Ani DiFranco
The Tasmanian Devil of Folk
by Al Riess
[From Dirty Linen #54 October/November 1994]
photo: Denise Sofranko
There aren't many performers in the realm of folk/roots music quite like 24-year-old New York City-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist Ani DiFranco. Since 1990, she has made six albums of original material, and recently started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records. Many media-types have used the following words to describe her lyrics, her guitar-playing, or DiFranco herself: angry feminist, hard, in-your-face, bitter, Tasmanian devil imitation, razor blades. Her head, if not completely shaved, often reminds one of what one would see in a punk-rock club with a long pony-tail of hair in the middle of her clean-shaven head. More than her ears are pierced. Not your usual folkie, especially for a girl, huh? These observations may be accurate to a point, but they paint an incomplete picture of Ani DiFranco.
Why is she becoming increasingly well-known throughout North America? Why do her fans range from young teen-age girls to balding middle-aged and old men? Why do her recordings often top the list of best sellers at an increasing number of folk festivals on this continent? Because few performers are as honest, independent, and uncompromising in what they perform and how they perform it, and that is welcome and refreshing.
On one of her occasional visits to her native Buffalo, DiFranco talked for nearly two hours about her music and career. She is as open in person as she is on stage, a relaxed, informal, congenial conversationalist.
Ani (pronounced AH-nee) DiFranco simply describes her early years in Buffalo as "liberating and independent." She began performing Beatles songs in public when she was nine years old, when a local folk music promoter brought her to local bars and clubs. The promoter booked into Buffalo artists like John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, Rod MacDonald and Christine Lavin, and DiFranco says "quite a few of them stayed at my family's house because he always needed some place to put them. I got to know them way back when and I was hanging out with a bunch of singer-songwriters." By the time she was fifteen she was writing her own material: "For me to start writing songs seemed like the thing to do at the time because everybody else was doing it."
Over the next few years, she played in bars, pubs, and coffeehouses in Buffalo, and developed a powerful, direct, dynamic guitar-playing style which has been compared to that of Michael Hedges. She says, "My style comes out of survival techniques; years of playing in loud bars where you have to figure out some way of making people turn around and shut up and listen when they just really want to drink and pick somebody up. My guitar playing evolved in that sense. My influences were along those practical lines and so I use a lot of open tunings."
In 1990, DiFranco released her first cassette, a self-titled album featuring only her vocals and acoustic guitar. It includes songs like "Both Hands," dealing with the expiration of a torrid love affair, and "Lost Woman Song" about a woman experiencing an abortion. At that time, she relocated to New York City to attend college at the New School of Social Work, and began to look for gigs at clubs, occasionally leaving her cassette behind. "[The tape] circulated on its own," she said,"and letters would start to come in from colleges. So I started to travel, because students would organize to get me to play at their school in New Jersey or upstate New York or Pennsylvania and that's how touring started. I was leaving town on the weekends to play shows, the weekends started getting longer and longer, and pretty soon I dropped out of school."
By the end of 1992, she released two more albums: another stripped-down album, Not So Soft, and Imperfectly. On the latter, DiFranco began to experiment with added instrumentation, using a little electric guitar, bass, and drums. Since then, she has added three more CDs to her catalog: a total of six in less than five years.
"[The songs] keep coming and I try not to obsess about it too much. If I was working for Warner Brothers, they would say, `Ani, you can't put out two albums a year, it doesn't make any business sense and you have to think about marketing,' but because I work for myself I can do whatever I want, and if I have two albums worth of material I go right back and start working on the next one. I want to be able to work at my own pace and right now it's a pretty fast pace. It may slow down but I'm not going to worry about it too much," said DiFranco.
Being her own boss and doing her own thing is important to DiFranco, as a performer and writer, certainly, but there's a feel that it is almost a crusade of hers to be independent, and her independence is vital to her psyche. In addition to her unique, honest songwriting and performing, DiFranco's success has given rise to her own recording label, Righteous Babe, which she incorporated earlier this year. She spoke a great deal about this venture and how it ties in with her independent philosophy, and about record labels in general. She seems driven to succeed not just for herself, but as a representative of the masses who bucked the system and won.
DiFranco's eyes sparkled with determination when she talked about Righteous Babe. She's willing to be in the label biz for the long haul, and won't sell out, financially or artistically, to larger labels. She has been courted by indie and major labels alike, but states, "The more successful you become, the more they want a piece of the action. Record company people come along and say, in so many words, `This is a great thing you have going, can I buy it?' The big fish wants to gobble up the little fish and make the dough."
