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[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "When Lightning Strikes" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[0:25] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the tingly mic drop moments that led you to becoming an artist.

[0:37] Melissa Etheridge: Melissa Etheridge is a ferociously talented rock music icon. This Grammy and Oscar-winning singer, songwriter, guitarist is known for her deeply passionate, raw and honest lyrics and smoky, distinctive voice with a career that has spanned more than three decades. This month, she is debuting her new solo show, My Window - A Journey Through Life, which combines great music and storytelling. This intimate show at New World Stages brings us from her childhood in Kansas to becoming a golden voiced rock music force with 15 Grammy nominations, two Grammy wins, and an Oscar.

[1:27] Jeryl Brunner: Congratulations on your new show and your residency at New World Stages. What inspired My Window, A Journey Through Life?

[1:38] Melissa Etheridge: Well, the truth is my whole life inspired this project. It's been something that I've been thinking about. I've been thinking about Broadway for 10 years. Well, all my life, but really seriously trying to really get something up and on Broadway. And last year, the whole idea of my life story and what I have to share with the world and musically, it just really made itself very clear that this is what my window is, my journey through life.

[2:21] Jeryl Brunner: And what was the joy in creating this show?

[2:25] Melissa Etheridge: Oh my gosh, there's still joy. We're in, you know, tech rehearsals and it's just magnificent. The director, Amy Tinkham, is just brilliant at bringing different types of media together to sort of augment my storytelling and my singing. And it's just really such a delight.

[2:52] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, I think of your songs and how you tell these beautiful stories in your songs. I mean, why was that important for you as a storyteller?

[3:10] Melissa Etheridge: You know, I started writing songs very young, and I really kind of followed the folk and country traditions of storytelling in songs. That's been the way I've approached my songwriting and everything that I've done. So to then tell a story about my life through my songs, it's like taking all the little ingredients now and making one big long story. It was quite a haul, but we seem to be doing it.

[3:49] Jeryl Brunner: I can't wait to see it. Can you talk about your lightning strikes moment when you knew you had to be an artist? And reading about you, you've said since you were a child, a tiny child, you knew this was your path. But was there a moment? Was it that moment when you saw the Beatles? What was it that made you think, oh my God?

[4:14] Melissa Etheridge: Well, you'll see in the show, we actually start at my birth. One of my first memories I have is when one of the neighborhood kids had me hold their transistor radio. I must have been three or four years old, and I remember listening and hearing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and thinking, what is this I'm hearing? These are angels. This is the feeling that I got. My parents were not musicians, but they enjoyed music very much. There were a lot of records in the 60s and 70s being played in my house. So that was a great influence when I would hear the harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel or hear Aretha Franklin sing. These were things that really made me want to participate in that sort of art.

[5:16] Jeryl Brunner: And then what about songwriting? When did you know that you had this gift for songwriting? Because that was very early on, right? You got your first guitar when you were eight, right?

[5:28] Melissa Etheridge: Yeah, yeah. I learned to play guitar, and once I heard three chords, I was like, wait a minute, that's a song. I thought A D E. I can make stuff up now. When I realized that was one of the ways a song was built, I started making up really simple things. It was fun to make up things and make them rhyme, and I just never stopped. I would mimic the songs that I loved, writing things that I didn't know about at 13 or 14 years old, and then it grew into, oh, I started becoming a teenager and a young adult, and I started actually writing about what I felt and what I was going through.

[6:19] Jeryl Brunner: Do you remember one of the earliest songs you wrote? What it was?

[6:27] Melissa Etheridge: Oh, yeah. It's funny because this is all in the show. There was a song called "Lonely as a Child." It was after my grandmother died, and I was 12 years old, so it was very folksy, very sad.

[6:47] Jeryl Brunner: What do you hope people take away from the show?

[6:51] Melissa Etheridge: Oh, I hope that people leave with a sense of wonder and a sense of inspiration. I hope they're inspired to look at my journey and know that we're all on our own separate journeys, but each of us has a certain power inside and a choice to make their journey what they want it to be. I hope they find that power inside themselves. I hope they are inspired.

[7:34] Jeryl Brunner: Do you mind sharing how you discovered your power in your life?

[7:40] Melissa Etheridge: I think experience gave me that. I think the experience of having the crazy dream to be a rock star when I'm a girl from Kansas, in an era where there was a handful of maybe women rock stars, and there certainly wasn't any from Kansas. That sort of idea that I can try, and then those things manifested, they happened and appeared, and I just kept following that path. The more I would be open and honest about myself, the more these things opened up, and then the more strength I got.

