On March 20, Ani DiFranco begins the second leg of her tour in San Diego in support of ¿Which Side Are You On?, her first new studio album in three years. The dozen track record is an exquisitely varied and colorful work, intimate and direct, while not only encapsulating the noted DiFranco creed, but also expanding on her storied treatise in a most modern and sophisticated way. The artist’s new album also features Ivan and Cyril Neville, Anaïs Mitchell, Adam Levy, Mike Dillon, Skerik, and folk icon Pete Seeger, along with a diverse range of subject matter that helps magnify its sublime framework.
Jambands.com caught up with the singer/songwriter at home in Louisiana, while discussing a wide range of topics from her creative process, the importance of live performances, Bob Dylan, motherhood, and the sound of a spaceship landing in a studio.
RR: It has been over three years since your last studio album. How long has it taken to get these songs together? I know some of these songs have been out there for a while, and some have been played live, but how did you decide upon song selection and sequencing, and when did you feel you had reached the endpoint on the work?
AD: I’m one who is always playing songs live before they end up on a record because I’m just always out there working. The stage is part of my writing workshop, bouncing things off an audience is very illuminating. I started working on this record on the heels of the last record, which was three years ago, and I haven’t been working on it steadily for three years, for sure, but in little fits and spurts. I would come back to it, largely because I’m a parent now, so most of my time and energy when I’m not on the road is dedicated to my kid. There’s just this album lurking in the background of my life for a few years, so far down my priority list, now that I’m a mom. Every now and then, I would look over my shoulder, and think, “Oh, shit, that thing —it hasn’t finished itself yet?”
I think that this record, had it come out a few years ago, would be a much different record, and not as cool, so I sort of have my kid to thank for all the interruptions because over the years, as you can imagine, some songs fell off the playlist, and other songs jumped on, and the record mutated in its scope. By the time I had arrived at the group of songs, the material that I wanted to share this time out, it’s funny that you should bring up sequencing because that was the hardest sequencing effort I have ever had. (laughs) I had this group of songs that I just, yeah, it was just not an obvious flow at all. I’m not sure how I came up with this final order, but it’s not an obvious order, starting with a song like “Lifeboat”—a very mysterious little dirge; it’s a weird way to start. I feel cool about the flow that I finally came up with; it’s just an intuitive thing.
RR: I want an album to tell me a story, which prompts me to go back to it. There is something about this particular record. Which Side Are You On? contains a lot of information, but it does flow in a logical way, and doesn’t appear overly planned out, which is why I was impressed with the sequencing right away.
AD: That’s cool. Well, good. I labored over it. (laughter) You know everybody…the conventional wisdom was “You should start with “Which Side” because that’s the obvious album opener,” and etc. etc., and I just thought, “Hmmm…I don’t know; I’m not feeling that.” I like the circuitous journey through all of the stories.
RR: Your version of Pete Seeger’s “Which Side Are You On?” isn’t in your face, but it’s a very strong work with the lyrical directness, and you sort of ease into that song on the album, also illustrating that life does not have a lot of easy answers. That prompts me to think that a lot of what happened when you became a mother colors these lyrics. I know my own parental situation leads me to dedicate less time to my writing, so I was wondering about your process. How did your new motherhood impact your art, and what was the specific impact on the album?
AD: Like I was talking about a minute ago, it’s the Grand Interrupter (laughter)—a child. My kid recently turned five, so five years ago I was resistant like any new parent, and in a panic, truth be told. “Oh, shit, my life is over, and everything that I loved to do…” For those of us that love their work, it’s an excruciating transition because you have so much less time, as you say, and energy to dedicate towards it.
But, I quickly realized that resistance is futile (laughter), as with anything in life, and total acceptance is the key. As soon as I brought myself there, it was just a huge blessing. In years past, if I’ve been guilty of anything, it is throwing work into the world too quickly— not taking a lot of time with records because I’m sort of the anti-perfectionist in my nature, so making records was a bit of a haphazard process. Sometimes, I was in the right place at the right time, and sometimes, I wasn’t. But I never had the will to belabor any of that. My art lives on stage. I’m a live performer at heart. That’s where I think…last night, my fella and I, was watching that Scorsese documentary of Dylan…
RR: No Direction Home.
