Melissa Etheridge doesn’t visit Santa Cruz often—“although that sounds lovely”— but four years ago, she chose the city to base her cannabis and CBD company, Etheridge Botanicals.

The good soil and biosphere, as well as the inviting business culture, led her to the area.

“Seventeen years ago, when I went through breast cancer, I realized just how much cannabis can help in the whole collateral damage of chemo and in the whole procedures of losing your appetite and pain and depression and all those things that were absolutely taken care of with cannabis,” the hit songwriter of songs like “I’m The Only One” and “Come To My Window” said. “It totally got me through. I want people to have this as an option, and so I really got into legalizing it, you know, the political part.”

Etheridge, 60, has a lot on her plate these days. Last fall, she released a new album of songs written in her early career, the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and is now touring in support of it. This summer, she will release a graphic novel telling her life story through various tales about her guitars. She’s also recently started a foundation searching for alternatives to opioids in the management of pain, after one of her sons died from an opioid addiction early during the pandemic.

The Grammy- and Academy-Award-winning artist first wrote the nine songs on One Way Out before publicly coming out in 1993. She recorded them with her original band (Fritz Lewak, John Shanks, Kevin McCormick) in 2013 for a retrospective album that was eventually scrapped in favor of new material. After she’d signed with label BMG, she was asked if she had any music she could release during the pandemic.

The songs still hold special meaning to her, but they’re no longer as personally forthcoming as they once were. While it’s fine that everyone can tell that “Wild Wild Wild” was about a woman, for example, she initially wasn’t sure how people would react to it, so she’d pushed it aside. Sonically, these songs are as thrilling as the albums she released during her prime-MTV-era heyday, with blistering guitar playing and bluesy swagger.

The album also includes “You Have No Idea” and “Life Goes On,” which she recorded live at the Roxy in West L.A. in 2002.

Etheridge spoke about the newer developments in her life from her home office in Hidden Hills, north of Malibu, which included her two Grammy Awards, her Oscar and a softball trophy—”things that are really important to me.”

RIFF: What made last autumn the right time to release One Way Out? What was your motivation for it?

Melissa Etheridge: The biggest reason was I didn’t have to go into the studio and record it, that I had this sitting around. I’d made an investment in it seven years ago. I knew it was really good, and I wanted the world to see it, so I was excited when they were interested in it, and then, when they [BMG] wanted to do it, I was very, very happy.

Is this a disparate collection of songs or did you pick them because they have something in common?

Melissa Etheridge: I think the nature of them being from the late ‘80s, early ‘90s; they’re going to have a theme. That time was a theme of great desire, not only professionally, but personally, very much so, and a little bit of hesitancy and mistrust. A lot of that is in “For the Last Time,” “I’m No Angel Myself”—and it’s all that sort of time when my personal relationships were the hardest things that was in my life, so you’re going to get that.

Then there’s also a couple songs that deal with—maybe it’s a feminist type of issue—of, “How do I look? How am I presenting myself? What do I need to do?” “Save Myself” or “As Cool As You Try”—those songs are very personally the questions I had about my own look at the time.

You wrote all these songs before coming out. Is that significant to the release? You can write songs a lot more openly now than back then.

Melissa Etheridge: I can release the songs, and there’s no action in there in me that’s still alive that these had to do with. They’re “past” enough that I can enjoy the creation of them, but I don’t have to relive the moment.

Is there anything on the album you really enjoy performing now above the rest?

Melissa Etheridge: There’s five of them that I play now on any given night, and … “For the Last Time” and “As Cool As You Try” are probably the top ones. “One Way Out” is really fun; sometimes I open the show with that. Then there’s “I’m No Angel Myself,” which I really enjoy playing, and “Wild Wild Wild.”

You’ve been on the road for a little while now; how is it being back around people?

Melissa Etheridge: Oh, it is the best. I will never take it for granted ever again. I will never bemoan any show I ever do. I hadn’t gone that long without a live performance. I did my Etheridge TV [livestreams], which I did before, but they weren’t to a live crowd, you know, the thousands of people. I really did miss that, so boy, getting back out there at the end of the year last year was difficult, but it was so worth it. Not only for me, but it seemed like people really missed that connection, also, that going to hear live music is very healthy for us.

What can you tell me about “Heartstrings: Melissa Etheridge and Her Guitars,” your forthcoming graphic novel? [Each chapter will tell a story about one of her guitars, with her journey being the overarching tale].

Melissa Etheridge: That’s just a really fun thing. The company [Z2 Comics] came to me and said, “Hey [we have] this idea,” and I said that’s really cool because I have teenage kids, and they love graphic novels. It’s just really fun, and this is a way to kind of fictionalize my story, make it kind of a pop culture story and highlight my guitars. … They’re doing it all; the art and the kind of fun pop way of [storytelling]. It’ll be out this summer.

How do you go about writing something like that?

Melissa Etheridge: Someone else is doing that. I sat down with [Steve Hochman], the guy who’s really spearheading it. It’s a journalist that I have known since my first record at my first show in L.A. … Chris Blackwell [of Island Records] signed me or discovered me, but as far as press goes, he was the first one who was like, “Why haven’t I heard of you before?” He wrote about me for years, and then we started hiring him to do my biographies. He’s known me for over 30 years. He came to me, and he knows my story, and I’ve worked with him on all kinds of things. … He really did all the work of narrowing down my life story to a graphic novel. He’s really done all that.

I’m so sorry about the loss of your son Beckett in May 2020. You’ve started a foundation to research for alternatives to opioids in the management of pain. How is the organization coming along?

Melissa Etheridge: We just did one of our online auctions and raised another $30,000. We’ve got about $150,000 in there, and we’ve hired a wonderful woman to work on our grants. We’re looking for organizations and people that are doing research into alternatives, and there’s so many, like psilocybin. There’s just all kinds of alternatives to opioids. We just raised this capital that we’re in the process now of connecting with some people who are working in the same field to get alternatives to pain relief, and understanding what pain is and really getting some new thought into this old, horrible pharmaceutical.

Have you been following the Sackler and Purdue Pharma court case?

Melissa Etheridge: Yes, I have. Money makes people do horrible things, and I don’t need money or anything. I need to know that we can help other people’s lives from being shattered by this. What you give out in the world comes back, so I don’t need to be a judge, and I also don’t need to be a victim. I just really think moving forward and really creating new ways to understand pain, to understand people that are in pain and understand addiction and just offer more alternatives to people.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.