Ani DiFranco is deep into Unprecedented Sh!t: The Tour, which will make a stop at MASS MoCA this spring. It might be a few years since she’s been on tour, but DiFranco has not slowed down. Last year, she did a six-month run on Broadway as Persephone in Hadestown. She released her 23rd album in May and is the subject of a new documentary, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, which is on a lengthy city-by-city tour intentionally mirroring the early DiFranco DIY tours. (The movie will be shown at Images Cinema in Williamstown on April 16.) Over the years, DiFranco also has released a collection of poems, a memoir, and two children’s books. She will be in North Adams on April 25, performing with special guest Wryn on MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center stage to a sell-out audience. From her home studio in New Orleans, the “Little Folksinger” talks about her latest album, Unprecedented Sh!t, as well as her solo move at age 18 from Buffalo to New York City, the impact of technology on young people, her take on Broadway, her fans, feminism, and being self-critical. She also lets us in on her latest work in progress.
We are looking forward to having you at MASS MoCA, Ani. When you’re on tour, do you explore the city where you’re playing? We don’t have a lot of days off, but whenever we do, then I have time to wander around and check a place out. On show days, I’m pretty ensconced with interviews and setlists. Making a setlist takes me a weirdly long amount of time, just trying to figure out what the flow is going to be like. I’m usually in the venue most of the day.
Your setlists vary depending on the venue? Yes, definitely. A rock club will be more rock and roll, and then in a seated theater, I can bring out the chill stuff. This spring is the first time I’ll be touring with my latest album, Unprecedented Sh!t. I haven't played any of those songs live.
I listened to the album again last night and really enjoy it. I'll ask you about that a little later. We have daughters who are a similar age, 17. How do you think your daughter’s life is different than when you were that age? I guess the biggest difference is the smartphone. She's growing up in a whole other way, in a whole other world than those of us who were pre-internet creatures. I feel very grateful to have known the world before that. It sort of contracted from three-plus dimensions to two. She has her own world there in her headphones and with her phone and TikTok, which is typical of this generation of kids. I feel like these devices—having the world in your pocket—is expansive in some ways because you certainly are aware of much more than maybe we were at 17 just entering the world. But I feel it's also a deterrent to actually going out there and striking your own path in the world. It’s an intimidating amount of information. Anything that a young person could think to do, they can pull their phone out of their pocket and see somebody who's doing it better than anyone ever has. And I feel like that makes kids feel like, well, why would I bother? I can't be that pretty or that good a dancer or that smart of a designer or whatever it is. I feel like it's almost a repressive force. That’s just coming from my mother's instinct. It seems like a lot of young adults seem wary to leave the house and go try to do something.
What stands out most when you were 18 and on your own in New York City? New York was so different back then, in 1989, when I moved there. It was much rougher around the edges, more dangerous and edgy, but really fascinating, really vibrant. With money comes cleanliness and safety and convenience and all those things, but it also dulls down the spirit of a place. I'm also happy that I'm old enough to have known the old New York, where there were found sculptures everywhere and still chickens running around the Lower East Side, squats and artists and a less shiny and moneyed and rat race-feeling city. It was rough. Even though I grew up in the city in Buffalo, landing in New York at 18 was daunting. I had a sublet for two months, and I didn't know a soul. I had to get work. I had to figure it out real quick. I remember I cried a lot. It felt cold to me at first, but I was determined. I acclimated, and, of course, I fell in love with it. I would live again in New York in a heartbeat.
What would you tell your younger self? I would mostly petition her to be more patient, to take more time doing everything. I was very driven and very determined. For whatever reason, I was flinging albums into the world twice a year, just churning out songs and throwing them against the wall and seeing what stuck. I would advise her to take more time—there’s no hurry—and even step back from making music, from making albums, from being on stage more than I did. I think it would have served me and my art, and in that sense, my audience, for me to remove myself and rebuild myself and regenerate my own cells more than I did.
Your kids must think you're so cool. I guess I'm doing okay in that regard. They're not mortally ashamed or embarrassed of me. It's amazing how little relevance the culture of one's parents has to their culture and their world. When I joined the Broadway show, I went up a notch with my daughter.
She got to experience New York and see her mom on stage, so I can understand why. Did you grow up wanting to be a musician? Yes, when I was nine, I started playing guitar, and right away it was the best medicine I'd ever had. It was the most healing thing to sing and to play guitar and to make music. Instantly, I wanted to do it and not stop. I didn't have a big plan for myself. I just knew that this was the best thing I found in terms of making art for me.
What did you listen to growing up? A lot of folk singers, so to speak. singer-songwriters of the ’70s, ’80s; I was fortunate to have a lot of them live and in person in my life.
