by Camille on Thu Aug 20, 2009 9:15 pm
Monday, August 10, 2009. Friant, Table Mountain Casino.
As the number of Melissa Etheridge concerts I’ve attended climbed higher and higher, I kept an eye out for which one would be my 100th. With my 98th concert being in Costa Mesa, and my 99th concert being in Saratoga, one more concert after that meant my 100th concert would be in . . . Friant.
Friant. Free-ant? Fry-awnt? Free-ahn-tay? I didn’t know how to pronounce the name of the city, let alone know where to find it on a map. If it didn’t have a comma and a ‘CA’ after it I wouldn’t have known it was in California. I’ve lived in California my whole life and had never heard of a city called Friant. When we found out Melissa would be playing a concert in Friant, Rhondda let me know Friant is close to the city of Fresno. Fresno? The city of Fresno is known for . . . . OK I don’t even know what the city of Fresno is known for. It’s inland Central California and they got farm land out there, and some buildings and stuff. I have been to Fresno, and the city itself was not the most glamorous city ever, shall we say.
I’ve seen Melissa play all over the United States and Canada and Holland, from small venues like The Roxy in 2002 to Giant Stadium for the Live Earth concert in 2007. Naturally, I wanted my 100th concert to be special. I contemplated attending one more concert anywhere in the US before the California shows so the Saratoga concert would be my 100th. Saratoga is a beautiful city, and I was planning on attending the Saratoga concert with my family, and it would have been really cool to experience it with them. But I’d already planned one cross-country trip this year to see MLE, and didn’t feel like adding another one in simply to play with destiny.
Ah well. In all my nearly ten years of Melissa concerts, I’ve found the most important ingredients for an excellent concert experience are MLE singing her songs and doing her thing, and being surrounded by friends and concert buddies. The Friant concert would have both. I accepted that fate made it so my 100th concert would be in Fresno, CA. No, make that outer Fresno.
If I didn’t have my GPS giving me turn by turn directions, I would have thought I’d gotten lost on my way to Friant. Highways turned into freeways turned into streets turned into roads lined with cow farms and produce. I plodded forward, knowing sometimes Melissa plays in the middle of nowhere, and venues can appear like a desert oasis. Sure enough, The Table Mountain Casino appeared, and the road lead me straight into the parking structure.
I had some time to kill since my friends had not arrived yet, so I entered the casino and checked out the lay of the land and slowly gambled away eight bucks on slot machine poker, then headed out front of the casino and sat on a bench by the entrance. I checked on my iPhone to see who had already responded to my hours-old post on Facebook about heading to my 100th MLE concert. After that I simply enjoyed the day by letting the hot Fresno summer sun shine down on me for some time, turning myself into a little baked bean. Shortly before 6 PM I called Kel, and she informed me she, Rhondda, Jib and Kim had just arrived and were at Will Call.
“Happy 100th!” Rhondda, Kel, Jib and Kim all wished me good tidings as I thanked them and hugged them all hello in front of the Will Call window. “We’re in Row E,” Rhondda informed me, sounding the tiniest bit bummed. The casino owned rights to the first two rows, and MEIN had the three rows after that; the first two of MEIN’s being determined by random lottery. “Oh that’s all right,” I said. Of course we always hope to win the lottery, but that happens very rarely for Rhondda and I. Row 5 was fine. We were all pretty hungry to so we headed to the restaurant at the far end of the casino.
I was a little fidgety while waiting in line at the restaurant. There was something I wanted to ask Rhondda, but didn’t want to ask her at the same time. I searched for the right words, and finally came up with, “My beanie is in my car, and there’s a little something I would like to give Melissa if I get the chance. Will you let me know when might be a good time for me to go get them?” Rhondda casually responded, “Now might be a good time, ‘cause we gotta eat, and you never know how long that takes, plus we want to go scope out our seats.” “All right well I’ll go get my beanie now,” I said.
Oooooh. Of course, I’d been HOPING I might get the opportunity to meet with MLE and hand her something for my 100th show, ‘cause Rhondda got to meet with MLE for her 100th, and so did the Brits, and a few other fans did as well. But I didn’t want be presumptive and flat out ask Rhondda and perhaps spoil any surprise. I figured I did a pretty good job of asking a question without asking it and she answered the question without answering it.
