Arts & Entertainment

Etheridge comes full circle

Out rock icon talks about her newest release taking us back to her roots; chats election year politics

Published

13 years ago

September 6, 2012

On the eve of her 25th year in the music industry, Melissa Etheridge is taking new risks, picking up new instruments and returning to her childhood roots. (Photo by James Minchin III courtesy Island Records)

Listening to Melissa Etheridge’s “4th Street Feeling,” out this week on her home label for 24 years, Island Records, one might agree with the dynamite rock legend’s own description of the sound as “organic.”

After adopting a more pop, adult contemporary sound in the middle of the last decade for singles like her cover of Greenwheel’s “Breathe,” the Oscar and two-time Grammy winning icon has returned to a nostalgic country blues sound that would flow well into a playlist with other artists she says she once played on her Chevy Impala’s 8-track in the ‘70s while driving the strip the album was named for in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kan.

Breaking barriers first by coming out in the early ‘90s and then rocking a Janis Joplin tribute live at the Grammys, bald from radiation and chemotherapy during breast cancer treatment, Etheridge returns to where she was born and raised for her eclectic 11th studio album, while experimenting with some new elements as well — like the banjitar featured in the first single “Falling Up.”

Etheridge, who will be honored at the National Museum for Women in the Arts starting today as part of the exhibition “Women Who Rock,” will bring her 4th Street Feeling tour to Bethesda’s Strathmore Music Center on Nov. 2.

““This next year, 2013, I’ll have been in the professional music business for 25 years,” Etheridge says of the National Museum for Women in the Arts exhibit when she sat down with the Blade to discuss her new album, the tour and the election year. “It’s nice to be honored. To be part of a wonderful community, the wonderful quilt of artists in our society that have brought forth the human experience.”

Etheridge has always been known as a confessional musician, but her personal woes have been on display in a new way with her high-profile 2010 split from actress Tammy Michaels and the contentious alimony and custody cases that have only recently been resolved. Nevertheless, the gravelly-voiced composer sings about her readiness to accept love again on her newest release, telling the Blade that when she sings, “I think I’m ready to try my hand at love again” in the track “Rock & Roll Me,” she’s singing about her budding relationship with “Nurse Jackie” creator Linda Wallem, whom she met through her ex.

““I don’t think we’re ever ready,” she says. “Like if it was up to me I’d still be sitting up in my room, ‘No! No! I’m not going to do that again!’ But love has a way of coming and the relationship that I’m actually in now, she’s been my best friend for 10 years. Believe me, I wasn’t going to go out and look for it, it found its way into my home. I’m very happy. Yes I am ready to try my hand at love again.”

Washington Blade: So the ‘banjitar’: where did you find this instrument?

Melissa Etheridge: It kind of started when I was writing songs to go play on the album, before I went to record. Listening to the radio, listening to popular music trends, I was delighted that people were playing organic instruments. I was hearing mandolins and banjos and real instruments.

I remember thinking, “I can play the banjo.” You know. I’m not terribly good at it, I played it a long, long time ago, but I can play a song on it.

So when I wrote “Falling Up,” I thought, “Yeah, I want to put banjo on this,” so I brought my banjo to the studio, and I said, “Yeah I’m going to play the banjo; not so good at it but you know, it’ll be fine.” And my guitar tech, Mark VanGool — he’s just a genius guitar guy — well why don’t you play the banjitar. I look at him like, ‘What are you talking about,’ and he says, “Yeah, its a banjo body, but its got a guitar neck, so you play it like a guitar, but it sounds like a banjo.” I said “That just sounds perfect!”

So he had one. He brought it. I played it, and the rest is history.

The album might be a dying art, with everyone being able to just buy singles so much. And really, I still think in a collection of music, not just one song. So all the songs are really different. It was hard to pick a first single. What’s representative of this album? It’s really hard. The record company chose “Falling Up,” and I was like “OK.”

Blade: You described that 4th Street feeling as the freedom to put everything you owned into your Chevy Impala. You’ve been on a long journey from Leavenworth Kan., so it’s interesting that the emotional center of this album has us listening to Al Green and Tina Turner on your old 8-track. Why was it so important for you to bring us all back here with you?

Etheridge: Because that’s where my journey took me. I thought in the spiritual evolution of aging and gaining wisdom that I would somehow shed all my old stuff and become something new. What I found is the only way you can become something new is to completely embrace all the old that you are and understand where you came from, and hold it, and even change your past in a way — in the way that you perceive it. In the way that you hold it now. And music takes you right back there. It’s obvious that we’re doing some reminiscing as a society right now. The music sounds like it’s right out of the ‘60s or something, everything is retro, it’s going back. It’s like taking the best of what we did do and growing on it. The organic stuff. That’s what I found. I’m not getting away from this, I’m being in this, and seeing it as something better.

