Casino Scene: Etheridge prepares for return to rock and roll
With the temperature forecasted to top 100 degrees Saturday, it's a safe bet that singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge won't be pulling out many songs from her most recent collection when she takes the stage at 9 p.m. at Harrah's Tunica Event Center.
Melissa Etheridge performs at 9 p.m. Saturday at Harrah's Casino in Tunica, Miss.
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Released last fall, A New Thought For Christmas was the Kansas native's first holiday-themed album, a collection of originals and covers, including her idol Elvis Presley's standard "Blue Christmas." While not overtly religious, the album still echoed the feelings of love and happiness that permeate the season.
"I wanted it to be a Christmas album for other people that aren't so religious minded or dogma minded," says Etheridge from a recent tour stop in Niagara Falls. "I wanted to still celebrate it because I love that time of year. It's an important time of year for us to celebrate, to understand these are the shortest, darkest days of the year when we come together and we reflect. And I wanted to create some songs that showed that."
The record can be seen as a companion piece to Etheridge's last album of all original material, 2007's The Awakening. Together, the records find the 48-year-old searching for and finding a new form of spiritual grace during a trying period when her personal life often overshadowed her musical one.
Tabloid fodder since she came out as gay in 1993, Etheridge's private life has been particularly high profile in recent years. In 2000, she split with partner Julie Cypher, with whom she has two sons via sperm donated by singer David Crosby. In 2003, she married actress Tammy Lynn Michaels and the couple have had two more children.
In 2004, Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer. In remission for almost four years now, Etheridge says the experience was a formative one.
"It made me not afraid to speak out," she says of her cancer struggle. "You see your mortality and you understand today this is it, this all I have; it's right here today, right now, and I want to make this now amazing and beautiful and loving."
Always politically active, Etheridge's illness inspired her to shed any remaining inhibitions she might have had about speaking out as a public figure. In recent years, she has been an unreserved champion on behalf of the environment, gay rights, and medical marijuana.
"I understand that for some reason in this society I have been given a platform and its something I take with a great deal of responsibility," she says. "I don't ever want to overuse that or overstay my welcome. But I believe there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do and are headed in the same direction I am, and I would like to give voice to that movement."
However, fans who have followed Etheridge over her 21-year career, propelling songs like "Bring Me Some Water," "I'm the Only One," and her 2007 Academy Award-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" anthem "I Need To Wake Up" toward the top of the charts, may be glad to know that the singer will be setting the introspection aside and returning to her rock roots for her next record, which she begins recording on July 10.
"You can expect a lot of rock and roll," says Etheridge. "Toward the end of the '90s, I fell off that tall cliff into electronic pop dance music. I watched rock and roll become something people sang on 'American Idol,' and I was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. But in the past couple of years a few artists have come out like Kings of Leon and the Killers. And you know what: People want to rock. It's not over. It'll never be over."
Tickets are $45 and $55 and are available at the Harrah's box office, by phone at 1-800-745-3000, and through Ticketmaster. For more information, visit harrahstunica.com.
Legend in Tunica
The music continues at Harrah's with a performance from super-smooth soul singer John Legend Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Tunica Event Center.
Legend has won a half dozen Grammy Awards since debuting in 2004 with the multiplatinum Get Lifted, including a win last year for his duet with Al Green, "Stay With Me (By The Sea)." His current tour is in support of his third album, Evolver, which debuted at No. 1 on the R&B/hip-hop chart last October.
Legend's high profile and artistic achievements led to his being pegged as one of the World's Most Influential People this year by Time magazine.
He will be joined Thursday by special guests India.Arie, the Atlanta neosoul singer who recently released her fourth record, Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics, and Vaughn Anthony, Legend's little brother and backup singer who has put out an EP, Mr. Everything, on big brother's HomeSchool label.
Tickets are $46 and $56 and are available at the Harrah's box office, by phone at 1-800-745-3000, and through Ticketmaster. For more information, visit harrahstunica.com.
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