[8:31] Melissa Etheridge: So then coming out publicly felt good, and I had the support of my family and my friends, and you know, that just felt right. Because I saw that moment, you know, at the Clinton, right? Inaugural ball, and there you were, and seeing k.d. lang, you know, her response, and what was that feeling like? Is it hard to describe what that? What that I didn't know I was gonna come out at that moment. I surprised myself, but I was mostly inspired by the people that I knew. I knew some really powerful LGBT leaders, Irvishivade, Kate Clinton, these great men and women who were really in the trenches fighting for our rights and fighting to be heard. And they were inspiring me. And I was like, look, if they can do that, then at the very least, I can just tell people I'm gay, you know. That's something I can do. And I learned that that was a huge form of activism just doing that.

[9:34] Melissa Etheridge: Is there something you'd like to imbue to this next generation? Yeah, I would say being your 100% true self and loving yourself is the best thing you can do for the world. Because when you are fully in your own power and okay with yourself, and you don't need other people to be okay with you because you're okay. When you're just okay, then it doesn't matter. Even the people who are trying to make laws against you, if you hold your power and your love for yourself, then you will attract those who are also holding that power, and then that strength grows, that power grows, and the opposition to it, the resistance to it has to fade. It goes away because it can't survive in that sort of love. And that's what I've seen that, you know, the younger generation, they haven't been around as long. They haven't seen the things that I have seen where we have come from. And so just be on that path of your own power and your own truth, and it goes a long way.

[10:59] Melissa Etheridge: Do you mind me asking how you found that self-love, how you taught yourself that that was so, or how you brought that self-love, unless it's too personal? No, it's personal. It's experience, experience really led me there that when I didn't have that self-love, when I was looking for it in the wrong places, when I was trying to get someone else to fill up my deep dark holes and make me feel better about myself, well, those people will ultimately let you down. They might do it for a while, but you know they've got to take care of themselves. So when I kept finding myself in hurt positions because of someone else, then I realized look I gotta do this myself. I gotta love myself before anybody else can love me. And that has worked very well for me in the last 14 years.

[11:56] Melissa Etheridge: Can you talk about your love for performing and this joy you have when you get up on stage, what that's like for you? Well, I've done it for so long. I've played professionally since I was, you know, 12, 13 years old and like standing in front of people singing. So I've had much practice, nearly almost 50 years. And so now when I step on stage, I feel very comfortable. And I get to enjoy that exchange of energy that I have people coming, paying money to see me do what I do, to know my songs, then that's like everything else is just icing on the cake. That was the hard part. And now sharing that with them is a delight. So everything you see on stage becomes just a celebration of that.

[12:56] Melissa Etheridge: Is there something you wish you could say to that little girl or to listening to the Beatles for the first time or writing those early songs? Is there something you wish you could tell her if you could go back? Yes, I would say, do what you love, do what feels good, keep doing it. That's where your momentum is. When I line up with what I am desiring and what I love, then it happens. And even when things seem to be not happening, to know that they are happening the way it will turn out. It may not look like what you thought it would look like, but it's going to be everything and more than what you wanted.

[13:48] Melissa Etheridge: Has your songwriting changed? Um, or how has it changed since those early days of songwriting? Well, my songwriting has always come from a personal place. So songwriting is going to change as I change. And I have grown and I have changed very, very much. And you know, it's gone from the sort of making up days of my teens to my early 20s and my early 30s, which was very angst and desire and provocative, and you know, a lot of that energy that most of the songs that people know and love came from those times. And then, you know, then I became more socially aware of the world around me. I, you know, into my 40s, and then I went through cancer, and that was an experience and really falling in love with life and health and understanding what health is, and then having in the show you'll see there's even a very metaphysical sort of spiritual part that has really come into my life in the last 10 years, and you know, so I write about that, I write about what I know, I write about what I question, what brings me sorrow or joy, and I just write about my experience.

[15:20] Melissa Etheridge: Well, and what is the joy of being in New York for you? Oh, New York. Well, I'm a Kansas girl who moved to California, so I like space. So I'm having a little, um, having to get used to how you all just kind of agree to, you know, live this close to each other. I understand, and you know, and I'm getting used to that, but um, New York is a very special place. There's such creativity here, and it's very alive, and it's quite a wonderful place to be. I'm loving it. I love that you picked New World Stages. Why that intimate space? I love that. Well, we needed to do this off-Broadway, and so it was a beautiful theater, and it's a lovely little space, it's 500 seats, and so there's not a bad seat in the house at all. And it's just a great group of theaters they've got there. It's a wonderful place. Thank you so much. Great, it still happens every day. When lightning strikes, it's the moment you know.