I walked to my car full of even more hope I might be getting the chance to meet with MLE. Melissa has given so much to me over the years, been so generous and so kind, I wanted to give something back to her. I came up with an idea, and I worked on the gift for months. It was something I put my heart, soul, gratitude and love in.
My little something wasn’t exactly little. I put the gift in a messenger bag and felt the weight of it as I slipped the bag’s strap down over my shoulder. Ooooh I sure hoped I could give it to Melissa in person. I hoped I hoped I hoped.
I returned to the restaurant, and Rhondda, Kel, Kim and I were seated at a table in the back. We were joined a little later by Frank, Tea Rose, Lisa, Angie and Dawn. The meal was filled with lots of laughter and stories of MLE concerts. In the back of my head, I was cognizant of the time, because I’m familiar with the approximate time Melissa does sound check and about when she’ll do Meety-Greeties. 6:30 PM came and went as I nervously nibbled on some lettuce. The closer it got to 7 PM, the more I started thinking perhaps I was not going to get a Meety-Greety after all.
Tink tink tink tink! “A toast!” Rhondda said shortly before 7 PM as she struck her fork against her glass. “A toast to Camille and her 100th concert!” she said. “Yay! Hurray Camille! Congratulations! Here’s to 100 more!” the rest of my friends said to me. “Thanks you guys! Cheers to you!” I told them in return. We raised our glasses and clinked them together in celebration: Chink! Chink! Chink! Chink! Well no wait- not exactly. The waitress forgot to bring Kel her water so I had Kel toast with her empty soup cup. It was more like: Chink! Chink! Chink! Tonk!
“Come on babe! We gotta get going! We got a Meet and Greet to go to!” Rhondda said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out two laminates and placed one of them on the table before me. OH SWEET! LAMINATES RULE! I was going to get a Meety-Greety with Melissa after all! HURRAY!!!
Rhondda and I waved bye-bye to our friends and made a quick pit stop in the ladies room where I donned my red beanie, then we had to hustle buns to get to the front of the venue. I was smiling the whole way there.
We timed it perfectly because right as we approached the doors to the venue, the left set of doors opened up and Stephanie came out. “Why don’t you get your tickets scanned,” Stephanie said to us. We got our concert tickets out and had the ushers scan them and we entered through the open set of doors on the right. “Follow me,” Stephanie said, and we dutifully followed Stephanie through the venue. I noticed Stephanie still keeps a walkie-talkie in her back pocket with a little stuffed animal mouse on the top of the antennae.
Stephanie knew I was celebrating my 100th concert, and as she was walking she turned and tossed out a question, “So, how much credit card debt are you in to get to this point?” I responded, “None, actually.” She said, “Wow, I wish I could say the same.” Stephanie kept walking us to the front of the venue, then over to the side wall on the left, then she opened a venue door. I walked through the door and found myself . . . in a parking lot.
What? Outside? In a parking lot?
I stopped and I looked around me at parked cars, and more parked cars, and more parked cars. Stephanie must have sensed my confusion, because she said, “You’ve been Punk’d!” Rhondda and I started laughing. “Are you taking us out back to shoot us?” Rhondda asked, and Stephanie laughed. Stephanie continued leading us along, and I saw Steven Girmant, with his perpetual open-mouthed smile, leaning up against the back of what appeared to be a really nice brown tour bus or trailer. Next to Steven was Dave, the gentleman in charge of lighting. I joined in the fun and asked, “Is my Meet and Greet with Steven?” Stephanie laughed and said, “Yes! There’s Steven . . . there’s Dave . . . there’s the trash. Thank you! Hope you liked it.” Steven had heard us joking and he laughed and said, “Hi!” Stephanie paused in front of Steven long enough for me to think I really had been Punk’d, and we were all laughing.
“Follow me, you guys,” Stephanie said, and continued to walk between the shiny brown trailer and the casino wall. “We’re going in here,” she said. For a second there, when Stephanie said ‘we’re going in here’, I thought she meant the trailer. She walked a few more steps . . . then she put her hand on the trailer door. “Wait, in here?” I asked, realizing she really had meant the trailer. Stephanie opened the trailer door, and I stopped at the open doorway. I’d hesitated going in since I know band trailers are strictly off-limits to fans. “In we go,” Stephanie encouraged me. Since Stephanie had opened the trailer door and was patiently waiting for me to enter, I figured she really did mean it, so up the trailer steps I went.