AD: Yeah, and I was watching Dylan saying, “The seminal performances of his songs happened on stage, and very rarely on record,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah! That’s it!” That’s a folk singer, or a jazz musician, or, jambands, as I know you write for Jambands, so, yeah, people who are live performers—their records are documents at best, and, hopefully, accurate ones, and, hopefully, flattering, but not always the case for me along the way. Taking my time with this record and all of the perspective that that affords, I think, that’s a dawning of a new era for me in terms of making records.
RR: You spoke of your evolving creative process over the years. What do you do in the moment to stay true to yourself when you are touring as much as you do?
AD: Yeah. Yeah. To me, the stage is so obvious and so easy a place to be in the moment. I’m somebody that is really taken by other people—my attention, my focus—so that
when I am standing in a room full of people, I am gripped, I am gripped by their presence. I am reacting to every shift, or every noise, or every response, or every silly unexpected thing that happens—that is the joy for me of making art. The challenge for me is always just being present in my art, not getting it all right. So the stage is my indigenous zone, whereas in the recording studio, there is nobody there except for you and your fear, or, if you’re me, the heavy baggage of regret for all of the mistakes you’ve made on record in the past. Again, not well-thought out performances, or recordings, that are stuck there on CD for posterity. That can be really claustrophobic for me in the studio. I much prefer singing (laughs) in time and space for other people. I think that music in its essential form is a social act, and that’s what feels most natural to me.
But I have a good album-making partner now in my husband.
RR: Yes, your “fella”—Mike Napolitano. How important has Mike been in your collaborative process, specifically as a co-producer on this latest work?
AD: Huge, just huge. He’s much better at making records than I. And thank goodness because I’m a songwriter and a performer. So now that he’s my left hand man in the studio, I don’t have to wear as many hats. I don’t have to feign objectivity. In the past, it was always me at the helm, so I’m setting up microphones for all of the instruments, and getting everybody situated and worrying about a thousand things, and then: “O.K., what microphone is left? O.K., I’ll sing into that. O.K., GO,” and then you perform. You’re supposed to step right out of the song, and objectively decide whether that was the right performance or not. This kind of schizophrenic job of trying to produce your own records, I think, has been quite weighty for me for many years, and the fact that I now have somebody that I totally trust, and can defer to, is really luxurious development in my life. Because making recordings is not my passion, I will do something automatically. I take the guitar on stage, I plug it into the amp I use on stage, and say, “O.K., I’m ready.” Mike will hold up his hand and say, “I think we can get a better tone than this,” so the process begins of him applying his more sophisticated recording abilities to my process now. I’ve learned a lot. I think I’m making some of my best recordings now—somewhat because of my age, I’m experienced, but mostly because of him.
RR: You have quite a strong band playing with you, as well. I would like to also comment on some rather formidable guests on the record like Pete Seeger himself.
AD: He has been a great inspiration to me in so many ways. He is one of the forefathers of my job. He’s a direct link to Woody Guthrie who I feel is the inventor of my job. Pete, as well, is the old guard of political song, of peoples music, of folk song. He has so much to teach, and I think as a young pup, I gravitated towards this kind of music and this underground community. I just felt really welcome there. People like Pete, and Utah Phillips, and the list goes on and on, were very welcoming to me when I started showing up at folk festivals, and bringing a teenage audience into the mix. I think that Pete is very much on the tip of allowing the music to change, to evolve, for new performers to come
in, and affect it probably more than he was when Bob Dylan was going electric at Newport (laughs) as I was just watching on T.V., but now he’s just so so centered in the fact that “evolve or die.” He’s just been a great friend and a great mentor of sorts.