She acknowledges the disadvantages of being on her own: she has trouble getting her recordings distributed and available in every store. Touring without label-supported roadies or guitar technicians can be a hassle. "When I break a string on stage I have to make a performance of changing it, but other people just hand their guitar to their guitar tech and get a tuned one back."
But she became quite emphatic when she said that if she signed to a label, "I would have to make sacrifices, politically and artistically speaking, and I'm not interested in being rich and famous if it means that I have to answer to big business people in terms of telling me what my image should be. If a company is going to shell out money, they are going to want a certain amount of control and I'm not willing to give anybody control over anything when it comes to my music. I want to prove to the world that it can be done. Somebody can remain completely independent and compete with majors and I think that there is a way to do it." She holds out hope that things may change, because more people, and performers, have increased access to everything from laser printers for designing album covers to studio time at small local recording studios. "Maybe I'm deluding myself, but I see that the music business is heading in the direction of people taking control over their own art and their own life and not signing their life away to a multinational corporation. The possibilities are broadening.
"Huge record companies are set up to make money first and music second. I get that sense from talking to people as they approach me, smile, and hand me their card. They send me their whole catalog of CDs to try and woo me. This is who's on our label and let me buy you lunch. My publicist was talking to one of the A&R people at a major label. The A&R person has been following me around a lot lately and actually called up my publicist and at some point in the conversation this A&R woman let it slip like, `You know, signing Ani would really make my career and I just...' and it was sort of like oops. It was the unspoken `We're interested in you, but not because we believe in your music.' If they didn't come out to shows, and see all the interest, or know how many albums you sell on your own, then they wouldn't give you the time of day. It's `What can you do for me?' Suddenly the performer becomes a commodity. Moving units. It's a world that I find very dehumanizing, demeaning and exploitative. I don't understand why so many musicians go that route. For me it's not a question of why don't you sign with a label, it's why would you? If you can figure out how to do it for yourself and be your own boss, that seems to be much more gratifying and politically useful than supporting some guy with a fancy car and car phone and a coke habit.
"If you really are interested in challenging the system, I don't think you can just become a part of it and expect that your music can still present that same challenge. The more voices outside the sacred circle we have making noise, the more useful it is."
Her musings about record companies eventually brought her around to folk music. "Another thing about record companies I find dehumanizing is that they break artists up into categories. They do demographic studies and they try to market things to certain age groups or races. They divide and separate populations and try to capitalize on the stereotype of each of these groups rather than bring people together. The great thing I like about folk music is that it tends to bring people together more. It happens in meeting halls, people sit around tables and talk and they eat and there are kids running around and it's sort of like sub-corporate music. I think it has the effect of bringing people together rather than dividing them." DiFranco is especially heartened by the mix of various styles of world and roots music at some folk festivals, and spoke of the time she "was on a stage with a guy from South Africa and some woman from Guam: very diverse people on a stage, relating to each other and swapping songs. You begin to hear the similarities and humanity in all of these diverse musics come out. That's what I love about folk music. There are certain reasons why I would shy away from the folk music label and there are certain reasons why I would embrace it. One of the great things about folk music is that it's completely uncorporate. It's music by folks. What could be better?"
DiFranco says what she thinks, whether she's talking about record companies or when she's writing lyrics. So if one person's ceiling is another one's floor, then one person's independence and outspokenness can become another one's restrictions. And it seems that an increasing number of her songs, while speaking directly and bluntly as DiFranco always has done, include words like "fuck" or phrases like, "Is that a dick in your pocket or are you trying to record me?" that will preclude more and more of her songs from being played on the radio even on college/alternative stations, where her music receives the bulk of its airplay. Two of the best songs on her new album Out of Range, "Buildings and Bridges," and "Diner" fit into this category and may not receive much exposure.
There are other aspects of DiFranco's music on radio. She spoke of her appreciation of broadcasters that go out on a limb and program her material, and even talked about a live radio gig on which she started playing "Every State Line" (about an unpleasant run-in with a state trooper over a traffic violation) without thinking about the line "Fuck you very much." She changed the word so the broadcaster wouldn't get into trouble.
"Not all of my stuff is the most radio-friendly material you'll find, but I write what is true to myself and I try not to think about whether it's radio-friendly or commercially viable. The amazing thing to me is there are tunes that have none of the seven dirty words in them that people won't play. Like `Blood in the Boardroom' [from her fourth album Puddle Dive]. An acquaintance of mine called up some station in Boston and requested `Blood in the Boardroom.' The DJ played up through verse two and a half and then cut it off. There's no swear words. It's completely a conceptual thing. What I find really amazing is that there's supposedly no rules or thought police and yet somehow people find the idea of menstruation offensive, and people won't play a song on the radio that has to do with that, or has the word tampon in it. Like that's a dirty word. People who feel that they need to adhere to the regulations and not play songs with swear words in them is one thing, but then people who won't play songs with certain ideas in them really scare me. This is even alternative radio."
