Melissa Etheridge embraces hope ahead of headlining Women Who Rock benefit in Pittsburgh

When Melissa Etheridge started making a name for herself in the music business in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she came in with a wave of other women, citing Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow and Indigo Girls.

“We all kind of showed up around the same four-, five-year period. And so it was really about helping each other,” Etheridge said from California in a recent interview. “Before that, you had Heart and Pat Benatar, some women that we looked up to, but really, we’ve been out here kind of cutting our own path and really trying to be inspirational.”

The climate for female musicians has improved considerably from how it was back during Etheridge’s first four albums.

“At the rock radio stations, it was, ‘Oh, we’re already playing a woman.’ I’m thinking, what? You can only play one woman?” she said. “It was just crazy. So yeah, it’s definitely much, much better.”

Even with the improvement, Etheridge said it was important to “help my sisters,” which is what she’s doing as the headliner for this year’s Women Who Rock benefit concert on Aug. 28 at Stage AE. The concert and charity auction, which features a guitar signed by Etheridge, benefit women’s health research at the Magee-Womens Research Institute. DJ Femi will also perform, WDVE’s Michele Michaels will be honored with the WWR Impact Award, and actress Margo Bingham will serve as emcee.

It’s been a while since Etheridge, known for songs like “Come To My Window” and “I’m the Only One,” has been in Western Pennsylvania, with her most recent shows on Dec. 13, 2017, at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg and June 22, 2015, at the Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, putting a little blame on the covid-19 pandemic. “I actually have a memory of last year going, I haven’t played Pittsburgh in a long time. Why haven’t I been to Pittsburgh? So I’m glad that I’m getting there with this.”

Her performance here is coming fresh on the heels of a docuseries, “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken,” which streamed in July on the Paramount+ service. The two-episode series sees her connecting with women at the Topeka Correctional Facility in Kansas.

Growing up in Leavenworth, Kansas, Etheridge had four prisons — federal, Army, state and women’s — all within 20 miles of her home.

“When I was 7 years old, Johnny Cash came to play at the federal penitentiary just a few blocks from my house,” she said. “We did not get to see him. No one did but the inmates. And that sort of left an imprint on me at the time. I thought that prisons were a place of fine entertainment, but learning later that this was a rare occurrence.”

As a teenager, Etheridge performed in some of those nearby prisons, leaving an impression on her that never dissipated.

“It’s funny. There’s pictures of me and these other people doing these shows in prisons when I was 12, 13, and I never, ever was afraid. Never. I was fascinated. I was like, ‘Oh, these are just people.’ They were not any different than anybody else I had performed to, and they just all had the same clothes on,” she said with a laugh. “That was it. No, it was not scary, and it was not last year either. It was very odd. I felt very accepted. I felt very welcomed. I felt very understood, and I felt like I was helping, lifting up, enlightening, and that’s what I wanted. That’s all I wanted.”

In the 1990s, she and country singer Tammy Wynette were planning a prison concert before Wynette fell ill and died. The idea stuck with Etheridge though, and it came to fruition last year. One of the goals of the series was to push back on the stigma that surrounds people who’ve been incarcerated.

“I hope this can change some hearts and minds, just about how we think about crime and punishment,” she said. “How much of these issues, research shows that over half the women who are incarcerated are there because of drug issues and mental (issues) that stem from early trauma. So it’s mental health that is really needed in the system, and I’m hoping that this shows that.”

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Etheridge’s interactions with prisoners helped inspire a new song, “A Burning Woman,” which aims to provide hope in the darkest places.

“You’ve got your momentum of going down — everything’s just down down — and sometimes it just takes thoughts and action, something, an idea, to get somebody out of that, and that’s what ‘A Burning Woman’ is about,” she said. “I used to think all this fire inside of me was what was getting me in trouble, but it’s, no, this fire inside of me makes me, it’s gonna get me out of here.

“It’s gonna help me find my own power, find my own desire to not be broken, to go, look, there’s nothing wrong with me. Just made some choices, I (messed) that up, but now I can break the chain. I can make a different choice.”

Besides the docuseries, her Etheridge Foundation is trying to develop new treatments for opioid use disorder through advocacy and supporting research. The foundation was created after her 21-year-old son, Beckett, died from causes related to opioid addiction.

“If you watch the documentary, you see how I speak about my son’s death, I speak about addiction and, and then outside of the prison, how I talk about the Etheridge Foundation, how we are providing research into plant medicines and psychedelics and things that have shown to be effective in addiction and the opioid use disorder,” she said. “And there’s so much hope there.”

Etheridge remains a strong supporter of legalizing marijuana, as it becomes more mainstream every day.

“I wish it would be federalized any moment,” she said. “It’s really causing more harm now than good.”

On the political front, Etheridge remains as vocal as ever, and sounds optimistic with the elections looming in November.

“You know what, I love my country, I love America, I love the United States, and I think we are in a much better place than all of us realize,” she said. “I think we’ve come so far and done so well, and whatever happens in November, I think we will continue to steadily move toward more understanding of humanity, diversity, and how we can all live together, because we’re going to have to.

“I think that who’s at the very top of the governmental system we have, they can do some damage, but I think that whatever we all choose, we’ll all go through it together and just keep moving on.”