Blade: You sing “Shake it like a polaroid” in your first single “Falling Up” which sounds like a nod to Outkast’s Andre 3000. Who are some other contemporary top 40 artists that you appreciate?

Etheridge: Oh yeah! Love Outkast. Always have. I think they’re very innovative and creative. I can cross all genres. My kids especially — like my daughter — play artists, she first turned me onto Ellie Goulding. She’s a little pop for me, but I appreciate a lot of the singer-songwriter stuff. Loved the Mumford and Sons album, Band of Horses, love Black Keys, (I’m) loving Alabama Shakes. All these great artists that I just want to see live and jump around with.

Blade: You came out 19 years ago and released “Yes I Am.” Just recently, R&B singer Frank Ocean followed your script, coming out and dropping an album; how has the music industry changed for gay musicians since ‘93?

Etheridge: Well, there’s safety in numbers, you know? I think in the ‘90s when those of us were peaking out, it was a sparse field. But I think everyone was kind of watching going, “Well, are you going to lose everything? Is it going to be like what we think?” And it’s all about how you kind of hold yourself in it.

Back then we did it. Did it hurt my career? I say, “I went from selling one million to six million.” People can see that I’m not blaming any of my perceived failures on being gay, so I hold it that way. Its just part of who I am. Its part of the big tapestry of who I am.

Cover art for Etheridge’s new album. (Image courtesy Island)

I don’t think there’s that big of a difference [between the current gay male artist experience and the experience for out lesbian artists]. I think we’re all aware of our society’s hang-ups when it comes to sexuality. We’ve realized that our sexual desires is what makes us different and dangerous. We’ve all grown up with it. We also know that the male aspect of that sexuality can be really frightening to a lot of people, so I think that it is somehow looked at as it’s harder to be a gay man and open in the entertainment industry. You’ve got to be really solid to do that. In general, it’s a little more delicate of a subject, just because of all the fear.

Blade: Four years ago, you took part in the historic Logo-HRC Presidential panel, and you were fairly vocal leading to the general. What do you think of what’s happened since then?

Etheridge: In the last 20 years, especially the last four, I think [the LGBT community has] become wiser about what part we play in this American drama that keeps unfolding in front of us, this experiment called Democracy and America and equality and what it really means. We challenge it to its very core and we’ve seen how we’ve been played in this game. OK, our votes are important, but no one can ever give us full cooperation, or they might be deemed less than, weak, or whatever scares them from giving us our civil rights. So I think this last thing that Obama did, by saying he supports gay marriage, it changes the direction of the stream just enough to kind of give us “Alright, there’s a reason we’ll vote for you again. Yes, you need our votes.” Because we’re a large group of people that cuts across every kind of people. And it also cuts across so many of our deep-seated fears in our whole culture. It’s a challenge. We’re challenged people, and we are challenging. And I think the homosexual community are the leaders in our great societal change right now. We are really pushing it, and I think it’s great.

Blade: What do you think of the Romney-Ryan ticket?

Etheridge: I think it’ll be a really interesting Trivial Pursuit question in 20 years. “Who was that running mate? Who was the Mormon guy?” I think it is fascinating. If you’d have told me in the ‘80s, “Oh my God, in 2012 there’ll be a black president — half black and half white — and he’s going to run against a Mormon with a Catholic Vice Presidential candidate …” But that shows that we are so diverse, that we are really opening up to all. You know what, in this great America of ours, there’s mixed-race people, there are Mormons, there are Catholics, there are every type of person and we have to show the world how it can all get along.

Blade: What are your thoughts on Rep. Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” statement?

Etheridge: Things are spread instantly. A sentence can leave your mouth, and in a half hour, your life could be totally changed. I love that instant accountability that we have now. And it also gives us an opportunity to examine ourselves and go “Whoa! These deep-seated beliefs or fears are still there!” There’s a lot of dark shadowy ignorance out there in the world, and its coming to the surface, and we’re going to see it in some of our quote-unquote leaders. I don’t think we should shut him down. “OK dude. Wow. Let’s talk about that. What makes it legitimate or not?” Bring these things to the forefront and then let people vote their conscience.

Blade: It always seems with the LGBT community it’s two steps forward, two steps back. We’ve had months of good news, but we’ve had setbacks in North Carolina, some high profile anti-gay attacks and murders and just last week here in D.C. a member of our LGBT community shot a security guard at the Family Research Council’s headquarters. As an artist how do you respond to these crises of community?