I learned “Which Side Are You On?” originally a few years ago to play at his 90th birthday party celebration. I started pulling it into my live set ever since then, and I decided to put it on my new record. So I called him up, and I said, “Pete, I’m recording my version of “Which Side.” Can you come play on my recording?” It was an immediate yes, and energetic “YES.” He said, “Hang on,” and he leaves the phone, and comes back with his banjo, and said, “The key is G, you say; now, we can do the modal version [DiFranco scats Guthrie playing that on the banjo], or we can do this version, [more Guthrie playing],” and by the time we rendezvoused to make what was essentially about a ten-minute long field recording session near his house, he had sent me various versions of the song, written paper, and he had sent me new material that he is writing, new protest songs that he thought I might want to get in on, or employ in my set. He’s just so eternally passionate and inspired and energetic that I can only hope (laughs) to follow in his footsteps, to be anything like him at age 90—at age 40, let alone 90.
RR: You also have some fine New Orleans musicians on the record, too. What is the contrast between recording in Brooklyn, as you have done in the past, as compared with Louisiana in recent years? Are there similarities, as well?
AD: Yeah, well, I guess most of this record was worked on in Louisiana. I guess every recording studio is a very different environment, and it’s not just the location…I guess it is…when you are recording in Brooklyn, you’re in a big city, and you’re staying in a hotel, if you’re me; you’re going back and forth to the studio.
The studio that I worked at in Louisiana, you’re staying in a little house out in the country. [Author’s Note: Indeed, the studio is, literally, called Studio in the Country, which is located in Bogaloosa, Louisiana.] There’s a much more secluded, lower key pace, and, then, of course, from there, I did all of the overdubbing and mixing work at home, which is the ultimate in relaxed, pressure-less environment. That’s how I prefer to work, if I can, these days.
But, you know, places like Andy Taub’s studio in Brooklyn [Brooklyn Bridge], where we worked, it is also exciting to be in a new environment with new creative people around you. Andy has wonderful things to offer along the way, and, also, an arsenal of guitar amps that I’ve never tasted before. A Mellotron appears on several tracks, which was recorded in Andy’s studio. He just has this wonderful gear that I don’t have, so that’s sort of ‘kid in a candy shop’ fun.
RR: I noticed that several people are credited with ‘atmosphere’ in the credits.
AD: Well, I guess that was my blanket term for many gizmos and pedals. My friend, Mike Dillon, who plays vibraphone, and Skerik—they have this arsenal of guitar pedals that they run their instruments through, and it can turn the sound of a vibraphone into the sound of a spaceship landing. (laughs) On several tracks, they were lending their pedal-fueled atmosphere to the backdrop of the music, so ‘atmosphere’ was my shorthand.
RR: Speaking of atmosphere, you are one of the forerunners of a generation of independent-minded musicians in a very dependent world. Has that changed for you over the years, or do you find yourself more defiant in your independence?
AD: Yeah, not, yeah, I think I used to have to be much more defiant. Now, I’m luxuriating in independence. (laughs) Back in the day when there was no precedent for it, there was also no respect for it. Condescension was one of the main things that I suffered along the way, along with just general exclusion, and without some of the marketing and the corporate muscle of the record company route. It used to be…I’d be playing in some bar, and somebody would be opening for me, for instance, Jewel (laughs), one day, and six months later, she’s on the cover of every magazine, and all over MTV, and I’m back in that same bar playing again. This happened a lot over the years—me going this long, slow turtle route, and other people were doing the bunny hop.
I used to have to sit myself down on a daily basis and say, “You are not envious. You are not jealous. You are on a different path. There is a reason.” I kept reminding myself: “What is my point ?” And to be cool with it—to be cool with that feeling of being left behind again and again, and sticking to my guns. I used to have to really have a lot of guns to stick to. Now that the music industry has imploded, and everybody is seeking ways of being independent, I find that I have spent twenty years building venue by venue an audience that’s not predicated on a hit single, or a fancy video. They are there for the long haul, they are there for something, and there is a deeper, more lasting connection. And, so, I find myself in a very lucky position. The tables have turned. (laughs)
RR: I felt you had that passion all the way down the line; whereas, some of the artists that hit it big during the 1990s were not interesting to me back then, and I am certainly not listening to them now. A lot of that work is dated. I feel your past work does stand up because it isn’t so much marked by a period of time.
