Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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DiFRANCO, Ani

(b 23 Sep. '70, Buffalo NY) Singer-songwriter, guitarist. A fiercely independent cult figure and a compelling solo performer whose lyrics are frequently couched in language as strong as her emotions. Her music has been dubbed 'punk-folk', and her swooping vocal style carries echoes of female icons from Joni Mitchell to Tori Amos; she is also an original and unusually accomplished acoustic guitarist. She learned to play at age nine and was an established presence on the NY coffee house/college gig circuit by her early teens, founding her own Righteous Babe Records '90 based in Buffalo and releasing an eponymous debut album which she sold primarily at gigs, followed by Not So Soft '91, Imperfectly '92, Puddle Dive (charted in Canada) and Like I Said (Songs 1990--91) '93, Out Of Range '94 and Not A Pretty Girl '95. Having sold a grand total of 200,000 self-financed albums she was courted by major labels, but said no thanks: Dilate '96 again came out on Righteous Babe (first to be released in the UK, on Cooking Vinyl), as did live two-CD Living In Clip '97, coming closer to capturing the power of her stage act, including Andy Stochansky's drumming and Sara Lee's bass and DiFranco's spontaneous banter. With her pierced nose, brightly coloured hair and take-no-shit attitude, DiFranco remains her own woman and a powerful force on the alternative fringe. Little Plastic Castle '98 on Righteous Babe/Cooking Vinyl was even more widely reviewed, but still took no prisoners.

She also wrote songs based on stories by by raconteur and folksinger Utah Phillips, born in 1935, a Korean was vet and a Wobbly (member of Workers of the World) for 40 years, then produced and performed them with Phillips on his The Past Didn't Go Anywhere '96 on her label. He had earlier albums on Philo; bluegrass duo Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin recorded Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs Of Utah Phillips on Rounder, and Fellow Workers '99 under DiFranco's name was another album of duets with Phillips on Righteous Babe, telling the story of the American labor movement, recorded before a small invited audience in New Orleans.

Further uncompromising DiFranco albums have been To The Teeth and Up Up Up Up Up Up, both '99, and Revelling: Reckoning 2001; So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter 2002 again captured the live act, followed by a studio set Evolve 2003. At a gig in Des Moines Iowa the night before that state's Democratic party caucuses on 19 January 2004 she brought Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich onstage, having endorsed his campaign for the presidency. It was a solo gig, showing off her guitar chops; she had recorded a new album Educated Guess herself on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and many of the songs seemed to deal with her recent breakup with her husband and collaborator (producer, engineer, sideman) Andrew "Goatboy" Gilchrist. A fool in the audience yelled out "Goatboy sucks!" and DiFranco seemed visibly upset; she recovered immediately but some fans thought she may have shortened the set because of it.