Etheridge: I look at the LGBT community as the balance. We are all searching for balance right now. Our whole society. The whole human race. The gay community — we are examples of balance, because we have both the male and female inside each of us. And that’s pretty special. And when we can learn to love that about us more, then we’ll see that there are emotional distresses in every type of person in every walk and choice of person, and that there’s a lot of sadness and a lot of fear and it makes you perfect and normal. And we have to realize that our diversity is our strength, not only in our community but in our country, in the world. It’s loud and clear we better jump on that wagon, that everyone is different, and you have to celebrate those differences, otherwise we’re just going to destroy ourselves. So I appeal to the LGBT community and say, “Hold yourself as someone very special. Believe in who you are, and hold your balance. And that will help balance the rest of the world.”

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FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM

Books

New book highlights long history of LGBTQ oppression

‘Queer Enlightenments’ a reminder that inequality is nothing new

Published

23 hours ago

November 15, 2025

Terri Schlichenmeyer

(Book cover image courtesy of Atlantic Monthly Press)

‘Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers’
By Anthony Delaney
c.2025, Atlantic Monthly Press
$30/352 pages

It had to start somewhere.

The discrimination, the persecution, the inequality, it had a launching point. Can you put your finger on that date? Was it DADT, the 1950s scare, the Kinsey report? Certainly not Stonewall, or the Marriage Act, so where did it come from? In “Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers” by Anthony Delaney, the story of queer oppression goes back so much farther.

The first recorded instance of the word “homosexual” arrived loudly in the spring of 1868: Hungarian journalist Károly Mária Kerthbeny wrote a letter to German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs referring to “same-sex-attracted men” with that new term. Many people believe that this was the “invention” of homosexuality, but Delaney begs to differ.

“Queer histories run much deeper than this…” he says.

Take, for instance, the delightfully named Mrs. Clap, who ran a “House” in London in which men often met other men for “marriage.” On a February night in 1726, Mrs. Clap’s House was raided and 40 men were taken to jail, where they were put in filthy, dank confines until the courts could get to them. One of the men was ultimately hanged for the crime of sodomy. Mrs. Clap was pilloried, and then disappeared from history.

William Pulteney had a duel with John, Lord Hervey, over insults flung at the latter man. The truth: Hervey was, in fact, openly a “sodomite.” He and his companion, Ste Fox had even set up a home together.

Adopting your lover was common in 18th century London, in order to make him a legal heir. In about 1769, rumors spread that the lovely female spy, the Chevalier d’Éon, was actually Charles d’Éon de Beaumont, a man who had been dressing in feminine attire for much longer than his espionage career. Anne Lister’s masculine demeanor often left her an “outcast.” And as George Wilson brought his bride to North American in 1821, he confessed to loving men, thus becoming North America’s first official “female husband.”

Sometimes, history can be quite dry. So can author Anthony Delaney’s wit. Together, though, they work well inside “Queer Enlightenments.”

Undoubtedly, you well know that inequality and persecution aren’t new things – which Delaney underscores here – and queer ancestors faced them head-on, just as people do today. The twist, in this often-chilling narrative, is that punishments levied on 18th- and 19th-century queer folk was harsher and Delaney doesn’t soften those accounts for readers. Read this book, and you’re platform-side at a hanging, in jail with an ally, at a duel with a complicated basis, embedded in a King’s court, and on a ship with a man whose new wife generously ignored his secret. Most of these tales are set in Great Britain and Europe, but North America features some, and Delaney wraps up thing nicely for today’s relevance.

While there’s some amusing side-eyeing in this book, “Queer Enlightenments” is a bit on the heavy side, so give yourself time with it. Pick it up, though, and you’ll love it til the end.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

Movies

In solid ‘Nuremberg,’ the Nazis are still the bad guys

A condemnation of fascist mentality that permits extremist ideologies to take power

Published

23 hours ago

November 15, 2025

John Paul King

Russell Crowe and Rami Malek in ‘Nuremberg.’ (Photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

In any year prior to this one, there would be nothing controversial about “Nuremberg.”

In fact, writer/director James Vanderbilt’s historical drama – based on a book by Jack El-Hai about the relationship between Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring and the American psychiatrist who was tasked with studying him ahead of the 1945 international war crimes trial in the titular German city – would likely seem like a safely middle-of-the-road bet for a studio “prestige” project, a glossy and sharply emotional crowd-pleaser designed to attract awards while also reinforcing the kind of American values that almost everyone can reasonably agree upon.

This, however, is 2025. We no longer live in a culture where condemning an explicitly racist and inherently cruel authoritarian ideology feels like something we can all agree upon, and the tension that arises from that topsy-turvy realization (can we still call Nazis “bad?”) not only lends it an air of radical defiance, but gives it a sense of timely urgency – even though the true story it tells took place 80 years ago.