I noticed immediately it was a top-of-the-line trailer. Beige carpet lined the steps up to the mostly tan accoutrements of the pimped-out lavish trailer interior. The curtains were all pulled down to block out the sun and any on-lookers, but the inside of the trailer was well lit with internal lighting. Two tan, plush couches lined the sides of the trailer, which also contained a kitchen area, and I could see a bedroom in the back. Rhondda followed me up the stairs, as did Stephanie after closing the door behind her.
“There are the couches, there’s the kitchen area,” Stephanie our Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Tour Guide began as she pointed out amenities to me and Rhondda as she walked through the trailer. I saw Stephanie was heading towards the bedroom in the back, and I jokingly said, “I know this is a special Meet and Greet, but I’m not going in the bedroom!” Both Rhondda and Stephanie laughed. Stephanie closed the door to the bedroom, then turned and pointed out some sandwiches and food on the counter near the sink.
“Well, sit down you guys, it might be a few minutes,” Stephanie said to me and Rhondda. Stephanie sat down on the couch closest to the door, and I sat on the couch directly across from her, and Rhondda sat next to me on my right. “Be careful, you might not be able to get back up,” Stephanie warned us as we felt ourselves slowly sink further down into the settee. “Oooooh, these are nice,” I said, and rubbed my hands along the couch seemingly made out of suede clouds. I took off my messenger bag, took the gift for Melissa out, and set both between Rhondda and me.
I was rather curious about our location. “So . . . what are we doing in here?” I asked Stephanie.
Stephanie told us, “This is the dressing room. The casino doesn’t have proper dressing rooms. They rent out these trailers and the talent use these. This is what they gave us, so this is what we deal with.”
When Stephanie first said the words ‘dressing room’, two thoughts dashed through my head. First, I thought she was completely joking. Second, I nearly jumped up and threw myself out of the trailer, because I’ve never heard of fans being allowed in Melissa’s dressing room. But I could tell by Stephanie’s temperament she was serious, and I figured since Stephanie had led us into the trailer and Steven had witnessed it, everything was on the up-and-up.
I turned my head to look at Rhondda, who returned a stoic yet happy look back to me. I knew we were both thinking the same thing- HOLY CRAP WE ARE IN MELISSA ETHERIDGE’S DRESSING ROOM!!! I must admit both Rhondda and I have the ability to remain cool under mind-blowing circumstances, because we both simply slightly raised our eyebrows, smiled, and turned our heads back to Stephanie.
Stephanie was relaxed and laid-back, occasionally playing with her hair, and she initiated small talk between the three of us. She asked me what I’d been doing since returning home last summer, and we talked about television, and we talked about free television promotions not being very desirable because they result in higher bills after the free television promotions are over. We continued our little chit-chat for a minute or two, then the trailer door opened.
I could hear her before I could see her. I knew who it was entering the trailer. A big head with blond dyed-hair flowing over tiny little shoulders was coming up the stairs. She was finishing up a conversation with Steven, who was behind her. Up the stairs she came, and it would seem like she had one final step to climb up, but nope, she’s only five foot three, and that was it.
Melissa stood at the head of the trailer, and a warm wave of energy emanating from her slowly permeated the room I felt it lightly touch upon my skin. For an individual somewhat small of stature, she sure has the presence of a giant. I could see Melissa was already dressed for the evening’s performance. She was wearing a mustard-yellow t-shirt covered by a soft, light blue over-shirt, blue jeans, and brown sneakers. She had full make-up on for the evening complete with a bit of brown eye-shadow, and a few beaded necklaces hung around her neck.
Rhondda and I rose to our feet.
“Where are we? It’s hot,” Melissa said to Rhondda and I, and she grabbed the lower edges of her over-shirt and fanned them in and out for a bit of a breeze.
“B.F.E.?” Rhondda responded, and it made Melissa laugh.
