Go to see Melissa Etheridge in concert these days and you’ll hear her playing wicked solos and heady leads as the primary guitarist in her band.
But she’ll acknowledge that wasn’t always the case — and, in fact, it’s been a role Etheridge has only really embraced during the past 15 or so years.
“Y’know, I’ve always had these great lead guitar players,” Etheridge — a three-time Grammy Award winner who recently received her first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination and who will release her 17th studio album, Rise, on March 27 — tells us via Zoom from her home near Los Angeles.
“I had John Shanks. On my albums I’ve got Waddy Wachtel. I’ve got Pete Thorn, Steuart Smith, all these great players, right?
“My wife, when we first got together about 20 years ago, she goes, ‘Why don’t you play that?’ I’m like, well, I never really did that… If you went and saw me live I would kill it; I know I was, like, one of the top acoustic guitar players.
“So about 15 years ago I started to really dive into it… and haven’t stopped since.”
Etheridge, who started playing guitar when she was eight years old, has always been open to the idea of playing electric. The Leavenworth, Kansas native owned “a Frankensteined Fender that a guy who I was in a band with had painted purple” when she was a teenager.
But during her junior year of high school she decided she wanted something better, so she and her father went to Kansas City and came home with a ’78 Gibson Les Paul Custom.
“The heaviest thing you can imagine,” she says now, with a laugh.
It went with Etheridge to the Berklee College of Music and then to California, but she was primarily playing solo gigs and notes that “there’s not much you can do with an electric guitar when you’re playing in a lounge, right?”
“When I was playing acoustic, I was very influenced by Richie Havens and José Feliciano,” she adds. “They both had this powerful way of playing an acoustic guitar, so I really followed that. And then Keith Richards; when I heard the Rolling Stones stuff, I felt like, ‘I can do that!’ Those three — to me, that’s guitar playing.”
After Etheridge signed with Island Records during the mid-’80s, executive producer Rob Fabroni introduced her to Bonnie Raitt, who made an immediate impact on Etheridge’s electric side.
Bonnie Raitt took me under her wing. She told me, ‘That Les Paul’s too heavy for you, honey. You’re not gonna be able to do that.’”
— Melissa Etheridge
“She took me under her wing,” Etheridge recalls. “She told me, ‘That Les Paul’s too heavy for you, honey. You’re not gonna be able to do that.’ So she took me to Norm’s Rare Guitars when it was deep in the Valley. I traded in my Les Paul for a Strat… although I wish I still had that Les Paul, ’cause it’d be worth a lot of money now.
“If I knew where it was I’d go find it; I’ve even asked Norm, but he doesn’t have any records of the things he sold from that long ago. But just recently somebody gifted me a 1979 Les Paul, so that makes up for a little bit.”
Wachtel, who played on three of Etheridge’s first four albums, recalls that at that time “she was a really great rhythm player — really tight and aggressive. Her first song, ‘Gimme Some Water,’ was fantastic. She was such a strong, strong writer, singer, a presence.
“I remember when ‘Come to My Window’ came up, she played me a demo of it and I said, ‘This is a smash, Melissa. This tune is gonna do it.’ And it did.”
Etheridge did sling electric guitars across her back for the cover of her self-titled 1988 debut and her third, Never Enough, in 1992. But her more recent determination led her to woodshed, and she reached out to the well-credentialed Thorn — who played with Etheridge during the early 2010s — for a primer.
“He’s an incredible teacher,” Etheridge says. “When I told Pete I wanted to play more, he said, ‘You need a Gibson Les Paul Custom,’ and I went out and got a 1982 one. Then he said, ‘You’re gonna need this pedal and this pedal and this pedal…,’ all the things I was embarrassed to be 40 years old and not knowing.
“And I actually did this; I went into a local store here that had a massive wall of pedals. I sat down with this guy who did not know who I was. To him I was like this middle-age housewife from somewhere.
“I said, ‘I want you to explain guitar pedals to me,’ and I was in there all day with him and ended up buying, like, five pedals or something. I got to ask all the silly questions I was embarrassed that I didn’t know, like what’s the difference between gain and distortion and blah, blah, blah.
“Then I started doing the scales and everything and building up. I started stepping out slowly, a 15-second solo live, and over the last few years I have taken on the guitar playing to where I don’t even have a lead guitar player in my band.
“I am the lead guitar player now. I have Max [Hart], who plays keyboards, too, and he’ll play the lines in ‘I Want to Come Over.’ But I have all the soloing things, which makes me enjoy my show so much more.”
Etheridge’s guitar arsenal now is mostly Gibsons — Les Paul Customs, including a Black Beauty, as well as a 135 and a 335 — as well as a ’78 Fender Jaguar that she plays on “Must Be Crazy for Me.” She also uses a customized Bigsby vibrato unit that she first found on a Gretsch Country Gentleman and now uses on a Rancher model. And she has a Jerry Jones 12-string acoustic guitar that he made for her in 1993.
She continues to use the Suhr amplifiers that Thorn turned her onto; recently she’s begun using the heads with digital inputs, including a King of Tone overdrive and a Strymon Mobius modulation pedal.
I went into a local store here that had a massive wall of pedals. I sat down with this guy who did not know who I was. To him I was like this middle-age housewife.”
— Melissa Etheridge
“I can use the analog pedals and put them through the amps and get the digital convenience and steadiness, but also still be able to choose whatever I want,” Etheridge explains. “I don’t believe in presets. I believe in, ‘Here’s my paints, here’s my guitar, I’m in this brand-new canvas — brand-new people.
“Maybe it’s a small place, maybe it’s a big place, but every night I can tailor my sound to the place I’m in.’
“The best thing is that I used to hear all the guys talking, and now I understand what they’re saying. I understand what all the words mean. I used to make fun of people who knew what all these terms meant, and now I’m a freakin’ gearhead. I’m addicted. The guitar-buying never stops.”
That confidence has translated into Etheridge’s playing as well — particularly her soloing.
“I’m not gonna get out there like Eddie Van Halen; my fingers are too small, for one. But I have developed a style that is melodic. It’s like I get another chance to sing for people; I can sing with my voice, and I can step out and I can sing to people through my guitar, which makes me really happy..”
Etheridge kicks off her tour to promote Rise on March 26 in Detroit, with shows currently booked into mid July.
