Ani’s cranky and
By Burl Burlingame
in control
Star-BulletinThere's something agreeably cranky about Ani DiFranco; a walking contradiction, a touring conundrum. She does things her way, and the hell with everyone else.
Armchair psychologists would call it a "control issue." Whatever. It's her way or the highway. A best-selling musician known for her sensitive insights, DiFranco has never recorded for the big boys. Instead she has become her own tough tycoon, founding Righteous Babe Records and cranking out a dozen records, each of which has done better than the last.
Righteous Babe began in the trunk of her car, from which DiFranco would sell cassettes after gigs. The label is now one of the success stories of her native Buffalo, N.Y., and she insists on manufacturing CDs in-town instead of out-of-state. But DiFranco continues touring and recording at a feverish pace, and does so every place except Buffalo.
In a business that skates on public image, she shuns the press. Even though her new album "Up Up Up Up Up Up" was released last week and she plays Honolulu tomorrow, her Hawaii interview with one of our rivals so displeased her that she refused others. And she's touring Australia and new Zealand instead of the U.S.
"Whenever I release an album, I just leave the country!" DiFranco once told the Boston Globe. "It's a strategy I invented when my last album, 'Little Plastic Castle,' came out.
"It adds significantly to my mental health to leave the continent when all the reviews and the chatter and the dissection come out. People have all these opinions about what you're trying to do, about what's successful or not. Of course, it's different for every person who is commenting, but it plays heavily on your thoughts and starts to mess with your head."
In other words, if she can't dictate the content, DiFranco's going to skip the context.
It extends to marketing her "public" persona as well. A dreadlocked, glamazon cover gal appearing on scores of music magazines, on her own album covers she's generally obscured by tricky photography or artsy graphics. The best look at her on the cover of "Up Up Up Up Up Up" is of an armpit that won't be used to sell razors.
A self-described "li'l folksinger," she's also a nostril-pierced, shave-headed, workboot-wearing, tattooed punkette.
But that's all about packaging, a subject that -- if we're reading between the lines correctly -- gives DiFranco the horrors. She'd rather focus on what she does best: write intelligent, elliptical songs that mean something, perform them with her trademark bottom-heavy acoustic guitar and gorgeous voice, reach beyond the surface and scratch listeners in places they didn't know they itched, and then blow out of town.
DiFranco's only in her late 20s. She's maturing enough to share the responsibility of creating music on "Up Up Up Up Up Up," which is more band-oriented than anything else she's done. She doesn't dictate to the performers, instead settling on grooves so organic that the record even includes weird sound effects that were a surprise during recording.
"We were just rolling tape at all times and just playing together," DiFranco told the Boston Globe. "I was throwing out ideas and then I picked what I thought was working. We had so much fun!
"I was also ready to make a new record that departed from my verse/chorus/verse folk music roots, so I could just feel my head drifting into new territory," she said.
While the disc hangs together as a single artistic statement, few things on it jump out as commercial radio fodder. DiFranco is fond of saying she has never had a radio single, and never will have.
"It's such a nonradio album," DiFranco told the Boston Globe. "I feel almost guilty when I walk into the Righteous Babe Records office. I don't give them a lot of tools to work with. There's a gentleman whose job is radio promotions and I say to him, 'Good luck!' But it's not a problem with me."
Obviously. Just the people who work for her, and the people who want to hear what she does.
But then, she wouldn't be able to manage how it's used on the radio. Control issue, again. You love Ani DiFranco for her intelligence, raw talent and plain cussedness, but if you don't, the heck with you.
In concert
On Stage: Ani DiFranco
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