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MELISSA ETHERIDGE HONORS THE RICH MUSICAL HISTORY OF LEGENDARY MEMPHIS LABEL STAX RECORDS.
RECORDED AT ROYAL STUDIOS BY LAWRENCE “BOO” MITCHELL, MEMPHIS ROCK AND SOUL FEATURES CLASSIC STAX REPERTOIRE.

Melissa Etheridge has done some pretty gutsy things in her stellar career. She’s shown no fear in forthrightly standing up for her truths, both in her songs and her life.

But as an artist she’s never quite laid it on the line like she does on MEmphis Rock and Soul. Sure, she’s sung songs by some of her biggest heroes before. But Otis Redding? Mavis Staples? Sam and Dave? Rufus Thomas? These are some of the names, some of the voices of music at the pinnacle of an era in American music, the people indelibly identified with the songs on this album. Captured at the historic landmark Royal Studios with a band of some of the preeminent figures in the Memphis scene, the album includes veterans of some of the city’s most cherished recordings. The songs themselves are all core to the famed Stax Records label, and the album is Etheridge’s loving tribute to the role the music of Stax played in her life, and in modern American life.

“You have no idea!” she says of diving into this project, which also features John Mayer’s deft guitar talents on two songs. “It took a lot of soul searching.”

But powering her musical soul is her memory of dancing around her Kansas City childhood home to the music of Memphis via WHB on her AM radio dial, transfixed and transported by the power and mystery, the joy and ache of those great songs, enhanced as she grew up by the impact this music had on the rock bands she embraced — the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin.

“It’s something that directly influenced me, and indirectly,” she says. “So much a part of what I’ve always wanted to be and wanted to sing and show that emotion, that intensity that knows no color. It comes from your soul. Each of us knows the heartbreak of ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ — ‘Please don’t make me stop now!’”