“It’s hot, and I’m wearing a beanie,” I said, feeling a little like a goofball for wearing a beanie when it was so hot outside. Melissa smiled at me and I followed with my explanation, “But it’s cold in here and in the venue. Plus, it’s the beanie I wore in San Francisco back in 2004 when you guys started recognizing me. I wanted to wear it tonight to tie in my 100th concert.” Melissa, Steven, and Stephanie all recognized the red beanie I was wearing and smiled.
Melissa had moved towards me and was extending her arms up, as was I, and we gave each other a nice, big, squishy, rock star buddy/rock star buddy fan hug. Melissa was chalk full of energy as she looked into my eyes and jubilantly said, “So WOW! 100 SHOWS!” “Yeah it’s been great!” I said back to her.
Melissa stood before us, and before we got lost in conversation or anything else happened, there was something I wanted to make sure I did. “Since it’s my 100th show, I wanted to do something special for you. I wanted to give you a gift,” I said.
“Awww, you don’t have to get me anything!” said Melissa.
I continued with, “Oh, I know. Well, since I know you like my reviews . . . I went ahead and put something together for you.” I turned and picked up her gift from the couch, then faced her again and held her gift out in front of me. What I was holding was a binder containing all of the MLE concert and performance reviews I’ve written, with artwork on the front, side and back of the binder resembling Tibetan prayer flags. “There are thirty-seven reviews; over three hundred pages. I put page numbers on them, indexed them, made them all pretty. There are even photo scans in there.”
“Oh thank you! Thank you,” Melissa said as she took the binder in her hands and started flipping through some of the tabs.
I said, “I also wrote something and put it in there, it’s called ‘100 Concerts, Hundreds of Memories’. Except the version in there is ‘99 Concerts, Hundreds of Memories’ because tonight is happening right now.” Melissa paused and looked up with a smile and said, “Right, right.” I let her peruse through the tabs for a few seconds, then continued with, “I figure some day if you want to go back and reminisce, there they are.”
“Aww, thank you!” Melissa said. She flipped through a few more tabs, then closed the binder back up. She turned and handed the book to Stephanie, then turned back around to chat with us.
The first question I wanted to ask her was waiting at the tip of my tongue. “How is the new album coming along?” I asked in eager anticipation.
“Great! Great! It’s going to be HUUUGE.” Melissa’s eyes got really big and she brought her fists up to her chest as if trying to grasp the immensity of the project.
“Is it done yet?” I asked.
“There are no vocals yet, just rough mixes,” Melissa said. “We laid down the guitar, now I gotta go back and do all the vocals, the recording. John Shanks is putting it all together. You guys remember John Shanks?”
“Yeah, I saw him,” I said, remembering back to the first MLE concerts I’d seen in which John Shanks had played guitar.
“Yeah, Shanks,” Rhondda said, who has also seen him play with MLE a bunch of times.
“You can see John in the old videos. He had big hair back then.” Melissa chuckled as she moved her hands above her head to signify big hair.
“I remember Fritz in those old videos. He had wild and crazy hair too,” I said, and the three of us shared a good laugh remembering old band hairdos.
Melissa continued telling us about the new album. “It’s coming along great. It’s going to be BIG. And HUGE. John is really playing it up. In fact . . . I don’t think I’m going to call it Songs of Fear and Love anymore. The songs are more . …” Melissa paused as she searched for a word, “ . . . edgy.” She seemed to like the word she landed on.
“How about ‘Edgy Songs of Fear and Love’?” I recommended. Melissa laughed at my album title recommendation.
She continued with enthusiasm, “The songs will require a big performance and voice from me. I’ll really have to prepare for it. It’s gonna take a lot, I’m really going to have to sing.” Rhondda and my eyes were really big and we were slightly leaning forward listening to her heartily tell us of her new album.
“When is the new album going to be ready?” Rhondda asked.
Melissa responded, “I don’t know exactly. They take time. I am excited to tour next year, to put these songs out there.”
“Are you going to tour with the band?” I inquired.
“I do want to tour with a band,” Melissa said, and she knew there were certain individuals I meant when I referred to the band. “You know, Fritz, he’s on tour with Jackson Browne, they have him on retainer, so he kind of belongs to them. And Philip, he’s got his own thing going. And Mark, Mark, I love him like a brother. I don’t know how everything is going to turn out next year.” Her eyes looked to me to see if I understood, and I nodded, signifying I understood things were up in the air and final decisions regarding next year’s touring band had not been made yet.
