Righteous Mom: Ani DiFranco

ANI DIFRANCO IS the greatest folk-rocker of her generation. She has toured and recorded at a fantastic clip over the past two decades, and since her 1990 debut album, "Ani DiFranco," she's released more than 20 records, including two double-live CDs and her recent career retrospective, "Canon."

Taken as a whole, DiFranco's catalog seemingly covers all the creative bases. Stark solo folk? Check. Spoken-word? Check. Biggish-band jazz? Check. The Buffalo Orchestra? Check. Collaborative electronic experimentation with folk legend Utah Phillips? Check. Et cetera.

DiFranco has raked in critical hosannas while selling millions of CDs on her own hyper-successful Righteous Babe Records, and she recently published a book of her poetry and visual artwork. She's even opened up her own venue in her beloved Buffalo, and her new DVD, "Live at Babeville," captures DiFranco, bassist Todd Sickafoose, xylophonist Mike Dillon and drummer Allison Miller playing for packed crowds inside the lovingly renovated church.

Though DiFranco still gigs assiduously — a summer outing brings her and opener Melissa Ferrick to Wolf Trap on July 7 — she reports that her creative torrent has finally slowed. Or, rather, changed.

"I have written very little since she was born," said DiFranco, discussing her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Petah Lucia DiFranco Napolitano.

"It's really hard for me these days to find the time and mental space to write, but I accept that and I'm happy with it," she continued. "I have written a lot of songs in my life — and will, I'm sure, get back to writing more in the future — but right now there's [another] act of creation that I'm participating in: I'm collaborating with my kid to make a person. That tends to supersede other acts of creation."

It is somewhat striking that despite all the sold-out concerts, Grammy nominations, choice spots on the Billboard 200 and other accoutrements of success, DiFranco has never had a hit song.

"Somebody recently said, 'Hundreds of great songs and no hooks. Truly amazing,'" DiFranco recalled, laughing.

"I guess I tend to write not very poppy songs. They're slightly different in nature, oftentimes, than typical radio material — the chorus has different words every time or something's [messed] up, you know? It always prevents them from fitting into neat packages."

But "I proved, at least to myself, that you don't need to have a radio hit to have a job," she continued. "It's worked out."

Express spoke with the folk singer about working with Utah Phillips, her lyrics and Babeville. DiFranco is expected to release a new record, "Red Letter Year," later in 2008.

» EXPRESS: I've been watching the DVD of your show at Babeville. What's the latest on the venue?
» DIFRANCO: Well, it's still a work in progress. Those opening nights that my band played, it was a bit dusty around the joint [laughs]. We're still renovating the club downstairs and dialing that in. In addition to the venue that you see on the DVD, there's going to be a smaller venue/club down in the basement and we're still building that.

There's a lot going on [in Buffalo]. There's a gallery and a theater in the building now and this great contemporary art center called Hallwalls is bringing all sorts of avant-garde and cutting-edge art into the building.

» EXPRESS: It must be nice to have your own spot like that.
» DIFRANCO: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've really just begun to do shows in the big room and whatnot. We're just starting to realize our dream of having the cooler venue in town and being a real "destination venue," as we call it in the biz — the kind of venue that will draw tours through Buffalo that might not have stopped otherwise, or so we hope.

» EXPRESS: Some of my favorite records by you are the ones you made with Utah Phillips. Can you talk about how you met him and the experience of making those records with him?
» DIFRANCO: Sure. We probably met at a folk festival, though I don't remember our exact meeting. [We were] folk-singers moving in the same world, and we connected instantly when we met. ... We were doing the same work. And that was easily recognizable to both of us when we encountered each other, so we just hit it off right away. And I was so struck by the multidimensionality of his performance, in that folk-singer way. The shows are about much more than just the songs, you know? It's the stories in-between that take you on this whole other journey.

So, I had this desire to make a record of his stories, since, like all folk-singers, he just records his songs, and all of the other parts of his performance — the stories and the humor and the connecting with the audience — doesn't end up on record. So, that first record, I asked him, "Do you have any recordings of your performances?" And he sent me a box of cassette tapes and from those I culled the stories that I put music behind.

The second record, we did that same concept, but live — together, him and my band, loud, in-studio, in front of an audience for a couple of nights, just providing musical settings to his story-telling.

We'd always intended on doing a third record, actually, but, of course, now he's passed. ... A very poetic friend of mine [said his death] was "Like a waterfall shutting off or a library burning down." A force of wisdom and history and transcendence that used to be available to all of us is not anymore. Although his work is still out there, all the recordings. I'm really glad that we made the recordings that we did, just so that there's a little bit more of him floating around in the world.

» EXPRESS: Your lyrics seem so direct. Do you ever write from a character's perspective? Or are all of your lyrics from your own perspective?
» DIFRANCO: I would say yes to both of those questions. I mean, one way of looking at it is that it's all from my perspective, but, honestly, that's too literal. It's oversimplified. "My perspective" encompasses the totality of my experience, which includes people's experience that I'm close to, or stories that I haven't necessarily lived, but that I've borne witness to.

I think that often, even when I am singing in the first person, I am taking on a character, or maybe a conglomerative character. It's partly me speaking and it's partly other voices coming through me. My songs are not testimony; it's not literal stuff. But I try to stick with the known — not to write too far outside of myself that I'm guessing, or pretending, or speaking for somebody that I shouldn't be speaking for.

» EXPRESS: People always talk about the importance of making compromises in life, particularly women, for the people we love. To what extent do you think you would compromise your art for those people?
» DIFRANCO: Well, I'd certainly be willing to compromise my work for my child. I'm doing that all the time now [laughs] ... Like that question was implying, women have done this throughout history — given all of their energy and love and ingenuity to the act of creating more people, good people, and that's very strenuous work. It makes sense, since the buck has stopped with women in that kind of nurturing and creating [role] — women have had a lot less time to make paintings and bridges [laughs] and the other stuff that men have the time to do. But I think that both are extremely valuable and legitimate work. A painting is a beautiful thing and so is a good person [laughs].

It's such a profound thing, to get pregnant and birth a child and raise a child and just to bear witness to somebody's process of learning and becoming themselves. It's really the most profound, if also the most difficult, job. I think that it's beautiful, in a way, that it's available to all of us.

I think that patriarchy is constrictive to women, not children [laughs].

» Wolf Trap, Filene Center, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna; with Melissa Ferrick, Mon., 8 p.m., $22-$40; 877-965-3872.

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos

Photos by Danny Clinch (top) and Jason Hickerson