Mekole Wells is a woman with a mission. Her music empowers her audience to be true to themselves, but still find time to break it down on the dance floor. The provocative and reflective quality of her voice reveals the singer as an authority on the subject, and indeed she is: In 1998, Wells was told she would never sing again after she was stabbed 10 times, her throat slit in a domestic abuse incident. Now, eight years later, the lesbian musician has just finished up her role in Menopause: The Musical and is awaiting the release of her second album. Wells’ music is a celebration of life, honestly conveying the bittersweet essence of struggle and survival, without softening any edges: “I’m a consequential writer. I’ll give you the beginning, middle and end, and I ain’t gonna cut it short.” A harsh wake up call, yet pleasing to the ear.

So, tell me a little bit about your first album, Full Circle.
Full Circle was uh, basically written for me and everyone else out there, ’cause I had gone through such a tumultuous time in my life, between my stabbing and the loss of my mother. … Everything was written as a statement to everyone. I really believe that we all have the same story, just different covers to our book. And we all breathe, and we cry, and everything. Everyone in life has almost the same story, just different parts. And I willfully wrote the CD for that purpose.

Do you feel like you came full circle?
Yeah, I do. And still learning, still learning. … You know, the song Crush On You was about me coming out. I was married at the time, and I had this crush on this girl, and I knew there was something inside that had to be opened up and explored. … And Full Circle was really my truth, my truth to myself, and to everyone else about me and who I am.

Had you always known that you were gay, or was that something that you realized when you had met this particular person?
I had hidden it a long time. … I had a crush on this one girl [and she] had a crush on me. She was Latin. And I was just really taken. I always knew I liked girls but it always in disguise. And then being married, I was forced to cover everything up. And my life was just hell. It was just pure hell, living that lie. … I knew deep inside that I loved women. … That’s why I understand about people being so homophobic because, when there’s something deep inside that you’re afraid to open up to, or be truthful about — I used to be hanging out with all my gay guy friends, and when I’d see two lesbians coming towards me, I was just locked up and, ugh, I didn’t want to be bothered: “Ugh, they’re nasty!” … Because I knew that that was something I didn’t want anyone else to know about me. I knew that that was the truth about me. So, when I see these people picketing off, “homosexual should die,” I’m like no, you’ve got a little issue with yourself you need to check out first.

So, how is this new CD that you have coming out, The Story of Me, different from Full Circle?
This one [takes] up a lot more chances. Full Circle, I kind of did a little bit of everything. I’m a jazz artist, that’s my love, but I do house music. I did a lot of my own writing, so with this one I’m doing cover tunes. I love cover tunes, I love ’em. When I do a cover tune, I want to completely do it in my genre, so people can understand. You know, it’s like, a lady told me a long time ago, she said, “I’ve heard this song for 10 years but I didn’t hear it until I heard you sing it tonight. And that’s what I love. I don’t do the normal cover tunes either. I do The Eagles, James Taylor.

Okay, so not your “Ain’t Misbehaving” kind of jazz standards?
Yeah, no, no, no, no. No, no no. Journey, that’s my shit right there. … I do those kind of covers. I may do some standards but I’m going to fuck ’em up and make ’em mine. Excuse my French, but I’m going to make ’em my kind of thing. See what I’m saying?

When I was younger, [my parents] put me in all private schools. … They called me “the fly in the buttermilk” because I was always the only African American in the majority of my classes. And what I found in doing that is I never wanted to be like everyone else. People ask me, “Oh, can you sing Gladys, Midnight Train to Georgia?” The bad part, the wrong side of me said, “Why? Cause I’m black?”

What would you like to see happen within the LGBT community?
I would love to see us come together more as a community, I would love to see us come together more as a unit. I still see separation, racial separation, in our community. … I don’t have no problem with “Black Gay Pride.” But why it gotta be “Black Gay Pride”? Why couldn’t it just be Gay Pride? And then you go to the Gay Pride, and everybody wants you to be pickin’ a guitar like my girl Melissa. I love Melissa Etheridge, but I’m a jazz singer.

Right.
We have a lot of issues within the community that we can’t get together. And my, my big stink — and a lot of people get mad at me — I’ll say, “Listen, why did they pay this straight artist, C.C. Peniston, all these ol’ bitches, they pay them to come to the Pride ceremonies, but they want the gay and lesbian artists to come perform for free.”

Let’s go back to Full Circle. You mentioned it was a really tumultuous time in your life?
Yeah, very. … In 1998, I was um, in a really bad domestic violence incident and I was stabbed 10 times. My throat was cut and then they said I probably wouldn’t be singing again, or doing my thing again. … I know there’s a God, ’cause they were counting to put me out for the count and God brought my black ass back again. You know? So, I know that it’s real.

