Melissa Etheridge is an advocate, giving voice to causes dear to her heart. She wrote “I Need to Wake Up” for Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth , and in 2007 received the Academy Award for Best Original Song. She came out publicly in 1993 at the Triangle Ball, part of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration celebration, the same year her fourth album, “Yes I Am,” dropped with major hits, including her Grammy Award-winning “Come to My Window.” In 2004, Melissa Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer, but she didn’t miss a beat. At the 2005 Grammy Awards, she appeared with a bald head to sing “A Piece of My Heart” in tribute to Janis Joplin. That year, she released “I Run For Life,” a song of empowerment that urges us to face challenges and never give up. Tragedy struck in 2020 when she lost her son, Beckett, to opioid abuse. In June 2020, she launched the Etheridge Foundation to advance treatments for opioid use disorder. Time and again, Melissa Etheridge has valiantly taken action when crisis struck. This spring, she returns to the road with her one-woman show Spring Tour 2025 , before reuniting with the Indigo Girls for their co-headlining tour Yes We Are . It was a privilege to talk with Melissa Etheridge in advance of her concert at The Paramount on April 8. You evacuated your LA home during the fires, but were you able to return? Yes, we got to come back in. Those firefighters were outstanding and worked so hard to keep it right at the edge of our neighborhood. We are blessed. Have you resurrected your Oscar winning song for An Inconvenient Truth in light of the fires? I didn’t, but I am writing a new album that I’m starting to record and although there’s not a direct reference to the fire there’s definitely some inspiration about coming together and getting through things. What was it like to hear your name called at the Oscars? That was one of my favorite memories. It was surreal. At one commercial break, Clint Eastwood got up, walked by me and did a little finger gun at me. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life! Why did you bring your 2023 one-woman show to Broadway? Growing up in Kansas, I was a big theater geek. I fell in love with 70s Broadway musicals like Hair. Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar. During the pandemic, I was writing my book, Talking to My Angels , so I spent a lot of time talking about my life. My wife and I started putting a stage performance together and we came up with something fun, moving, musical and storytelling. I loved doing it though it was a lot of hard work. I bow down to the work that Broadway people do. How do you make the personal and professional relationship work with your wife, Linda Wallen? That’s one of the easiest relationships I have. We were best friends and worked together before we were married. We already respected each other. We want to be around each other and work together, so it’s perfect. In 2024 you had a two-part docuseries, I’m Not Broken, recorded live at the Topeka Correction Facility. Why did you choose that facility? I’m from Leavenworth, Kansas, and that’s where the women’s penitentiary was when I was growing up. In the 90s it moved to Topeka. When I was a teenager, I went there and performed with other musicians. It stayed with me how much they loved music, were lifted up and entertained. I thought it was very important. I always wanted to go back and finally got to. The warden, everyone there was so supportive and made it happen. I’m really grateful. I loved that experience and the residents told me that since the docuseries they were talking to each other more and there was more understanding about why people were there and how to help each other. In October 2004, you were diagnosed with breast cancer, but you called it a spiritual awakening. What is the greatest change that it influenced in your life? I went through a big change in my diet and mind. If everyone else is OK then I’ll be OK was the way I went through life. Then I realized, no, I have to make sure I’m OK, then I can help everybody else. To start putting yourself first is a big change for those of us who grew up feeling we’re supposed to help everybody else first. When you performed bald at the 2005 Grammys, did you know you were helping so many women deal with the effects of chemotherapy? No, I didn’t know until Linda said do you know what’s going on? I wasn’t watching anything, I was still gaining strength, still recovering. She told me how women were getting together and the next time I went to my doctor’s appointment the nurse said, “After you performed, there were so many bald heads around here. Everyone was taking their wigs off.” I’m just grateful to be here and be able to share this with everybody. You lost your son, Beckett, in 2020 to an opioid overdose. What advice can you give others dealing with the loss of a loved one through drug abuse? Stay away from guilt and shame. There are so many families that have gone through this. These drugs that take hold of our loved ones are more powerful than we are, but there’s hope. I started the Etheridge Foundation which looks into plant medicine and psychedelics. Our children who have gone would not want us to spend a moment of guilt or shame on them. We need to work on that because we can just make ourselves sick and die too. And what good is that? People can’t save other people, we can inspire them, but the only way we can inspire them is by doing the best we can for ourselves. What is the Etheridge Foundation finding in the fight against opioid abuse? We are finding that psychedelics are incredibly effective in getting people off opioids or heroin and they don’t want to go back. It changes them because it is a soulful, spiritual experience. Much of our research is out of the country because of our laws that we’re, of course, working on. There’s a root in Africa called iboga that you make ibogaine from and it’s a very powerful hallucinogenic psychedelic, life changing. The first results were outstanding. We don’t want to just fix the symptoms but get to the causes like childhood trauma and these neural pathways can be changed with psychedelics. You go from your spring into your summer tour. Do you like being on the road that much? Yes! I’ve been on the road for the past 35 years. I am one of those strange people who love it. The stage is my safe place. I feel confident there. I’ve been doing it since I was 11 years old. It’s the greatest joy I have other than my family. I’m so grateful that people still want to come hear me sing and they sing my songs with me. I love it.
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