How did that come about? When I was just a kid starting to play guitar, I made friends with this fellow in Buffalo, Michael Meldrum. He was a singer-songwriter, a troubadour playing in all the bars and running the open mics. I became his shadow. Another thing that he was doing was booking concerts. He had what he called the Greenwich Village Song Project, and he would bring songwriters in from the city. So, I met and hung out with a lot of them. I saw all of them play. The model for music was something you do. He and I would sit around and sing and learn songs and play together, and I would play with him at all his little shows. Growing up, it was more of a social act, which, I think, is the genesis of music and what it really is. So, I had a good, long beginning of the essence of what music is.
Did your singing come at the same time as guitar playing? Yeah, it was sort of about singing songs. I had the Beatles complete songbook, and I learned every Beatles song. When I was about 14, I started writing my own songs. I was surrounded by people who were writing songs, so I joined in.
You were on Broadway last year for a six-month stretch of the multi-Tony Award®- and Grammy® Award-winning Hadestown. You first sang the role of Persephone in Anaïs Mitchell’s 2010 concept album that was released on your independent label, Righteous Babe Records. How did it feel to play that role on stage? Is Broadway something you’d do again? It is totally something I would do again. It was really amazing in many, many ways, starting with being a part of something very big. I'm used to doing my own shows, and it’s all about my songs. I might have a few musicians playing with me, I might have a band, but this was much bigger than me. It was an amazing feeling on a very deeply monkey level, to be a part of a tribe. It was this amazing tribe of incredibly talented, spirited, super-wonderful, inspiring people. In that sense, it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. It felt like a really different type of performing. To break it down in a simple way, when you're on stage, there are two elements: One is interaction, where you're exchanging energy, or maybe even words; you're talking with the audience. Maybe they're talking back. You're relating to each other. The other aspect is putting on a show. You’re the show, and somebody is more passively watching. The Broadway thing was leaning very heavily into the latter. It was a big learning curve for me. When I do my thing, I lean very heavily into the interaction—I walk out on stage, I smell the air, I look at the people, I catch a vibe, and I go with that. I interact. That was a mistake on Broadway. I had to unlearn that instinct of mine. On a Wednesday matinee or a Tuesday night, if the audience is dead and the vibe is real sedate, that doesn't matter. You put on the damn show. You don't respond to the energy of the room; you command it. You come out swinging, no matter if it's Tuesday or Saturday night. You hit the same notes, metaphorically speaking. You get to that same pinnacle no matter what's happening in the room.
And you enjoyed that? Yes, I enjoyed the challenge of it. I did the show for six months, and on the last night that I performed it, I was still improving. I was still learning. I was learning the whole time and getting better the whole time. That was exciting. Another really, really interesting aspect of it to me was the acting part of it. Playing a character that was not me—even when I'm singing—the whole embodying of a character, I found that really interesting and challenging. I would definitely do it again.
Your memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, covers how you rejected the mainstream recording industry and created your own label. How did you come up with that name? It was originally Righteous Records. When I was 18, 19, 20, when I started making recordings, I was very political. I was this very anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchy, rebel kid. So it was Righteous Records. Then I learned when we went to incorporate the name that there was Righteous Records in Oklahoma, gospel music. They did not take kindly to me sharing their name, so I had to change it. I was a young woman navigating the world alone, living in New York. The “babe” I threw in there, well, for legal reasons so this gospel music label in Oklahoma wouldn’t sue. And because that was sort of my ironic, “hey, babe” world that young women live in, where you're always under the male gaze. A friend of mine and I used to call each other “babe” as sort of a joke, taking the power of it into our own hands, taking back the word and sort of poking fun at the patriarchy amongst ourselves. That is what I chose to throw in there. In retrospect, I'm very grateful to the gospel music label, because I think it's a cooler name. It says more.
Who are some of the younger artists you admire? In terms of leading this new generation, Billie Eilish is an amazing singer and changing the game in a radical way that I was sort of involved in back in my day, in changing the game for people. This young woman makes her records with her brother, a partnership of siblings that made their number one world-selling albums in their bedroom with only their own spleens and visions to guide them. They’re not industry creations. That’s really radical that they pulled that off, and amazing. Then there's all these other aspects to her rebellion of “I'm not going to let you use my body to sell my music,” all of those subtle but radical moves. I'm really impressed by her and hopefully more and more young people who are trying to thwart the system. There's just a lot of different ways to do it and stay empowered and stay authentic.
I've interviewed feminist icons like you—Gloria Steinem, Emily Saliers, Rachel Maddow, Rosanne Cash, Rita Dove, and others. Are you uncomfortable being referred to as that? The icon piece, whatever, that's for other people to decide. I have always called myself a feminist. You can look it up in the dictionary. It’s the belief that women should have rights and opportunities equal to men. It's simple. The cultural reality, which I've lived through plenty of years, is where feminism is a dirty word. Young women are trying to run away from it. It's very indicative of something that runs very deep, when the one word in the English language that means women have rights and opportunities equal to men is a taboo word that even women don't want to identify with. Somebody has created that cultural impression around that word, and a lot of people have bought into it. So, I'm really thrilled with any young woman, like a Beyoncé with “FEMINIST” written behind her on stage. This is not a dirty word. This is actually the path to peace on earth. So, let's be real. Why doesn't everyone identify as feminist who believes in this very basic concept? That should be a question more often asked.
