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From Audrey

To the Melissa Etheridge Mailing List

Bowing to all the off-list pressure, I will attempt to put together a review of the Meadowbrook farm show [Gilford, NH]. I have to apologize for a sketchy memory of the night, which was most likely a direct result of having made it back stage to meet Melissa! my head was spinning the rest of the show! 

In a nutshell: My girlfriend had been working a charity event during the summer which directly benefited the greater Manchester aids project. they raffled off tickets to the Gilford show and used the Melissa theme to raise a lot of money. So GMAP had a plaque engraved for Melissa as champion of the children, and through Michelle's contacts, we managed to get a couple of backstage passes to present the award directly to MLE. It was pretty incredible. she shook our hands, and listened to what the award was about...asked a couple of questions and offered to autograph a bunch of stuff and send it to us for future fundraising. Steve g. gave us his business card and told us to contact him. I was so blown away having her standing 2 feet away from me I let Michelle do all the talking! I think I had one of those stupid smiles pasted on my face the entire time. MLE was so gracious and appreciative. I think she was surprised we didn't ask her any of the typical fan questions (although I did make sure to get an autograph :-)). 

Somehow I managed to get to my seat, 4th row left of center. she opened with "all American girl" and I believe she performed the same or similar set list as the ct. show, although I didn't write it down. About halfway through the show she announced that since this was the last date of the tour, she was going to perform a song she hadn't done yet during the tour, which turned out to be "the different" (which she sang w/out the band). Throughout the night she returned to the "this is the last show of the tour" theme. one of the different things for this show - since it was the last - was her entire band and crew showed up wearing the same blue and white checkered pajama pants (except for Stephanie the drummer who wore an off-white nightie with a bright pink bathrobe!) MLE claimed not to have noticed the PJs until the third song into her set, and she said she never got the memo or she would have worn them too. she commented that she had occasionally slept in her leather pants and gave a wicked grin. 

A woman sitting directly behind me, who also met MLE backstage, had set up rainbow colored banners and had the people sitting in those seats hold them up at one point, and MLE came over and acknowledged them all. she then proceeded to pose for this woman's camera and did that two other times during the concert. very very cool. 

She had an incredible rapport with the audience. at one point a guy began shouting something like "I love you Melissa" and she went off about how she likes it when the men yell at her because she's so used to the high squeaky female voices, and she began to mimic the female fan's shouts and then the male fans low registers and had the crowd get on their knees as she got lower and lower. 

A fan threw one of her t-shirts onto the stage at one point. MLE picked it up and asked why someone was giving her own shirt? she said that she already has a few thousand of them. 

Mark the bass player asked her to autograph the guitar he was playing during one particular song and she signed it and joked around about it. she also commented how she is going to steal Stephanie away from kid rock. (Stephanie, btw, was absolutely amazing.) 

Bailey and Beckett sat onstage in the corner for about 1/2 hour, watching mom perform. Tammy came out towards the end to refresh a guitar, clad in the same PJs and a cute baseball hat. 

The set list (in my opinion of course) wasn't the best she's put together but she put everything she had into each song. "Like The Way I Do" encore lasted about 20 minutes, and ran about 12 minutes past Meadowbrook's 11:00 p.m. curfew (some zoning regulation). During LTWID she had the front row crowd strum her guitar. Everybody knew this was the last song of the show and of the tour and MLE seemed to stretch it out just a little bit longer, as if she didn't want the night to end. She was wailing on her guitar more than I've ever seen her do, breaking 2 strings at different times. She and her guitarists got behind Stephanie and grabbed extra drumsticks and they all jammed on the drums for a couple of minutes (hmmm, now that I think about it I'm not sure when this happened). MLE really looked like she knew what she was doing! 

Before she left for the final time she thanked her band and crew, had them all come onstage for a bow. She then thanked all the fans, especially the "crazy dutchies" who followed her around all summer (and said next time she promised to travel to Holland to play for them), the woman who made the rainbow banner, and me and Michelle for the GMAP award! I couldn't believe she remembered our names and chose to publicly thank us. 

Audrey

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