POP MUSIC REVIEW : Etheridge’s Rank in Rockdom Is Clear, but What’s Next?

Melissa Etheridge looked a little like Dorothy surrounded by Munchkins as she stood on a makeshift stage in the middle of the audience during her Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre show on Sunday. Having snuck up to this spot while her band played on the main stage, Etheridge was swarmed by throngs of fans as she gave an acoustic, three-song interlude.

It’s a fitting image for the Leavenworth-raised rocker, who literally and figuratively is not in Kansas anymore.

Her fourth album, “Yes I Am,” with sales of more than 4 million, has pushed the current Rolling Stone cover girl way beyond her already strong cult-heroine status, into the realm of heartland rockdom ruled by such wizards as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp.

That’s territory that no other female rocker has staked a claim on before. She’s reached it by sharing with those artists a knack for songs with broad themes of longing and desire, and by matching their stage dynamics move for move.

On Sunday Etheridge reveled in that success, repeatedly marveling at the size and enthusiasm of the crowd and reminiscing about how far away this is from “the bars”--the Long Beach women’s tavern circuit she played in the mid-’80s after coming West to begin her search for fame and fortune.

But the issue rising from the show was not about where Etheridge is now, but where she’s heading. When Springsteen, Petty and Mellencamp reached the level of success that Etheridge has now achieved, they used the opportunity to refine their artistry, enriching their songs with neatly turned details that filled out the vast landscapes of their earlier work and gave insights to their own emotional machinery.

Etheridge’s rise has been concurrent with a public opening-up started by her “coming out” two years ago. Recent interviews have been crammed with personal details that had been glossed over in the past.

But the only look ahead on Sunday was in one new number. “All the Way to Heaven,” offered during the acoustic set, fit squarely into Etheridge’s every-song-an-anthem format.

Springsteen had his “Nebraska.” Can Etheridge now give us her “Kansas”?

Just click your heels together. . . .

The balance was tilted the other way with opener Joan Osborne, whose songs are rich with imaginative imagery and clever construction, but who lacks Etheridge’s natural stage presence. Osborne’s gawky manners were in some ways endearing, but generally were lost in this large setting. Perhaps in a smaller venue--such as LunaPark in West Hollywood, where she plays tonight--she can be as engaging as she is on her new major-label debut album, “Relish.”

Still, even in the great outdoors there was a compelling quality to her story-songs, which range from the spiritual musings of the Celtic folk-rock-ish “St. Theresa” to the lusty, harder-than-Bonnie-Raitt blues-rock of “Right Hand Man.”