Right.
Someone said, “Do you believe in the afterlife?” I said, “I believe in the afterlife, yeah!” I do, ’cause I’m a walking afterlife. When you lose a third of the blood in your body, and they put you out for the count, and you’re still here, you get it together. There is a reason. … In 2002, after my stabbing, I had really gone through a lot of stuff. I had lived on Skid Row for a minute, not because I was drugged, or an alcoholic, or drug addict, ’cause I don’t do that. It’s because I was a prideful bitch and sometimes your demise in life makes you wake up. So I wasn’t liquored up when I was on Skid Row, my ass was wide-awake. And that was, that’s even worse. So people see the aftermath of, “Oh, gee, look at her, she’s here now.” I’m like, you don’t know what I’ve gone through, and what I’m still going through.

I’m sure you live that everyday.
Yeah. Being employed, what the fuck, am I going to get a meal? Oh please, lord. Bring a dollar down from heaven, you know? I’ll tell you this, it’s all strength building. I tell everyone. They say, “Oh, it’s so sad.” I said, “No. “ Everyone has got to have something to build their strength. I said if I didn’t die with tear-stab wounds, I would not be where I’m at today.

That’s the bottom line. It’s not about making the money, not about making the this or the that. Who can you help survive in this race of life? Who can you help by being an example? What kids are out there, going through hell right now, who want to come out? … So many people have heard my story. I’ve had women come up to me and just thank me for being who I am.

So now you’re in Chicago?
Yeah, my show just closed. I’m doing Menopause: The Musical. It’s a Broadway play. I’ve been doing that for like two years. I was in the Charlotte cast. I’ve been everywhere with the show, and I was in the Chicago cast and the show just closed last week … so I’m like, “Oh great! Unemployed again and searching.” But it’s going to be good because this time. … I really believe that people can make whatever they can make for themselves, they just have to believe it.

I get tired of struggling, to be very honest. I’m being real. … Many people have said that my time is ripe here because a lot of people have heard me. I’ve always heard if that one person, that one right person hears you, it’s going to be over. I just love to write. I really would like to write and get my music, the lyrics, out to the world so people can have a chance. We all, we need hope real bad. Collectively, individually, mentally, spiritually, no matter what age, no matter what your status is. I don’t care if you have so much money, we need hope.

Melissa Etheridge, God love her, when she got the cancer, she really found out who the fuck she was as a woman. It’s through your struggles and your strategy that you wake up to be who you are. And that’s what it is. … I’m not going to lie and say I don’t want to be a multi-million dollar star. It would be nice. I want to, I really want to be where the world can hear [my songs], like “Why.” … I wrote that [song] ten years ago, but the world needs to hear “Why” because when the world [it] a change will be made.

I don’t want to hear, “Oh, I want to love you, love you, kiss you down,” and all that because you’re not telling little girls about the aftermath when you get pregnant and he leaves you. … They’re talking about, “Oh, I want to, let me touch you and grind you and all that,” and that’s lovely, but what happens afterwards when he gets you pregnant or when he brings AIDS into the home? What happens then? What song is going to get you through then?

Right, people don’t like hearing about the consequences.
Exactly. I’m a consequence, [so] I feel that I’m a consequential writer. I’ll give you the period. I’ll give you the beginning, middle and end, and I ain’t gonna cut it short. This is the deal. And a lot of people don’t want to hear that.

I think we need more musicians who are asking themselves what their responsibility is, and what their purpose is in what they are doing.
You know what the deal is, baby? We have been blessed with a gift. … And you know what? Blessed are those that give. … There are few that have been chosen. If you have a talent, you have a responsibility to do something with it.

I have a program that I do called “Songs from the Heart” on my off time. And what I do is, I go into at-risk areas. … This is what I’m really trying to make all this money for. I really want to teach songwriting to children. … I take them on an eight to 12 week program, teach them the business. They work, they do a car wash, basically whatever they gotta do to get their copyright money together. They send it in, we get some friends of mine who are photographers; they get their little photo shoot. They do the whole bit with musicians, and then after the eight to 12 week program, they have a product, a final product, their own product, one song.

Is this based in Chicago right now, or where?
Well, no, I do it everywhere, wherever they offer me to do it, I do it. I did it in Charlotte, N.C., and I’m trying to get the program started here in Chicago, and basically wherever they want. … My brother’s trying to get a program started out there in Los Angeles. … These kids that are not unruly, they just need to be heard. When you sit down with these kids, I say, “Say what you want to say, but you don’t have to curse. Say it with a positive message. Say what you want to say.” And you’d be surprised at how many kids are like, “Ms. Wells. Thank you. We love you. Because now I feel like I’ve done something. I can, I can go a step further.” Not that they have to be a songwriter, but they can be a writer of just a mere sentence. They can have some kind of self worth about themselves. … If more people would try and have a little more faith in themselves and maybe do something that they really have always wanted to do instead of working that nine to five and being caught up in it, we’d have less people on drugs, drinking, shooting, killing, ’cause all that is just suppressed anger with who we are as an individual. Get rid of the self-blame because it’s all going to work out in the end anyway.

The bottom line is just take a chance. I could have set up in Skid Row. Yeah! It’s easy: get a free meal, get some clothes thrown at you, but I don’t want that. I can say, “I can’t do a CD, I’ll never make it.” I ain’t worrying about making it, my voice will be heard, and thank God my voice is being heard.

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