Rhondda asked Melissa, “The covers you are doing- how do you choose the songs?”
“I’m doing songs that have deep meaning to me,” Melissa said. She brought her hands up against her chest to illustrate the close feeling the songs have for her. “Some are the top ten or fifteen favorite songs of mine, in my life. They have different meanings to me. I didn’t want to cover them before, because I didn’t want to put them out there and make them mine. But I want to do that now. I want to share them with the fans.”
Rhondda said, “They seem to be older songs, songs from your youth.”
Melissa agreed and said, “The song I’m playing tonight is more contemporary, from the past ten or fifteen years.”
I was glad the subject of the cover songs came up. There was definitely something I wanted to tell her. “Your cover of Stay With Me. I don’t know what you did, but you NAILED it. My two top performances of yours are the Grammy’s, and then Stay With Me, even though I wasn’t there. The performance has been bringing tears to fans’ eyes, and bringing them to their knees. I love what you did with it.”
“I really did see the movie (The Rose) a bunch of times, and I LOVE that song,” Melissa said. “It has such meaning for me.” Referring to her performance of Stay With Me, she said, “I saw the video of it on YouTube. I listened to it, and thought it sounded . . . slow.”
“It sounded PERFECT,” I said.
“Oh, thank you,” said Melissa. “I’m doing another cover tonight. I think you’re really going to like it. It’s going to be a ninety minute show- I don’t have that much time.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
Melissa said, “It’s part of the deal with the casino. I get the money, and the casino tells me how long I can play. I would play longer if I could. You guys know how I like to play longer. I try not to do too many of these. I just did a meet and greet with the high rollers. I don’t mind doing it. It’s part of the whole thing.” Rhondda and I nodded our heads knowingly.
Steven had left the trailer a minute prior, and the trailer door opened up again and a couple followed Steven in. Melissa turned her head to look at them, and I thought since I’d given Melissa her gift and we’d asked her a few questions, our meet and greet was over. I was ready to thank Melissa and give her another hug. Melissa reached out her right hand and gently touched my upper arm, and put her left hand out and directed Rhondda and I, “Wait here- stay right here- don’t go anywhere. I gotta do this. I’ll be back.”
“OK, sure,” Rhondda and I said.
Don’t go anywhere? First of all, I would do just about anything Melissa asked of me. Second of all, if Melissa wanted me to stay where I was so she could talk to me some more, I was perfectly fine with that. Easiest directions in my life I’ve ever been asked to follow. Third of all, we were in a trailer with one door- there wasn’t anywhere for us to go! Melissa turned to meet the couple, and as requested, Rhondda and I stayed where we were.
I looked at Rhondda, and she looked at me, and without exchanging any words, we acknowledged with our eyes and smiles how awesome it was our Meet and Greet would be continuing. I was a little nervous, though. I had planned on giving Melissa the gift and asking her a question or two, but I asked Rhondda, “Do you have more questions to ask her? Go for it! I’m out!” Rhondda laughed and said she had more questions to ask MLE. I told her to please do so, while my head raced and came up with more things I could chat about with MLE.
I looked at Stephanie, who was still sitting on the couch and had the binder open on her lap and seemed to be engrossed in it. I walked the few steps over to where Stephanie was. I told her, “I wanted to give the reviews to Melissa. Since the message boards were revamped, all of the reviews are gone now, except for a few recent ones. That’s the only place they exist.” I followed up with, “Don’t worry, it’s printed on recycled paper.” Stephanie chuckled, and said, “We’ll put this in the office.” “Oh cool,” I said, having no idea what or where ‘the office’ was, but really liked her answer nonetheless.
“Silent Legacy,” Stephanie said as she pointed to the middle of a page, “I remember that.” I turned and tilted my head down to see what she was looking at. Having written the contents of the binder, I was very familiar with it, and I saw she was looking at one of the reviews from the Lucky Tour.
“Right, the three songs in a row,” I said.
