There are worse things than getting stood up by Melissa Etheridge. At least she said she'd call. That's more than most regular people could ever hope to get from a world-famous rock star.

But still, when the call didn't come Wednesday morning at 9 ... or 9:30 ... or 11 (the whole time-difference thing might have been the culprit), it became apparent that she wasn't going to call.

The world-famous rock star obviously had better things to do.

Thursday morning, some time between 10 and 11:

"Hi. It's Melissa Etheridge. I'm so sorry about yesterday." Only it came out more like: "Hiit'sMelissaEtheridgeI'msosorryabout yesterday. ..." She was rushing to apologize, explain, and not make excuses. She managed to do all three, while still making it very clear — with grace and candor — that she did indeed have something better to do Wednesday morning and that's why she didn't call.

Fair enough. After all, who could argue with that? And isn't Etheridge's human error what we — the media, the public, the fans — want from our celebrities? To be reassured, however erroneously, that they're just like us, only famous? Of course, they're nothing like us, but if ever there was a layman's rock star, it's Melissa Etheridge.

Etheridge will launch her 2008 tour in support of her latest album "The Awakening" tonight with a concert at the Blaisdell. This will be her second concert in the Islands; her first was in 2004.

There was no mistaking the voice on the other end of the line. Etheridge talks like she sings. Her husky voice is taut with barely bridled energy. Her sentences, virtually free of annoying gratuitous words like "um," "like" and "you know," are succinct statements of purpose: "I'm very comfortable with who I am."

Indeed.

'I AM COMFORTABLE'

Etheridge seems to be the embodiment of those realized-woman archetypes. Could it be that such a creature actually exists? And not just in women's studies classes and post-modern girl-power novellas?

"You have to insist on your comfortableness — while they say 'but you're gay, but you're a woman, but you're bald.'

"I still choose to be comfortable. I am comfortable." Etheridge says the words with ... is it conviction? Actually, it's more like Mommy wisdom. The kind of matter-of-fact, I-know-better-because-I've been-through-it mini speech that is borne of deep-seated concern for the young 'uns.

And make no mistake: That maternal ring in her voice isn't an accident. Because of all things they say she is ("Honolulu welcomes human-rights and gay-rights activist, cancer survivor, lesbian mom and rock star Melissa Etheridge. ..."), she's mostly a mom. "I'm all of those things," she said. "But right now, I'm a mom and a wife."

And, like they say (sometimes with disdain and sometimes with admiration), she is gay, a woman and a breast-cancer survivor who was bald for all the world to see.

"I started realizing how much comfort we give away to fear," Etheridge said. "Fear that people aren't going to like us, fear that we look strange, fear that we act strange. I don't have time for that."

Things — the bad things that life throws at you — just get bigger when you fear them, she said. So don't fear them.

Simple, right?

MAKING CHOICES

"You're obviously a brave woman." The statement acts as a question and Etheridge doesn't even feign modesty. She knows she's brave.

"I didn't wake up one morning and think: I am going to be brave," she said. "Each time I was confronted with a big fear, I just made the choice to believe in the truth, and I was hugely rewarded. I now believe that if one just lives their life that way, it's much more fruitful."

Fearlessness. It's Etheridge's latest discovery. Her raison d'etre. Her platform.

Her latest album, "The Awakening," is, at its core, about confronting fear. Fear of who we are. Fear of what we might become. Fear of what we HAVE become. The album, her first since being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, is, like most of Etheridge's albums, titled literally.

She introduced herself to us with 1981's "Brave and Crazy"; she answered the question of whether she was gay with 1993's "Yes I Am"; she told us she was "Lucky" in 2004; and she said her next album will be probably be called "Fearless." (But not before she makes a Christmas album. "Why is it that Christmas belongs to conservative white Christian people?" she said. "I don't believe that. So, I'm writing a Christmas album for the rest of us.")

"Fearlessness is such a huge theme in my life right now," said the two-time Grammy winner. "I think that fear does the most damage in our solitary lives and in society as a whole. What I fear the most is fear."

Reach Kawehi Haug at khaug@honoluluadvertiser.com.