Are the terms “social activist” and “musician” intertwined? For sure. I've been asked for so many years about the relationship between art and activism. Even thinking about it as separate things in a relationship feels a little off. To me, it’s one thing. It's a motivation to connect with people. It's a motivation to uplift people. It's a motivation to be free and for everybody around me to be free.
How has your audience changed? Or has it? I've been out there for 30 years or more. A lot of people have been on the ride with me the whole time or for a long time, which is super deep, to have an ongoing, long-term relationship with listeners. I have an experience a lot these days where, if I see somebody on the street or in a restaurant who comes up to me, what I often hear is, “Man, you have accompanied me in all these phases of my life.” Some of the people got off the boat somewhere, and they come up to me and say, “Whoa, you got me through high school.” But a lot of other people say, “Wow, you hit your Saturn return. I hit my Saturn return. You found love. I found love. You became a mother. I became a mother.” This is my favorite part about writing songs, feeling less alone, connecting with other people and hearing, “Yeah, me, too.” That's a really deep, warm feeling now when I get out there and perform. Also exciting is seeing some younger people down front, to see a next generation of radical political feminist creatures who hopefully will go out there and change whatever this new game is.
Well, you're definitely inspiring them. I hope so. That's my biggest joy is to set somebody a light within themselves.
Your 23rd album, your latest, is quite different than what you've created in the past. I’ve read that you wanted to work with someone who knows about emulating the world of machines. BJ Burton is the person that you connected with. What is it about him that you felt was compatible with you? He's a person who has this amazing discography of records that are not centered around recording bands playing their instruments necessarily. It’s about creating soundscapes in a studio. We took a chance on each other. I was like, okay, here's a dude that's up to the shenanigans that I'm interested in exploring and never have. So, I sent him a few demos, and they piqued his interest. I recorded some basic stuff, and then he turned it into way different stuff. The sounds generally are just manipulations of some very organic, basic materials, which I find fascinating.
How is that going to work on tour? I don't know. We shall see. I’m gonna get together with my band. I feel like I haven't been on tour in a thousand years, so it all feels new. We’re going to figure out how to represent these songs live for the first time with our instruments. I’m not going to play tracks or simulate all the sounds on the record. I’m just going to interpret the songs live, musicians interacting, and see what that sounds like. It'll be different from the record. And why not? A song is a song.
I went online trying to find where I can watch the movie 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, and it can’t be streamed yet, right? Thanks for looking. It’s still going around to independent theaters and art houses. In the spring, it should go to some streaming platform.
How do you feel about having a documentary about you? Well, I feel really good about it in that I actually haven't watched it. That would make me feel all sorts of other things. It’s been working out really well to not watch it myself and get into that inward spiral of “Oh, God, why don't I do more things to look better in any given moment?” I didn't do anything different because there was a camera around. I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s very honest, it's very raw, and it's very much the director Dana Flor’s creation. I didn't tell her anything, really. I saw an earlier version, and I gave a couple of notes, basically protecting not my own privacy, but the privacy of others in my life. That was about it. We've done Q/As for a bunch of screenings, and I’ve been there, and I’ve talked to a lot of people who have seen it, and they overwhelmingly really enjoyed it and felt inspired. So I'm not sure what Dana created, but it seems like it's inspirational to people, and that's all I could hope for. That’s why I chose to work with her, too, because I knew that about her.
I don't see you as not wanting to watch yourself. I'm very insistent on being myself and being free. To be honest, I am not free of my own self-loathing yet. It's my life's work, really. I can't listen to my own recordings. I can't watch myself on film. So, I still have work to do. That’s part of what has driven me to make music and to make songs and to heal myself with music. The epicenter of the motivation is to heal and to be okay with myself and my life and figure out my path. Then the fact that when you do that, that can transfer to other people, and other people can heal through it, too, is a bonus. But, I think, in the beginning, what I'm trying to do is get there myself.
You have two children's book and a memoir, the tour coming up, the movie, the Broadway show. What’s on the horizon? There's a project that I'm really excited about, but I probably shouldn't talk about it just yet, because I'm not even officially hired. I've been writing on spec; I’ve been working on a TV show based on a book, and I really hope it comes into being. I’m sort of living and breathing and dreaming that project right now, but it's all, you know, TBD. That’s what I’ve got on the backburner. It’s a new context to use my creativity.
We’re really looking forward to you returning to the Berkshires. You’ve been here at least a few times before. Yes, and I have a very dear old friend who lives in Williamstown, artist Laylah Ali. I’m gonna hit her up. I’m really excited to be in that part of the woods.
—Anastasia Stanmeyer