“The Trilogy,” said Rhondda, who only needs the tiniest of hints to identify a MLE reference. We were all referring to ‘The Trilogy’, which is how my friends and I refer to three of Melissa’s meaningful songs played in sequence: Silent Legacy, Scarecrow, and Tuesday Morning. Stephanie continued, “I remember that was when we used to get ready for the last part of the show.”
“Have you ever missed a cue? Have you ever missed leading Melissa off the stage with a flashlight?” I asked her.
Stephanie thought, then said, “No, it becomes second nature.”
I asked, “You ever get tired of it? Of listening to the music?”
“I do enjoy the music,” said Stephanie. She thought a bit more and said, “Sometimes it becomes like ambient noise. One time I was supposed to help out with a guitar change. They’d asked me to help out, and I was in the back and on the phone, and the door opened up and I heard the song and realized I was supposed to be out at the stage. I literally dropped the phone right then to end the call and ran to the stage.” Rhondda and I laughed at her story.
“I saw you come out and watch the show several times in Saratoga, over on the side,” I told Stephanie.
Stephanie said, “I was enjoying Melissa, and the cricket singing back up.”
Rhondda and I laughed and Rhondda made little cricket noises, “Eeh-eeh! Eeh-eeh! Eeh-eeh!”
“The crickets!” said Melissa, who had finished her other Meet and Greet and turned to rejoin our conversation. “They were so loud!” Since I’d moved a few feet across the room, Rhondda was now on my left and Melissa was in front of me to my right.
“They were louder than you!” said Rhondda, and we all laughed about the noisy crickets.
“You could hear them during a few songs,” said Stephanie.
Rhondda said to Melissa, “Last night’s show was amazing. The cover, Sylvia’s Mother, was great. You even mentioned it later- ‘I want to come over, please Mrs. Avery’.” The four of us laughed.
“That was fun,” Melissa said.
I told Melissa the crickets could be heard on the video recordings I’d obtained at the show. Rhondda mentioned not being able to find a boot of I’ll Be There and Let’s Get It On, the cover songs Melissa did in Detroit. Melissa said about the second song, “Oh I shouldn’t have done that on the piano, it’s really a guitar song.”
Stephanie piped up, “Are you crazy? The fans were losing their minds! They LOVED it!”
“Really?” Melissa asked. “Yeah really!” Stephanie said. “Oh, OK,” said Melissa, and she laughed.
I asked Melissa if she would be debuting any more new songs. “Mmmm. I’m not sure. I did Away, and people . . .” Melissa paused, searching for the right words.
“That threw people for a loop!” Rhondda said.
Melissa guffawed and continued, “Yeah, you know, I put that out there, and when I saw the fans’ reactions to it, ‘cause I read what the fans were saying about it, I was like, ‘oh, that’s not what I meant.’ They were, they were . . . it was just one of those things . . . you know, in a marriage, you have those things, and that’s all it was.” Melissa was gesturing to us with her hand forward, as if looking for comprehension. She saw we were both nodding at her with full understanding, and she quickly straightened back up.
Melissa let us in on a tidbit of information, “I actually went back, and I added some lyrics to the end so people will understand, ‘honey it’s all right, let’s kiss and make up’ sort of thing. So I changed it, I added that at the end.” Rhondda and I were smiling really big and loving the fact Melissa had shared that nugget with us. Melissa followed with, “Actually, John, he’s taking the songs, he’s making them all bigger. He already did that with Indiana.”
“As it should be,” piped up Stephanie again. Melissa laughed and turned to the Indiana resident sitting on the couch.
“Yeah play that one up,” Stephanie said. “That’s a good one.”
Melissa laughed and informed us, “Stephanie likes that song. She’s an Indiana girl, she likes the Colts.” My ears instantly popped up with the reference to my favorite football team. Melissa temporarily shifted into football fan mode and said, “My Chiefs! Oh the Chiefs. I have a whole new team.” She seemed ever so slightly pained to speak of the current status of her beloved Chiefs, and she quickly resumed chatting to us about the new album.
