Life is different now for Melissa Etheridge now. She’s older, and wiser. She’s survived breast cancer and lost her son Beckett to opioid addiction.
And yet she’s still standing, still performing, and still loving life. For her, there’s no other choice.
“I’m different,” Etheridge, 62, tells 9honey ahead of her Australian tour this May. “I used to think I had to prove something every time I played.
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“I always came from a place where ‘most of these people haven’t seen me yet, so I have to prove.’ And slowly, it’s changed. In the last few years, I’ve realized, ‘No, these are people coming back, and they’re already expecting it to be wonderful.
“That’s what I love is now people come in and they know to expect a great show.”
Choosing her set list out of decades of hits isn’t as easy.
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“There are a good core five or six songs that I will do every single night because you wanna hear Bring Me Some Water and I Know You and Come To My Window and I’m The Only One and Like The Way I Do and I Want To Come Over.”
Etheridge stared playing guitar at the age of eight and sang for the first time publicly at her family’s church.
She “bugged” her parents for a guitar for months.
“And they said I was too young, that my fingers would bleed, and no I can’t. And I bugged them and I bugged them and I bugged them,” she recalls.
They bought her a “little Stella guitar,” thinking she’d play it for a while and then stop.
“I guess my fingers bled and I just kept doing it,” she says. “And I just fell in love with it and I’m still learning. That’s the joy about the guitar for me is I’m still getting better.
“I’m still learning things on it.”
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Etheridge is also still writing music ahead of a new album release next year, and she has plenty of material to choose from.
“My process before I had children and a family… a free bohemian 27-year-old… I could ride on the bus, I could ride in hotels, and I just was constantly creating,” she says. “For the last few years, I have a life.”
She said she is currently in a “writing cycle” and has found herself drawing inspiration from “everything around me, from where I’m at in my life, from what I love, what’s happening around me, where we are and where I hope we go to, those sort of things that will inspire songs,” she says.
Etheridge will set aside time to “pull those things together” and “create,” which is much easier now that her children are grown.
The musician famously stepped back from her career when her children were young.
”With my first she never left me,” she says. “I didn’t know how I would be as a mum, and so just discovering myself and loving someone so much in that mother-daughter relationship was, it’s wonderful, just beautiful for me.”
Etheridge welcomed her first two children with ex-partner Julie Cypher – daughter Bailey and son Beckett and then fraternal twins Johnnie and Miller with ex-partner Tammy Lynn Michaels.
Etheridge married current wife Linda Wallem in 2014, the person she describes as her “true love.”
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She says she had always been spiritual before the loss of her son four years ago and that spirituality has helped her through.
“His death was the most challenging, yet I’m very grateful for the understanding I had of life and death, and how his spirit is right here,” she says.
“I have a strong belief in the non-physical, and that death is not the end or this horrible darkness. Death is the difference in a breath and a different frame of mind than sort of where we are in this reality right now. So it helped.
“I mean I’m in my 60s now and I’ve seen a lot of life and it really does make a difference. You slow down a little and you see more and you do know there’s something else very much going on. We’re not just lumps of clay that just happen to figure it out, you know? There’s a lot going on here that and it actually brings peace.”
Etheridge arrives in Australia for her next tour in May. Her first show is in Perth on Friday May 10, followed by Adelaide on May 12, then Melbourne on May 15, the Gold Coast from May 16-19 and Sydney on May 17.
The last time Etheridge performed in Australia was before the pandemic in 2018 so it is long overdue.
“Oh, I love coming down there,” she says. “It’s the people that love the music. It’s how they have embraced me over these 35 years and how just how they love music and they love rock and roll.
“You know, rock and roll hasn’t gone away there and I love that.”
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction contact the Alcohol Drug Information Service on 1800 250 015 or Narcotics Anonymous Australia on 1300 652 820.