{"id":5064,"date":"2012-02-29T01:27:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5064"},"modified":"2012-02-29T01:28:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:28:47","slug":"ani-difranco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/ani-difranco\/","title":{"rendered":"ANI DiFRANCO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"ANI D<\/strong>i<\/strong>FRANCO\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A hard-driving, hard-rocking modern folk pioneer learns to take her time\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

For a decade and a half, Ani\u00a0DiFranco was among the most prolific acts you could name. Between 1990 and\u00a02007, the Buffalo, N.Y., native released 16 studio albums of new material, not to mention a handful of live collections, compilations and EPs. But the latest, \u00bfWhich Side Are\u00a0<\/em>You On?<\/em>, is her first new offering in almost four years\u2014and the primary reason is obvious. \u201cThe short version is that I\u2019m a mother\u00a0now,\u201d says DiFranco. \u201cThat\u2019s the explanation. That\u2019s my main job, and then music\u00a0is my side job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The January 2007 birth of daughter Petah to DiFranco and her husband and producer Mike Napolitano fundamentally changed the way the artist thought about her so-called \u201cside job.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to my relationship with my work,\u201d DiFranco says. \u201cI learned that if you take your time, you can make a much better record.\u201d For Which Side<\/em>, that approach allowed DiFranco to soak up more of the influence of New Orleans, where she has lived since 2003, as well as to recruit guests like folk legend Pete Seeger (who plays banjo on the title cut). The new album finds the singer, songwriter and guitarist addressing motherhood and marriage, as well as her ongoing commitment to social activism. We caught up with DiFranco at home, where she gamely spoke with us over the racket of a jackhammer. \u201cWe have some renovations going on,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt turns out the back of our house is built on a cement monstrosity filled with garbage. We\u2019ve found toilets, hubcaps, radiators\u2014we\u2019re waiting to find a body back there.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How has New Orleans affected you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been happier in this city than any other time in my life, and of course my music is something that changes along with that. So you can hear New Orleans in the subject matter, you can hear it in the way I make recordings and the people who I make recordings with\u2014and also in the more relaxed sound of my voice. I feel at home here, and the pace of life is beautiful and graceful. It\u2019s a very inspiring place to live. History is alive here. From my house I hear the boats on the river, I hear the trains going by, I hear the clip-clop of the horses and carriages, I hear kids walking down the street playing trombones. I\u2019m somebody who revels in that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you mellowed stylistically?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t drifted away as much in live performance as it has on record. But yeah, the new songs that I write tend to be a little more chilled out in general. I guess maybe that\u2019s because I\u2019m 41 instead of 21. When you\u2019re home alone it\u2019s hard to work up the kind of energy that you have onstage. When you\u2019re at home in a quiet state you tend to create quiet music. It\u2019s been a challenge lately, because I get onstage and the only rockers are the old songs. I have to keep reminding myself to try and write some\u00a0more upbeat stuff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How has Mike affected things?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s never been my instinct to reach far outside myself. I\u2019ll just automatically plug my usual stage guitar into my usual stage amp and say, \u201cOK, I\u2019m ready!\u201d Mike will stop me and say, \u201cWe can get a better sound than this.\u201d He nitpicks everything and gets it right in a way that I never had the ability or will to do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What guitars are on the record?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the things Mike has been encouraging me to do is to get some different guitars. I play these Alvarez Yairi guitars onstage, which are wonderful. I think my stage sound has really developed by playing them over the years. I like a lot of punchy low end, not a lot of high end, and they\u2019re great for that. I\u2019ve tried different guitars onstage, and I keep coming back to Alvarez. But I\u2019ve brought in some other guitars for recording the last few years. I bought a Martin D28 and a Gibson. Mike found a little homemade parlor guitar, which was kicking around the house for years. Finally we got it fixed and\u00a0it sounds gorgeous.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you record guitar tracks?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

On any of the songs on the record, there will be about four guitar tracks. One guitar performance will be a DI [direct injection], mainly for punchy low end. Then one with an acoustic microphone to get the sound of the actual guitar. After that it\u2019ll usually be going through two amplifiers\u2014one for clean and vibrato, and the other for crunchy distortion. If you have these different flavors, as you overdub and the track develops you can dial it in to fit the overall mix.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What about live?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I play six guitars onstage: two WY1 Yairis; one big-bodied Alvarez Dreadnought acoustic; a tiny-bodied, backpacker-type Alvarez; and a baritone guitar that Alvarez built for me. They\u2019ve worked on building me several guitars, and this new baritone is the best of all of them. It\u2019s got a warm, rich sound, and I don\u2019t have to do as much EQing to try and get it to be big and luscious.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is your daughter OK with touring?<\/strong><\/p>\n

She\u2019s an amazing traveler, having done it since 5 months old. But I\u2019ve been leaving her behind more often than not these days, because she\u2019s in school. It\u2019s weird. My whole life I always joked that I\u2019d make a great father\u2014I want to be the one who comes and goes, where I\u2019m the hero of the universe and I don\u2019t have to do the daily grind of actually being there. But now that\u2019s the position I\u2019m in. Oftentimes when she stumbles down all sleepy in the morning she\u2019ll go and sit on her father\u2019s lap, and when she gets out of school she\u2019ll run to him. And of course there\u2019s a lot of work and a lot of energy drain in being the go-to parent, but there\u2019s a lot of reward, too. So now \u201cBe careful what you wish for\u201d\u00a0is ringing in my ears.<\/p>\n

As a writer, can you separate the personal from the political?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always felt them to be one thing. What I\u2019ve written about politically is stuff that I feel passionate about, that affects me emotionally. These are things that we grapple with emotionally. So when I\u2019m writing, that\u2019s all one thing. My love, my passion, my happiness and my unhappiness, they have very personal inward and outward sources\u2014and the connections between them are fascinating to me. That\u2019s where a lot of my songs hinge. That very juncture, I think, is where my writing has pitched its\u00a0tent over the years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you have a goal in mind?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to get over myself. I feel like I\u2019m slowly doing it. Like many people in this world, I have real self-esteem problems. I dwell on them and obsess about them. It\u2019s becoming more and more apparent to me in my old age that\u2019s very self-absorbed behavior. The less I do that, the more energy I have for the world. So I want to grow beyond myself. That\u2019s what I\u2019m working on now.<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANI DiFRANCO\u00a0 A hard-driving, hard-rocking modern folk pioneer learns to take her time\u00a0 For a decade and a half, Ani\u00a0DiFranco was among the most prolific acts you could name. Between 1990 and\u00a02007, the Buffalo, N.Y., native released 16 studio albums of new material, not to mention a handful of live collections, compilations and EPs. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3155,3032,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5067,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions\/5067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}