“So the drummer, he’s amazing, he’s kind of a drum geek, and he’s an Italian guy. We’ve got Jaime on the keyboards, he was the guy who . . .” All of a sudden, Melissa paused and with her hands mid-gesture in the air, turned her head and said to Steven with a laugh, “Uh oh, I guess it’s out now!” It was as if it dawned on her she was giving Rhondda and I information about her album and she could sense we were anxiously anticipating sharing the information with our fellow fans. I said to Melissa, “Hey, if you don’t want me to post something, let me know. I’ll hold off on posting it.” Then I followed with, “ . . . for 24 hours!” Steven laughed and said with a smirk, “I’m surprised you’re not Tweeting the Meet and Greet.” Everyone in the room laughed, and I put my hands behind my back and pretended to be typing away on a cellular device. “It’s already up!” I said, and everyone laughed again. Melissa didn’t ask us not to share anything, she simply shrugged it off with a smile, and looked to Rhondda for even more questions.
Rhondda mentioned not being able to Tweet the set list in Saratoga due to poor cellular signal, and Melissa, Steven and Stephanie all went, “Awwww!” Rhondda told Melissa she follows John Shanks on Twitter, and Shanks had recently Twittered about working with Melissa.
“John, he’s a busy guy,” Melissa said. “He works with a bunch of different artists. He works with Miley Cyrus . . .”
Rhondda said, “Yeah I saw his Tweet about working with Miley.”
Melissa said, “Miley- she’s a fan of mine. She wants to do a song with me. I said Yes I would do it. The record company said No.” She shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head to the side.
I asked Melissa, “Would you ever do anything if your record company told you No?” My question caught her a little off guard, but it was only because I had not understood what she had said.
“Oh not my record company. My record company is great,” she said.
I realized what she had meant and said, “Oh, Miley’s record company said No.” Melissa nodded.
Referring to the non-mainstream combination and perhaps the reason Miley’s record company said no, Rhondda said, “They didn’t want to put the Teeny Bopper and the crazy lesbian together, right?”
Melissa laughed and said, “You got it.” Melissa continued, “I like her song The Climb. You know that one?”
At first, I nodded. But then I shook my head side to side and said, “Actually, no. I don’t. We’re slightly out of that demographic.” The three of us laughed.
“They don’t play that on KFOG!” said Rhondda, and we laughed again.
“I love KFOG!” Melissa added. Melissa got back on the subject of Shanks- “John said he wants to help with promo stuff later this year.”
This time Rhondda was caught off guard. “You mean to play with you?” she asked.
Melissa said, “I don’t know about that, but he wants to help with the promotion.”
Rhondda went on to ask Melissa about a recent article posted on AfterEllen regarding a possible musical Melissa might do with Linda Wallem.
“Linda! She is my BEST friend!” said Melissa. “I’ve been wanting to do something with Linda for a long time. She developed a show for me years ago. She’s doing a show now, Nurse Jackie.”
“Maybe you could do a guest spot on Nurse Jackie!” I offered.
“Me? No, but maybe Tammy,” said Melissa. “Tammy has a few projects going on right now.”
“That would be cool,” I said. “It was fun when we used to go watch tapings of Committed.”
Melissa’s eyes lit up and she looked right at me and smiled and I could tell we were both thinking back to how fun it was to attend tapings of Tammy’s show.
“Yeah that was fun! They were making bigger parts for her, but then the show got cancelled.” Melissa again shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head to the side.
Rhondda mentioned how years ago, Melissa had wanted to do a show on Broadway.
Melissa said, “Yeah, Broadway. I wanted to do a one woman show. But I’d have to do like eight shows a week . . .”
“And you’d have to move to New York,” Rhondda added.
“Right, New York. It would have taken me away,” Melissa continued. “Plus I thought, ‘Oh wait, that’s me! Only me!’ I don’t want it to be only me. I want to write it and put it out there. I want to be more like Elton John- put it out there and sit back and win a Tony.”
Rhondda and I laughed and nodded in agreement with Melissa’s plan. All of the things we’d been chatting about were circling in my head, and I had to ask her, “How do you choose what you do? You must absolutely be inundated with requests.”
Melissa nodded her head and rolled her eyes. “I get SOOOO MANY requests. I have to turn down 99% of the requests I get. There just isn’t enough time for me to do everything. Every now and then something comes along and I really want to do it. But I have to choose. Time is my most valuable commodity. I have to balance that with family.”
