Melissa Etheridge has lots of ‘ Thoughts’ this Christmas
Melissa Etheridge is dusting off the Christmas albums this month — including her own. For the first time, the Grammy- winning singer will tour with songs from her holiday album, “A New Thought for Christmas,” which has largely been shelved since being released in 2008. Alongside snowcapped classics like “O Night Divine” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” there are thoughtful originals including “Light a Light” and “Christmas in America,” all wrapped up in her sultry blues- rock tenor. “I’m actually looking forward to singing about peace on earth and good will toward men,” she says, slyly. “We all need some of that good spirit and joy to the world right now.”
Etheridge has dealt with a number of trying moments in her 55 years — she’s survived breast cancer, publicly come out as gay at the time of her 1993 breakthrough album “Yes I Am,” and had the trials of personal relationships play out in the media. But getting through 2016 brought its own set of challenges, she says. No more so than this summer as she tried to wrap her head around the hate crime that killed 49 people and wounded 53 when a gunman opened fire inside the LGBTQ- friendly Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
“It affected me deeply. I became a young adult in [ bars like that]; they are community places where people come together to be themselves because they might not be able to be themselves anywhere else. And so the nightmare of what happened there, it really just saddened me greatly,” she admits. In response, she penned the song “Pulse,” with the harrowing chorus, “Love will always win underneath the skin, everybody’s got a pulse,” and donated pro ceeds from the download sales to Equality Florida.
“It felt like everybody needed to try and understand [ what happened]. All our differences have us all so scared and so afraid of others, and I wanted to try and attempt to heal that with the song.”
Those dark realities also became a part of recording sessions for her fourteenth album, “Memphis Rock and Soul,” released in October that pays homage to the city’s famous Stax Records label that introduced America to greats like Otis Redding and The Staples Singers ( including Chicago’s own Mavis Staples) at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Both artists were hugely influential to Etheridge while growing up in rural Kansas where there only was one radio station, “and there weren’t these boundaries in music,” she says.
Etheridge chose to record the album at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios, “Home of the Memphis Sound,” the de facto spot since the original Stax recording studio was shuttered in the ’ 80s. “That was probably my favorite part of the whole experience,” she says of working in Memphis, praising the special qualities of the city. “It has such deep music roots and was a hub of so many influences in the ’ 60s, and still bears those scars. … As I got closer to my project, the Black Lives Matter movement really started heating up, around the same time I was working with these amazing artists who would tell me their experiences of touring the South in the ’ 60s, getting pulled over by the sheriff. And I thought, ‘ God, this happened in my lifetime,’” she continues, before briefly pausing to regain herself. “So it was not lost on me, the timing of all of this.”
Etheridge is not yet certain what she will write about next in 2017, but she says it probably won’t ever take on the same tone as her gut- wrenching personal narratives from the ’ 90s like “Come to My Window” and “I’m The Only One.”
“You know I’m not getting my heart broken and stomped on; that’s not the center of my universe anymore,” she reflects. Etheridge is now happily married to her partner, actress and producer Linda Wallem, and raising children from a previous relationship. “Now my focus is on my kids that are going out in this crazy world, and on thinking about how can I make it a better place.” In addition to advocating for human rights, she also is a staunch supporter of environmental causes and, in 2007, won an Academy Award for her song “I Need to Wake Up” that appeared in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“All these things — divorce, cancer, mortality — it will open your eyes to the world,” she says, resolute to keep drawing attention to them with her voice and her guitar. “The subjects have gotten bigger in my life, and so the things that move me to write are different, which happens when you are older, but it’s been an amazing path that has led to progress, and that’s good always.”