The lyrics of "Blood in the Boardroom" tell two stories: the first is one of a decidedly non-corporate type woman who experiences her menstrual period unexpectedly early while "Sitting in the boardroom/ the I'm so bored room/ listening to the suits.../ they can make straight lines out of almost anything/ except for the line of my upper lip when it curls" and there is the woman's (dare I say feminist) slant in the lines "These businessmen got the money/ they got the instruments of death/ but I can make life, I can make breath." The song concludes with, "I didn't really have much to say the whole time I was there/ So I just left a big brown blood stain on their white chair." Media pundits often categorizes DiFranco's repertoire as "angry woman songs," and "Boardroom" is an example of why this happens. But this piece, along with many other so-called angry woman songs, can appeal to a wider audience. Read between the lines, and the song's second angle tells the broader story of the underdog battling the establishment, using whatever means possible to achieve some sense of empowerment. It seems that many media people ignore the fact that these songs can, and often do, operate on a level that speaks to all kinds of people.
DiFranco just laughs at the constant categorization of her music. "On my bad days I find it infuriating, this pigeonhole I keep being stuck in, but on my good days I find it hysterical that being 5'2" and giggly and not very aggressive in person that I could be intimidating to people. Sometimes, I show up at a new venue and people often say, `I thought you would be... taller.' I just know that they were expecting some monster with fangs and I have to go through the process of convincing people that I'm not a monster with fangs and I'm not intimidating and I'm not angry and I can talk about these things and still be human. And that we can have some place at which we can relate."
DiFranco will continue to say whatever she feels in her lyrics, and although some people will always pigeonhole or dismiss her, she said, "I would rather suffer that than suffer silence or try and hide certain things about myself. In live performances, I find that no matter what you say, if you can communicate it from a place of mutual respect for your listener, and you expect that respect back, a lot more people than you think will be open to your message. You don't even have to agree with me. I travel around and play to a many different kinds of people, different walks of life, ages, sexes, and people are really pretty open even when you're talking about taboo subjects. If you can make them laugh and have a good time, it works."
"I think generally speaking we have so much more in common as people than we have differences, and although I write from a women's perspective because I'm a woman and that's my life, a lot of men can relate to my songs if they open themselves up to relating to a different perspective." And it's not that difficult to relate to the universal level of DiFranco's work. Out of Range's "If He Tries Anything," a sometimes dark, sinister track about two confident and sassy young women hitchhiking at night, could easily refer to young men hitching, "We got rings of dirt/ around our necks/ We talk like auctioneers/ and we bounce like checks/ we smell like shit/ ...when we walk down the street."
With her fourth album, Puddle Dive, DiFranco has added more backing musicians on her recordings, and began to experiment with the breadth and depth of her musical arrangements. Canadian percussionist Andy Stochansky is now a permanent fixture on DiFranco's tours and in her recording sessions. There's even a funky horn section on one of the tracks on her latest album Out of Range. She says that when she writes her material now, she often hears particular arrangements for the songs. In mid-1993, she released Like I Said, a re-recording of 15 selections from her first two guitar/vocal-only albums, this time with more instruments added to the mix in a subtle, unobtrusive manner -- even bagpipes and didgeridoo. She said "On the first two albums, I never really did play with the songs in terms of other instrumentation. Listening back on the first album and the second album, a little bit less, I think I hadn't quite found my own voice yet. To me I sound not quite like me and so I wanted to re-record certain songs on those first two albums that are still alive for me and bring them up-to-date in terms of how I play them now as opposed to four years ago."
In the next couple of years she hopes to play more folk festivals, especially in the United States, to complement her success at festivals in Canada, and she wants to put Righteous Babe Records on "firm ground and become an example of somebody who held her head above water in the music business without floating out to the great multinational music corporation sea, and maybe at some point in the future record other people on Righteous Babe Records. And do a lot more touring and performing: I'm a touring musician and I don't ever want to stop. The way I learned about song writing is by performing songs and the way I learned about the world is by getting out there and talking to people, traveling around. Hopefully, the business will keep expanding and the albums will get better, and when all that stuff is happening you can just take me out behind the barn and shoot me and put me out of my misery. Until that day there are always new challenges."
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