Melissa Etheridge in Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken, streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: James Moes/Paramount+.

Johnny Cash Inspired Melissa Etheridge To Perform In Prisons

By: Cheryl Johnstone

23/7/2024

Country Music News

In the new docuseries, Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken, the singer is shown performing in a prison in her native Kansas.

In a new interview with People, Etheridge reveals that Johnny Cash came to her hometown when she was young and played a show at a prison there.

Etheridge was around 9 at the time of Cash’s 1970 prison performance.

“No one in Kansas City saw him. I thought, ‘Wow, prisons must be a place of fine entertainment. And this is a goal. I would like to be that someday.”

Etheridge filmed her performance at the Topeka Correctional Facility for the docuseries.

“I wasn’t afraid of prisons or of what was going on in there. And so I always knew that I wanted to get back and do that sort of Johnny Cash thing, the performance for people that really need it, who probably haven’t had entertainment in months, years, decades, and just how healing that can be.”

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