Ani DiFranco took the confessional landscape of artists such as Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell and fused it with the spirit of punk rock, emerging with a sound and lyrical content that shook the foundation of American songwriting. (The record is also considered one of the essential live recordings released in the 1990s.)
Its reemergence in 2022, just as DiFranco is taking to the road again in full swing, serves as an important reminder of her place in the firmament of American song as well as a powerful reminder of live music's place in the lives of her fans.
But, like most artists, she's keen to keep moving forward, seeing her performances as part of the here and now, and even a little bit of her artistic future. And, more than 30 years since her recording debut, she'll deliver her first children's book in early 2023, accompanied by a new song for the occasion.
DiFranco recently spoke with KMUW about her life since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and more.
I wanted to talk about the album that you put out last year, "Revolutionary Love," which feels like a culmination of a career and life. The kind of album you can only make with a certain wisdom.
I'd like to think that's true. [Laughs.] I feel like I'm a much different kind of revolutionary at 50 than I was at 20. But it takes all kinds. The song "Revolutionary Love" and making that the centerpiece of the album really speaks to the idea that these days I'm coming at it with a different energy. I feel like I've done some of the preliminary steps on the path of revolutionary love, which is taking care of yourself. Bonding with your community. Making yourself stronger, making yourself safe. I think I did that for a lot of years in my songs, and now I'm ready to go to that sort of next phase, where I meet my opponent [and] having made myself strong, I can do the work of meeting them with curiosity, with openness. That's what I'm shooting for these days.
I'll be 50 at the end of this year and I'm experiencing a lot of changes I don't quite understand, but I do know that I see the world differently with age.
More humility starts to seep in. I'm less quick to judge; I'm more aware when I'm putting myself above somebody else. That takes experience. I've been cancelled on social media. It's really painful but that sensation of being put down put me in touch with the idea that I don't want to do that to others. I need to check myself when I start putting myself above somebody else. These are the kind of life experiences that help make you more of a bridge-builder as you get older. I think that, too, especially in this day and age when we're all kicking each other off the planet, all day long as soon as something gets hard. I think finding ways to build dialogue is really important. So I want to be part of that right now.
We're much closer as people than we're often led to believe by whatever slogans or billboards surround us. But it's hard to remember that.
Certainly, when you get immersed in these divisive algorithms it's really hard to remember it. My favorite thing is leaving my house, getting in somebody's car for a rideshare and getting to the airport and, by the time I get there, I have a new friend. They're of a completely different make and model than me. It's amazing how much love and mutual respect is really out there. It's accessible to you in any given moment to share with people. It sounds weird but I find that so life-affirming. When I start to feel hopeless and helpless and hapless, I just leave my house and go talk to people and I'm, like, "No, wait. This is America, an incredibly diverse place where people are actually super ready to show up and be kind to each other and consider each other." That, too, is still happening.
You're talking about leaving your house and going on tour, but in 2020 and 2021 that was off the table.
The medicine of gathering together and feeling inspired by each other's presence, feeling that sense of community and joy and inspiration and everything, and the idea that it's not just a one-way street that I bestow upon people. It's a thing that moves around and around and around. Through us. The absence of that for years was a whole lot of suck! And playing music for cameras and laptops instead of people? Whooo! [Laughs.] [That's] everything that's hard about my job and none of the good [stuff].
It's like being on display without the connection, without the feeling of connecting yourself to somebody else. It was really more like being watched, which is the part of it that I'm not so fond of. I was thinking, "If this is what being a musician means for too much longer, I don't know if I can hang."
I talked to a couple of people who had some considerable skin in the game but thought about hanging it up. But then a song would come and they'd say, "I can't turn this off. What else am I going to do?"
The inspiration was at an all-time-low, too. In terms of creating new songs and being inspired to play. You're so disengaged. It was kind of a dry spell even on that level. Yes, songs did come to me now and then, but not nearly at the rate [they do] when I'm out there mixing it up with people and feeling really engaged with society. I can kind of relate to, "Do I have another song in me? Is it over?"
You reissued the album "Living in Clip" earlier this year, and I've been reexperiencing it. It was a curious experience when that came out because my friends who introduced me to it had all been listening to Frank Zappa and Rush a few years earlier.
[Laughs.] Wow.
And suddenly they were listening to you. It was a seismic change for me as a listener. Is it strange to look back on an album and think, "Wow, it's been a quarter of a century since that came out?"
Yeah, it's pretty strange. But, for me, the really delicious part is the quarter century of community that has gotten stronger and tighter and more beautiful that whole time. I think a lot of people got down with my music for the first time through that record. We've had a long-term relationship since then and those kind of relationships get deeper over time, so I feel really grateful for the community. Of course, I can't really listen to a record I made last year let alone 25 years ago and be happy with it myself. It's hard for me. But I sure can be happy with the community that's galvanized around it and everything that we've accomplished.
You have a children's book on the horizon for release in 2023 ["The Knowing"], and I'm guessing that that's something you didn't see yourself doing.
Never saw that coming really. It was after I wrote a memoir a few years back, the young reader's division of my publishing company contacted me and said, "Hey, have you ever thought about [writing a children's book]?" When the pandemic hit I thought about all kinds of new things! [Laughs.] Since I couldn't sing for my supper anymore. I got in touch and said, "Maybe I want to try my hand at this." It's a whole other kind of writing for me in every way. All of my tricks [in my songwriting] like messing with cliches and cultural references and language play and connotation and double entendre and all these things that I love mean nothing to children. Nada. Zip. I had to put myself in a very different head to write to children. There's a song that will come out with the book. It was kind of a cool challenge really.
