At 47, rock icon Melissa Etheridge has finally found the higher power most of us can only dream of, and it is within.
Maybe it always was.
How else could a 20-something girl guitar player from Leavenworth, Kan., break every barrier in the often misogynistic rock music culture just by being herself, and score a Top 10 hit with “Bring Me Some Water”? Why else would she ignore advice and declare “Yes I Am” in 1993, forever putting to rest questions about her sexuality but risking stardom?
Who else could stare mortality in the face after being diagnosed with breast cancer and roar onto the Grammy stage a year later, bald from chemotherapy, smiling but defiant, bringing the house down with a rendition of Janis Joplin's “Piece of my Heart”?
The Oscar and two-time Grammy winner's current tour, landing at Viejas Casino in Alpine Saturday night, features her 2007 release “The Awakening.” For Etheridge, it reflects a new journey that began not with her cancer diagnosis in 2004, but just before.
“I had reached this point in my life where I was happily in love and happy in my career,” she says.
She had also begun to reassess her place in life and her final destination. Surveying the music world at the time, she remembers thinking, “I'm not Britney, not Christina; there's not a place for me.”
Now happily sharing her heart and home with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels and their toddler twins, does she have any demons left to conquer?
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Melissa Etheridge
When: Saturday, 8 p.m.
Where: Viejas Outlet Center, 5000 Willows Road, Alpine
Tickets: $50-$101
Phone: (619) 659-2070
Online: viejas.com
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“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Fear.”
Earlier in her career, fear was the worst demon. “Thick, dark fear; fear of being alone, fear of failure, fear of being misunderstood.”
She won an Oscar last year for her song “I Need to Wake Up” for the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore-inspired film on global warming. She also inspired cancer victims around the world with the song “I Run for Life.”
But 20 years ago, she broke into the rock music world with her self-titled debut featuring “Bring Me Some Water.” In 1993, she released “Yes I am,” featuring the Grammy-winning “Come to My Window.”
Her decision to become the first openly gay rock star that year was among several awakenings in her life, beginning with her decision to quit the Berklee College of Music and make her way to California.
An environmentalist who has lent her voice to a number of causes, she has also called herself an “Obama Mama” even though one of the songs on her new record imagines a world where a woman can be president. Etheridge says she wrote the song before the campaign started and people were saying there was no way Hillary Clinton could be president.
Some of her fans may disagree with her politically, but they are still buying her records. Despite three multi-platinum albums, Etheridge attributes her staying power to staying true to herself.
“Maybe it's because I've always been just on the outside. There was a moment in 1994 when I was on top, with 'Come to My Window,' but it was about more for me,” she says. “I have a great belief in my fans. What my fans want is for me to be who I am. As egotistical as it may sound, I'm bigger than that industry; the industry makes musicians small.”