“Yeah, family first,” I agreed.
Mention of family put Melissa into proud momma mode. “The twins are so big now!” Melissa said, and she held her hand out to show us how tall they are getting. “They’re almost three!” Rhondda and I smiled at the mention of her wee ones. Melissa smiled big thinking about the mini-‘Ridges, then returned to the topic at hand.
“When I choose something, it’s about . . . I won’t ever do a fundraiser to make money for a drug company. It’s gotta be about raising awareness, or about being healthy, that sort of thing. My staff has to help me with my calendar,” she said as she looked to both Steven and Stephanie. “There are so many things I want to do, still things I have to do. I want to tour Europe next year.”
“Yeah Europe!” Both Rhondda and I said.
“They are so mad at me!” Melissa confessed with raised eyebrows. “And Australia.”
“We’ll go there too!” said Rhondda and I.
Melissa wasn’t done yet. “And Asia,” she said. “I want to be in world markets.”
Rhondda and I were nodding so much I thought our heads might fall off.
Melissa continued with, “My kids are old enough now, they’re at the point where they understand Momma may have to go away for a few weeks. This album will be big. You guys are going to have to deal with me playing in arenas again.” I immediately felt and imagined Melissa’s intention, and again both Rhondda and I said, “We’ll be there!”
“There are many so things I want to do. You know, these days, I am so in the Now, it’s important to be in the Now. There was a magazine article, years ago, and it . . . the magazine . . .”
Melissa paused and was mentally searching for the name of the magazine. I simply looked to the Raincylopedia to my left, and faster than Google, Raindda said, “Science of the Mind.” I swear, I don’t know how Rhondda does it, but she does.
“Science of the Mind,” Melissa concurred, and I think she was equally impressed with Rhondda’s recollection abilities. “Years ago, I read that, and it’s about creating what you imagine. I want to work with people like that . . .”
“GATE,” said Rhondda within a fraction of a second.
Melissa was again tickled by Rhondda’s lightening fast response. “Right, GATE. Jim Carrey, I sent a message to him. The movie Yes Man, in that movie . . . there are points in that movie . . . I can tell that he really gets it. So I put an e-mail together, and they contacted me.”
“I want to work with people who want to make movies and entertainment with messages. Like I did with The Awakening. I want to . . . put my messages out there . . . to uplift people. I feel like I’m just getting started.” Melissa was characteristically gesticulating with her hands as she told us her plans.
“Have you ever thought about creating ‘The Melissa Etheridge Foundation for . . .’?” I asked and intentionally left the full name of a foundation open since Melissa has so many causes and does so many different things.
She thought for a second and said, “I feel like I already have that with everything I do.”
Hearing Melissa talk about all of the projects she’s working on and planning to work on was filling me up with pride for my rock star buddy. I pointed to Rhondda and myself and I told Melissa, “You know, I feel so lucky, we get to hear what fans have to say, and hear about how much you mean to them, and how you shape their lives, the differences you make. It’s been absolutely amazing following your career and watching everything you do.” Melissa’s eyes had been studying me intently as I spoke, seeming to study my face and really listening to what I had to say.
“Oh thank you!” Melissa said. She followed with, “You’ve been to a hundred shows now!”
<<continued next post>>
i have not truely lived!!!! someday,maybe!! sounds like a great show.....congratulations camille.....100 shows!!!! holy crap!!
I'm not far behind you 
Hope spmeone got the cover as I am not familiar with that song but it sounds like it was incredible!! 
Thanks, as always, for the setlist and other info, Rhondda 
I loved when she sang..."I wish I was special.." and someone yelled out, "you are!!!". I loved when we rushed the stage too and I was inches from her! 
Officially the BEST concert I've ever ever went to! 
was I was in row U but just the fact that I got to go was so cool. I could have gotten closer but I didn't tell my mom and she says she will go with me again. I am going to do it with MEIN next time. It will be a first for me to go with MEIN. I have been a member for 9 years. I really can't say anymore but wow! I have only been to 7 live shows but I am lucky. I got to see her live for free 3 times. Each time I go it is so much fun and I am a wild person when I go.
Ruined the audio on a great cover- thanks
summer with the rest of the gang 