AD: Yeah, that’s one thing I’ve got going for me. They are very individual, yeah, unique types of records along the way, and each different. I guess if I had had the slick producers of the day, maybe I’d sound more formulaic. They are honest. They are honest recordings. It’s not always the best sounding…(laughs)
RR: Along that thought process with the passage of time, a lyric that jumped out at me from the song “If Yr Not” grabbed my attention—if you’re not getting happier as you get older…basically, you must be doing something wrong. That, to me, was very profound because so often, one has it all nailed down when they are young, and as one gets older, that happiness and the ground that one stood on has slipped away.
AD: I guess I had this subliminal will to challenge that age-old idea that when you are young, you are unfettered and free and it’s the happiest time of your life. Then, responsibilities set in, and you get more and more tied onto your own little post, and stuck in your own little corral, and life becomes less and less fun.
I just think that’s bullshit. Or, it can be. I’m 41 now, so I’m developing my own perspective on aging. Yeah, you know, when I was young and bold and didn’t stop to think twice about anything I was doing, there was a freedom. Youth is a fabulous, fabulous energy and full of discovery and, yes, it’s terrific, but it’s also very painful. The younger you get—you see these babies that we have now, and if they feel a little bit hungry, or a little bit cold, they are screaming bloody murder. Through your teens and your early 20s, I think that the great joys of new love and new discoveries come hand-in-hand with these great pains. You have not yet had the experience of “this, too, shall pass,” so much that you believe in it. The pain that you feel can overtake you.
I feel that growing older, hopefully, is a process of coming to know yourself, and knowing thyself is such a good tool for dealing with thyself. I find that I’m getting happier, and it’s not accidental. There’s a lot of effort that I’ve put into it, a lot of consciousness, in trying to undo the destructive behavioral patterns that I learned very early on in life, while developing more constructive ones. That makes my relationships better. Knowing my body in a way that I can’t believe it took me so long to learn.
It’s very sad, I think, especially with females, in the way that we are not given the information that we need to deal with the reproductive system in the modern world. It wasn’t until the late 30s, for me, that I started keeping, for instance, a menstrual calendar, and when everything in my life seemed terrible and everyone was wrong, it used to be that I would create conflicts with that energy out of that problem. Now, I look at my menstrual calendar (laughter), and I say, “Oh! That’s why everything in my life is terrible and everyone’s wrong. O.K., breathe.”
These are things that age can help with, and, also, I was just trying to speak in a humorous way to that possibility [in the lyrics to “If Yr Not”].
RR: You also speak a lot about growth and development, divisions in our society, and disappointment in certain figures in your new songs, but there are unique positive observations on things, too, which were not often found in your past lyrics.
AD: Yeah, definitely. I’m very aware that I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I think I was—in my early years and my early writings—very hopeful and very energetic, but I was powering through a lot of pain. I came from an unhappy family background, so there was just this sort of invisibility about my charge through life, and, after a while, I had to accept that this is not working. I’m not healing myself; although, music, for me, is my path to healing. Writing is the way that I heal myself, but, yeah, I guess after a while I had to sit myself down and say, “This is not getting me all the way to a new me. I have to work harder than this.”
Mike, my fella, really opened that door. When somebody comes along and give you unconditional love and support that you’ve been lacking, it really helps. (laughs)
RR: Absolutely. It must be very fulfilling that you’ve been able to heal so many people through your music, too.
AD: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so great. In times past, when there was more of a cult of celebrity around me, and there was more of a frenetic fan energy that I would have to face every day, it was a drag, and I would recoil from it. But, now, when people approach me, I feel like I’ve reached this nice balance where I can stay open to people, even if I am having a low energy moment, and appreciate it, too. These are really cool people that come up to me, and they say such beautiful things. Now, it’s not just “you got me through high school” stuff. It’s “I’m a mom, now, too, and it’s so amazing to have made this journey in life with you and your music”—this accompanying that we do with each other through music is a beautiful thing, and it makes me feel less alone, as well.
