Melissa Etheridge appears in a series streaming on Paramount Plus as of July 7th, entitled “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken.” The two episodes are being shown on Sunday, September 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. as part of the Nashville Film Festival.
Young Melissa Etheridge.
A native of Leavenworth, Kansas, Etheridge is shown visiting the Topeka Correctional Facility for Women, after having corresponded with many of the inmates for 9 months prior. It was a homecoming of sorts for the singer, as, like Johnny Cash, she had performed at a Kansas prison when she was only 12 years old, in 1973. Brian Morrow and Amy Scott directed the series and five of the inmates of the prison are shown reading the letters they wrote to Etheridge. Etheridge talks with the five women and performs for them.
Saying that their letters inspired her, Melissa wrote some original music for the concert and said, “I realize I can’t save anyone, but I’m looking to inspire.”
HIGH POINTS
The Mayor of Leavenworth, Jermaine Wilson, who did 3 years in prison himself, is shown talking with Etheridge about the upcoming concert. Wilson and Etheridge, together, stressed that they wanted to inspire and encourage the imprisoned felons, saying, “Mistakes don’t define you. You are not a failure. You are not a mistake. You were created on purpose for a purpose.”
Mayor Jermaine Wilson of Leavenworth, Kansas.
In addition to much charitable work, Melissa also founded the Etheridge Foundation which attempts to legalize cannabis and other drugs that might be useful for therapeutic purposes. She shared with the crowd of women—many of them incarcerated specifically for selling, using, or possession of drugs—that she once had an arrest as she entered the U.S. from Canada through North Dakota, where cannabis was illegal. “The best I can do is to be an example—a light that holds you up and says you matter.”
PRISON STATISTICS
Meghan Davis, an employee of the facility, said that the likelihood of a woman being the victim of a crime never drops for women as it does for men. Women do not grow up and become less likely to become victims of crime. In fact, over the last 40 years, there has been an 84% increase in women convicted of crimes and imprisoned, many of them crimes that originated with a drug habit.
Of the 760 women incarcerated in Topeka, 500 are mothers or grandmothers. Prison employee Dani Essman talked about how many of the imprisoned women lose their identity. One of the women expressed gratitude for Etheridge’s actions, saying, “We were just grateful that she gave a shit.”
POIGNANT SHARE
Melissa and her then-partner Julie Cypher had 2 children. Cypher gave birth to Bailey Jean and Beckett.[65] Cypher became pregnant via artificial insemination using sperm donated by musician David Crosby.[66] Cypher and Etheridge separated in 2000. On May 13, 2020, Etheridge announced on Twitter that her son with Cypher, Beckett, had died at the age of 21 of a drug overdose related to opioid addiction. (Her daughter, Bailey Jean, graduated from Columbia in 2019).
Beckett and sister Bailey.
When Etheridge shared this personal heartbreak with the crowd, she sang the song “Shadow of a Black Crow,” which she said she seldom performs. One of the lines in the song is, “I would rather die fast than ever drive slow. Father, forgive me, for what my mother don’t know.”
Etheridge—speaking to so many women who know only too well the curse of addiction—said, “He (Beckett) was either gonna’ find his way out or not, and in his case not.” Referencing the lyric “The scratch marks on my soul from the shadow of a black crow” Etheridge said, “I miss him here, but I know he is here (gesturing upwards).”
SECOND HALF
In the second episode of the Melissa Etheridge Paramount Plus offering “I’m Not Broken” Ms. Etheridge composed a song especially for the inmates of the Topeka State Prison. We witnessed the actual creative process as Etheridge discusses the evolution of the song. Band member Joe Ayoub tells us that they worked up the band’s part from Friday to Sunday.
Onstage.
particularly heartbreaking story, told by one of the five women spotlighted in the special (Andrea, Cierra, Jessica, Kristi and Leigh) shared with the viewers was that she became hooked on drugs and was pregnant by 19. Her baby died ten minutes before she gave birth.
Etheridge opened up about her son Beckett’s death on May 13, 2020. Beckett was born on November 18, 1998. Etheridge explained his addiction as stemming from Vicodin administered after a snowboarding accident. His addiction quickly spiraled out of control.
Beckett was 21 when the police found him dead after a wellness check that Melissa and her former partner Julie Cypher requested.
THE ODD
Beckett and Bailey.
I found Melissa Etheridge’s sharing of her personal trauma brave, but odd.
Melissa and son Beckett.
She said, “I do not let it take me out of my own sense of well-being. You can accept a person’s choices and it doesn’t have to destroy you.” She seemed remarkably calm and distanced from grief at the death of her son. I couldn’t help but wonder if, like the devotees of the new meditation start-up Jhourney, Etheridge has internalized the life rule “true peace comes from accepting things just as they are.” I admit that I was taken aback at the calm way Etheridge discussed the death of her 21-year-old son, Beckett. It was shocking and surprising; she seemed somewhat clinically detached. The death had taken place three years prior so that may help explain the low-key dispassionate discussion the film showcases.
CONCLUSION
The 2 part serial look into Melissa Etheridge’s life and creative process was interesting, but repetitive. There were too many shots of Etheridge performing on the temporary stage set up outside the prison walls. The interviews with the five inmates (Andrea, Cierra, Jessica, Kristi and Leigh) were conducted in less-than-optimal settings and there were a lot of those table shots. Perhaps film of the five inmates establishing the women’s relationships with their families of origin before they were incarcerated would have helped?
Onstage.
What comes through loud and clear is that Melissa Etheridge is a time-tested talent. She asks the assembled women if they are familiar with her music. Some are not. For them she described her audience as those aged 50 and up, as her Grammy-winning years were approximately 1993 through 2007. That’s a pity, as she is just as talented now as she was in earlier years— more seasoned and just as creative. She continues to write. This series is a tribute to a true talent trying to bring redemption and empowerment to incarcerated female prisoners. It is a wonderful humanitarian concept.
Melissa Etheridge onstage.
What else could have been done to liven up the many scenes of Ms. Etheridge talking with the inmates? The library setting was used repeatedly. Melissa performing onstage was entertaining, but also repetitive. Those were the weak points of the two-episode series, which will screen at the Nashville Film Festival on Sunday, September 22nd, from 7 to 9 p.m., and on Paramount Plus.
THE GOAL
The goal of bringing hope to the incarcerated women of the Topeka Correctional Facility for Women was worthwhile and deserving of support. The plea for accepting drugs for therapeutic purposes is also a progressive step forward, just as Etheridge’s original song “I Need to Wake Up” for Al Gore’s 2007 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won the Academy Award, was part of a good cause, trying to alert the world to the dangers of global warming. (I can’t help but regret how our weather patterns might be different if Florida and the candidate’s brother had not been allowed to prevail in the hanging chads election of 2000. A candidate whose party had no plan at all to address global warming—and still does not—was declared the winner. Al Gore, who was extremely concerned about our stewardship of the planet, stepped aside with decorum. How times change!)
Reservations aside, it’s a pleasure to watch a Top-Notch Singer/Songwriter writing and performing her work. Etheridge’s social conscience cannot be denied. This two-part Paramount Plus series is a testament to that .