Johnny Cash Inspired Melissa Etheridge To Perform In Prisons

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. “No one in Kansas City saw him. I thought, ‘Wow, prisons must be a place of fine entertainment,’” said Etheridge, who was around 9 at the time of Cash’s 1970 prison performance. “And this is a goal. I would like to be that someday.” Etheridge filmed her performance at the Topkea 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,” Etheridge says. (People)