Photograph by Danny Clinch
Let’s face it: Some years in our lives are better than others. More productive, more abundant, more fulfilling. That’s especially true for artists, though it’s rare to experience a banner year some 35 years into a career. As she has so many times before, however, singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco proves the exception to the trope.
Last year, the indie roots pioneer, feminist icon, and mother of two blazed ahead with a prolific streak for the ages. Besides releasing Unprecedented Sh!t, her 23rd album since debuting in 1990, she co-starred in the Broadway musical Hadestown; published Show Up and Vote, her second children’s book; and had a documentary film about her life, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, receive distribution.
Speaking from her home in New Orleans between tour stops, DiFranco explains how she’s expanding on 2024—including her September 3 show at the Taft Theatre with Hurray for the Riff Raff. “I’m following last year up with more mayhem,” she says. “Been doing a lot of touring, playing new songs from Unprecedented Sh!t. Music will always be the backbone of what I do, but I’m working on finding ways for it to not just be me driving around and playing Ani songs or be the only context I make music in. Not that I haven’t loved that job for 30-plus years, but right now I’m writing a musical and looking to score a film and finding other ways to be creative.”
Always evolving, never standing still, DiFranco and her music have always been rooted in the folk genre with heightened overtones of punk, jazz, and blues. Though she tours with a small band now, she’s known for her intense percussive guitar playing and solo acoustic shows. Unprecedented Sh!t offers a bold detour from her customary sound. DiFranco uses an outside producer, BJ Burton, for only the second time in her career instead of producing herself—which makes all the sonic difference, as Burton creates electronic textures to accompany her incisive lyrics and melodies.
“I chose that title because it speaks to where we’re all at here,” she says of the album. “I am of a generation where music is made by people playing instruments, but that’s something of an antiquated notion these days. Record-making in modern music really leans into machines and what they can do. Of course, an instrument is an old kind of machine—if you listen to modern music, people playing instruments is just one element of it, but a lot of construction now is in the digital realm. For years now I’ve been wanting to also explore all the possibilities computers have to offer.”
DiFranco candidly recognizes her skill set and limitations as a musician, explaining, “But computers are not my jam, so when it comes time to making a record, I generally just set up microphones in front of myself and other musicians. But computers are very much a part of my world—like all of us, screens have almost put the real world into the background—and whatever you want to think about that scenario, it’s a reality. So it’s weird for me that this world of machines and computers has not been evident in my art or my music even though we’re all living with these machines. I reached out to BJ Burton, who very much understands, manipulates, and is creative with that sort of computer realm, so I could bring my songs into the 21st century.”
Their unusual collaboration leads to an edgy record of contrasts, from the opening “Spinning Room” and “Virus”—pulsing, electronic dirges of dislocation about dealing with depression and the COVID years, respectively—to the sparse acoustic strum of “More or Less Free,” a prisoner’s lament. The ambitious “Baby Roe” confronts the history of abortion in America with an industrial-fueled soundscape and jarring tempo. In the plucked acoustic folk-blues of “Boots of a Soldier,” DiFranco’s weary alto infuses pathos in the imagined backstory of her own thrift-store boots in war, a worthy echo of Tim O’Brien’s classic Vietnam story, “The Things They Carried.”
In “New Bible,” the record’s centerpiece track and a manifesto of sorts, DiFranco chronicles what it takes to survive in the post-modern world. She weaves personal ethos with the political in these kinds of provocative songs and challenges listeners to follow their own destinies, a common theme in her music. If she can empower herself through music, others can as well.
DiFranco sums up the unprecedented forces we face today. “If you look at it, fascism is what we’re dealing with now on our shores, and it’s really patriarchy in its endgame,” she says. “I certainly hope to inspire people to follow their own truths and believe it, even if it doesn’t seem reflected back to them when they look around—sort of a role I’ve played since the beginning with my songs.”
DiFranco has been forging her own way since leaving home in Buffalo, New York, at age 15. Nicknamed “the Mother of the DIY movement” in music, she started her own indie label, Righteous Babe Records, at 19, and hasn’t looked back—still releasing records under her own brand decades later. It’s gratifying to learn Prince was a major DiFranco fan, admiring her fierce independence; they later collaborated. With the DIY/indie music scene thriving these days, the depth of DiFranco’s influence becomes apparent.
“It’s cool for me to have been an example or inspiration for people,” she says. “I love hearing that from people, like, I saw what you did and made me think that I could do it. My favorite thing to hear is that I inspired somebody to push the envelope in their own direction too.”
DiFranco’s own influencer, collaborator, and mentor was Pete Seeger, the iconic folk hero. Both artists share an activist spirit and a stubborn refusal to back down from core beliefs. Seeger, who died in 2014, played banjo on DiFranco’s cover of the union anthem, “Which Side Are You On?,” and the two became friends. The recent Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, has provided Seeger with a higher profile, and DiFranco toured with Dylan as an opening act in the late 1990s.
“I did see the movie, and I thought Ed Norton was amazing as Pete,” she says. “I thought everybody nailed it. That being said, it is fiction, it’s mythmaking. Bob is very good at making myths, even his own, and why not—making great stories and myths is an awesome thing to do.”
DiFranco says Seeger inspired her simply through his energy. “He was a model for me in trying to show up every day in every situation with an open heart, paying attention, and there for the right reasons,” she says. “That’s what I try to be. He was always so kind and open and effective in guiding people gently back to that place of why are we even here, because we’re losing sight of it. That’s what I hope to grow up to be someday.”
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