Melissa Etheridge coming to Santa Rosa

After 25 years in the business of the heart, Melissa Etheridge has finally pared down the human struggle to two words: “Fear and love. Those are the only two choices we have.”

Put them together and you can apply it to anything. “I'm going to love what I eat fearlessly or I'm going to love my children fearlessly,” she says. “I'm not going to be afraid of what someone else might think.”

Over the past year, Etheridge has been in the news more often for her split and ongoing custody battle with former partner Tammy Lynn Michaels than for her music. But rather than reading about it in the tabloids, she's back out on the road with a new album called — you guessed it, “Fearless Love” — a collection of gravelly voiced rock songs that make no bones about how she's feeling.

The title song puts it all out there: “I need a fearless love/Don't need to fear the end/If you can't hold me now/You will never hold me again.”

“Miss California” is a tirade against those who approved Prop. 8, the statewide proposition that banned gay marriage. And, slowing it down for a breather, the acoustic strummer “Gently We Row” was inspired by the “generational information that is handed down from parents — ‘life is hard, you gotta work, here we go, we're all out here on our own.' All of a sudden, you're walking through life thinking, ‘I've gotta make money and I need health insurance to make sure I don't get sick so I can work for my health insurance.' I'm saying we're all in this together.”

Taking a tour pit stop before she hits the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa, the 49-year-old mother and breast-cancer survivor took time out to chat about energy loops, taking the stage by walking through the audience and marital advice:

Q: What are you up to today?

A: Well, I have a show tonight. I'm in St. Louis and there's a massive thunderstorm outside my window. It's insane. It's beautiful.

Q: So this is what you do on show days? You're not sitting in an oxygen tent drinking herbal tea?

A: Yeah, that's me. Pretty much I just sit in my hotel room and watch the thunderstorms because they're insanely gorgeous.

Q: Is it good to be back out on the road?

A: Yes and no. It's funny, I've been doing this for 22 years now and the road is a very special place for me. It's kind of a place that makes sense to me. And I also have quite a life as a mother and a family in California. So when I'm out here, I miss that and when I'm home, I miss out here.

Q: Do you amp yourself up to get out on the road? I think of you as the kind of performer who leaves it all on stage. This is athletic, is it not?

A: Oh yeah, I start training months before — a whole lotta yoga and I get my cardio up. I take a lot of hikes and walks to get myself in shape.

Q: What's the perfect night for you?

A: Ahhhh — two nights ago in Chicago. The perfect night is a night where mostly everyone in the crowd is looking forward to the show and they know, ‘Oh my god I know I'm gonna have a good time.' There's an anticipation.

Q: You can feel it?

A: Oh, I can totally feel it. So when I step on stage, it's like “That's right, you're expecting that of me and I wanna give that to you.” And that creates a really great energy loop that is my most fun to play in.

Q: I hear you've been taking the stage by walking through the audience.

A: Yeah, I did it a few years ago and again, it's about energy. There's a difference when you come from the back of the crowd and you then pull their energy onto the stage with you.

Q: It's been six years since you were diagnosed with cancer. Do you still wake up and treat every day as a blessing?

A. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not because I'm glad I didn't die, but because it gave me a sense and the taste that every day you should be grateful for this life. This is amazing what we can do here. There's no other place like this. We all have free choice. I'm loud about it because I don't want people to have to go that close to the edge.

Q: I probably don't have to tell you this, but people are lining up at City Hall in San Francisco right now waiting for the stay on Prop. 8 to be lifted so they can get married.

A: Ahhh, that's great. I love it.

Q: You talk about it in “Miss California.” That song has a lot of venom in it, no?

A: Yeah, I think so many of us in California were shocked. It was like — wait, I didn't know we had a problem with this.

Q: Did that song just come out instantly?

A: Yeah, that was a one- or two-dayer.

Q: Have you thought about what makes people oppose gay marriage?

A: It's fear. Not a fear of homosexuals but sex in general. They're sex-o-phobes. We're taught this is the most horrible thing and you're only supposed to do it to make babies. It's the one pleasure we have in our lives. They say, ‘Oh those people who do it just to do it and they can't make babies, they must be the worst of them all.'

Q: Do you have any advice for all the people waiting to get married?

A: No. Not at all. Nothing. Not a word. I know nothing about it.

Q: You don't think you'll be lining up like that any time soon?

A: No sir. You know what? I will fight to the end for the right, but it doesn't mean I'm ever going to exercise that right.

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and follow on Twitter@becksay.