Melissa Etheridge:
Melissa Etheridge stormed onto the American rock scene in 1988 with the release of her critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, which led to an appearance on the 1989 Grammy Awards show. For several years, her popularity grew around such memorable originals as “Bring Me Some Water,” “No Souvenirs” and “Ain’t It Heavy,” for which she won a Grammy® in 1992. Etheridge hit her commercial and artistic stride with her fourth album, Yes I Am (1993). The collection featured the massive hits, “I’m the Only One” and “Come to My Window,” a searing song of longing that brought Etheridge her second Grammy® Award for Best Female Rock Performance. In 1995, Etheridge issued her highest charting album, Your Little Secret, which was distinguished by the hit single, “I Want to Come Over.” Her astounding success that year led to Etheridge receiving the Songwriter of the Year honor at the ASCAP Pop Awards in 1996.
Known for her confessional lyrics and raspy, smoky vocals, Etheridge has remained one of America’s favorite female singers for more than two decades. In February 2007, Melissa Etheridge celebrated a career milestone with a victory in the “Best Song” category at the Academy® Awards for “I Need to Wake Up,” written for the Al Gore documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. As a performer and songwriter, Etheridge has shown herself to be an artist who has never allowed “inconvenient truths” to keep her down. Earlier in her recording career, Etheridge acknowledged her sexual orientation when it was considered less than prudent to do so. In October 2004, Etheridge was diagnosed with breast cancer, a health battle that, with her typical tenacity, she won. Despite losing her hair from chemotherapy, Etheridge appeared on the 2005 Grammy® telecast to sing “Piece of My Heart” in tribute to Janis Joplin. By doing so she gave hope to many women afflicted with the disease.
On October 7, 2016 Melissa Etheridge released Memphis Rock & Soul, her first album since 2014’s critically lauded This Is M.E. Recorded at Royal Studios in Memphis, the album received stellar reviews from the likes of Entertainment Weekly, Parade, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter and more. She followed that up with the release of The Medicine Show in April, 2019. For The Medicine Show, Melissa reunited with celebrated producer John Shanks and sounds as rousing as ever, bringing a new level of artistry to her 15th studio recording. The Medicine Show deals with universal themes of renewal, reconciliation, reckoning, compassion and, most profoundly, healing.
In June of 2020, Etheridge launched her own live streaming subscription and single ticket concert platform, Etheridge TV and has done over 200 live streams in 2020.
On September 17, 2021, Melissa released a new album called One Way Out. The 9-track album is a collection of songs Etheridge wrote in the late ’80s and early ’90s that never made the cut….until now! The time is finally right, and fans will finally get a deeper glimpse to who Melissa was then.
October 2022 saw Melissa’s return to the theatre with her one woman show, My Window — A Journey Through Life. The critically acclaimed, sold-out run premiered at New World Stages on October 13 and will open at Circle In the Square Theatre on Broadway in September 2023.
Jewel:
Jewel’s unique story began on an Alaskan homestead- with no electricity- where her family survived off the land. Her New York Times best-selling memoir Never Broken chronicles how she used hard work, grit and grace to survive and thrive under extreme circumstances.
Jewel discovered a variety of mental health tools as a child living in adverse circumstances, helping her to go from homelessness to happiness. She has built her career sharing her wisdom through music, poetry, books and a wellness curriculum that inspires physical, emotional and mental health. Her lyrics calmed a generation of listeners with the phrase, “If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we’re all ok.” And “worry is wasteful in times like these.”
For over thirty years Jewel worked with the top psychologists, experts and practitioners to create her System which has 10 Pillars of Healing and Growth and 30 tools to inspire physical, emotional and mental health. Jewel’s System has been used to create curriculum and products for nonprofits, school districts, corporations and consumers.
For two decades, Jewel’s system and Inspiring Children Foundation (ICF) have been helping to revolutionize education with a cutting-edge model that completely transforms the lives of at-risk youth. By empowering children struggling with financial hardship, anxiety, depression and mental health challenges the program provides youth with the ultimate environment to survive, then thrive at the highest levels. The Foundation’s best in class student led mental health programming is informed by mindfulness, meditation, entrepreneurship, mentoring, project driven learning, athletics (tennis) and a special peer-to-peer support group and certification. The program uses aspects of Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), trauma treatment, and group counseling.
Jewel founded Jewel Inc., which is a holding company for all her passions and work in music, TV, film and entrepreneurial endeavors. Jewel has co-created human development, education and mental health programs in hopes of helping more people to become whole humans by partnering with existing delivery systems. The curriculum has been repurposed to scale Jewel’s System into music and wellness festivals, online summits, K-6 Curriculum for schools, consulting and programming for corporations.
Most recently Jewel co-founded and is the Chief Strategy Officer of Inner.World. Innerworld is a virtual community where members can work through mental health challenges safely and anonymously. It’s a peer-led model where people can teach each other the tools of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (the gold standard of therapy) Cognitive and a proprietary Cognitive Behavioral Immersion. This is Jewel’s latest project in her mission to scale wisdom.
To marry her music with her passion for mental health Jewel also co-founded The Wellness Experience, a music-food & wellness festival with almost 500 brands to bring physical, emotional and mental health to the masses.
Jewel’s free mindfulness and mental health websites help high performing students, executives, parents, athletes and artists. To this end Jewel is partnering with some of the world’s most innovative companies like Kroger, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, Zappos, Car Saver, WeWork and Saks Fifth Avenue to help deliver happiness into people’s everyday lives at work and at home.
Jewel’s System and curriculum is designed to help people gain tone and strength in all areas of their lives and most importantly as friends, associates and contributors to society. She has authentically become one the most notable spokespersons and advocates for the modern-day wellness, mental health and mindfulness movement. Jewel has used her platform to advocate for mental health and to encourage organizations to “invest in human capital” at some of the most prestigious conferences in the world including SALT Hedge Fund conference, Fortune’s Most Powerful Woman, Wisdom 2.0 and The Wellness Experience. As Founding partner and curator for the Scale Global Conference in Las Vegas Jewel is helping to bring the world’s top leaders in finance, policy, tech, and the arts together to find common ground and ways to scale successfully as a society.