As the music world opened back up, she was nearly finished packing – socks and everything – weeks before her first tour date.
“I'm a little ashamed about how much I missed applause. That connection, that energy-sharing with people in a room. We are human beings (who) are not meant to be isolated,” she says.
This summer, her tour will take her through Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee throughout July.
“We are social animals,” she says. “We are happy around others. And then you add music to it, that's our job: to entertain, to enter the vessel and make you feel something. Joy.”
Like the Beatles said, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.