Pop Music : Melissa Etheridge Puts Blues, Levity Into Folk, Rock

One of Melissa Etheridge’s most popular songs is “No Souvenirs,” but don’t tell that to the merchants in the Wiltern Theatre lobby, who were doing a reasonable business Saturday during the opening of her four-day stand. Many of the shirts and scarves were emblazoned with the title of her year-old gold album, “Brave and Crazy.”

Some other equally appropriate manifestoes, suitable for album title or T-shirt, came to mind--like “Co-Dependent and Bluesy” or “Obsessive and Raspy.”

Bonnie Raitt may be the pre-eminent blueswoman in pop music nowadays, and Etheridge, a former folkie who still usually strums an acoustic guitar in front of her minimal band, can hardly be said to work in that genre.

But she’s got the tenor of the blues down as pat as any prominent female rocker out there,in her own ‘70s-based, singer-songwriterly style.

She has also learned to be wary of those who would type her as a perpetual “wronged woman,” even if that is part and parcel of the cathartic blues well she gets her sustenance from.

Midway through Saturday’s show, Etheridge began introducing a song from her debut album that she claimed she was reluctant to continue to perform. It reinforces, she said, the public misunderstanding of her image as a self-made victim who thrives on romantic torture.

Nonetheless, she began describing a lonely situation--”Pretty soon all you’ve got is you, yourself and your precious pain .” And with that, she launched unabashedly into the ballad of that name, which, as might be expected, romanticizes the hurt of heartbreak.

It’s a narrow canvas indeed that Etheridge paints on, and whether you see it as unduly tragic or not, it’s a mightily self-obsessed one as well in this day of social consciousness. On the other hand, her second album marks a great leap forward from her first, being less a pity party of the “Precious Pain” sort and more a rich, involving, personal exploration.

Moreover, her persona takes on a distinctly different color live thanks to her consistent playfulness, be it in a dramatic dart of the eyes or a witty turn of her terrific barroom growl. The needed levity is more clearly there on stage.

At least two-thirds of Saturday’s sold-out crowd was female, extremely unusual for a rock show, New Kids concerts and other under-18 attractions withstanding. They no doubt respond to Etheridge’s dual qualities of victim-ness and defiant aggressiveness.

This wasn’t Etheridge’s most triumphant night as a performer. The set was almost identical to the one last October when she headlined five nights at the Roxy, and it’s no surprise that she doesn’t have quite as much fire to put into the same material after another year’s worth of touring. Her highly charged version of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”--sandwiched between “Bring Me Some Water” and “Like the Way I Do,” her two most favored numbers--is now, as then, the highlight of the show. Britain’s Martin Stephenson & the Daintees is the opening act on most of Etheridge’s tour. Their Celtic-soul-influenced set picked up extraordinary steam in its last two numbers with the introduction of an all-important tuba.

Besides Wiltern shows on Tuesday and Wednesday, Etheridge plays Saturday at the Santa Barbara County Bowl.