Constructed as an ensemble narrative, it intertwines the stories of multiple characters as it follows the behind-the-scenes efforts to bring the surviving leadership of Hitler’s fallen “Third Reich” to justice in the wake of World War II, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), who is assigned to spearhead the trials despite a lack of established precedent for enforcing international law. Its central focus, however, lands on Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), a psychiatrist working with the Military Intelligence Corps who is assigned to study the former Nazi leadership – especially Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s right-hand man and the top surviving officer of the defeated regime – and assess their competency to stand trial during the early stages of the Nuremberg hearings.

Aided by his translator, Sgt. Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), who also serves as his sounding board and companion, Kelley establishes a relationship with the highly intelligent and deeply arrogant Göring, hoping to gain insight into the Nazi mindset that might help prevent the atrocities perpetrated by him and his fellow defendants from ever happening again, yet entering into a treacherous game of psychological cat-and-mouse that threatens to compromise his position and potentially undermine the trial’s already-shaky chances for success.

For those who are already familiar with the history and outcome of the Nuremberg trials, there won’t be much in the way of suspense; most of us born in the generations after WWII, however, are probably not. They were a radical notion at the time, a daring effort to impose accountability at an international level upon world leaders who would violate human rights and commit atrocities for the sake of power, profit, and control. They were widely viewed with mistrust, seen by many as an opportunity for the surviving Nazi establishment to turn the fickle tides of world opinion by painting themselves as the victims of persecution. There was an undeniable desire for closure involved; the world wanted to put the tragedy – a multinational war that ended more human lives than any other conflict in history before it – in the rear-view mirror, and a rush to embrace a comforting fantasy of global unity that had already begun to disintegrate into a “cold war” that would last for decades. “Nuremberg” captures that tenuous sense of make-it-or-break-it uncertainty, giving us a portrait of the tribunal’s major players as flawed, overburdened, and far from united in their individual national agendas. These trials were an experiment in global justice, and they set the stage for a half-century’s worth of international cooperation, even if it was permeated by a deep sense of mistrust, all around.

Yet despite the political and personal undercurrents that run beneath its story, Vanderbilt’s movie holds tight to a higher imperative. Judge Jackson may have ambitions to become Chief Justice of SCOTUS, but his commitment to opposing authoritarian atrocity supersedes all other considerations; and while Kelley’s own ego may cloud his judgment in his dealings with Göring, his endgame of tripping up the Nazi Reichsmarschall never wavers. In the end, “Nuremberg” remains unequivocal in its goal – to fight against institutionalized racism, fetishized nationalism, and the amoral cruelty of a power-hungry autocrat.

Yes, it’s a “feel-good” movie for the times (if such a term can be used for a movie that includes harrowing real-life footage of Holocaust atrocities), a reinforcement of what now feels like an uncomfortably old-fashioned set of basic values in the face of a clear and present danger; mounted with all the high-dollar immersive “feels” that Hollywood can provide, it offers up a period piece which comments by mere implication on the tides of current-day history-in-the-making, and evokes an old spirit of American humanism as it wrangles with the complexities of politics, ethics, and justice that endure unabated today. At the same time, it reminds us that justice is shaped by power, and that it’s never a sure bet that it will prevail.

Yet while it’s every inch the well-produced, slick slice of Hollywood-style history, “Nuremberg” doesn’t deliver the kind of definitive closure we might long for in our troubled times. For all its classic bravado and heartfelt idealism, it can’t deliver the comforting reassurances we desire because history itself does not provide them. The trials were not an unequivocal triumph; though they may have set a precedent in bringing accountability to power on the world stage, it’s one which, eight decades later, has yet to be fully realized. Vanderbilt doesn’t try to rewrite the facts to make them more satisfying, or soften the blow of their hard lessons, and while his movie certainly feels conscious of the precarious times in which it arrives, it doesn’t try to give us the kind of wish-fulfillment ending we might long to see – which ultimately gives it a ring of bitter truth and reminds us that our world continues to suffer from the evil of corrupt men, even when they are defeated.

It’s a movie populated with outstanding performances. Crowe delivers his most impressive turn in years as the chillingly malevolent Göring, and Malek channels all his intensity into Kelley to create a powerfully relatable flawed hero for us to cheer; Shannon shines as the idealistic but practical Jackson, and Woodall provides a likable everyman solidity to counter Malek’s volatile intensity. It might feel early to talk about awards, but it will be no surprise if some of these names end up in the pool of this year’s contenders.

Is “Nuremberg” the anti-Nazi movie we need right now? It certainly seems to position itself as such, and it admittedly delivers an unequivocal condemnation of the kind of fascist, inhuman mentality that permits such extremist ideologies to take power. In the end, though, it leaves us with the awareness that any victory over such evil can only ever be a measured against the loss and tragedy that is left in its wake – and that the best victory of all is to stop it before it starts.

In 2025, that feels like small comfort – but it’s enough to make Vanderbilt’s slick historical drama a worthy slice of inspiration to propel us into the fight that faces us in 2026 and beyond.