As a contributor to The Post and Courier, South Carolina's largest newspaper, I profiled dozens of popular musicians, including singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco.
Righteous Babe: Laughing activist, Ani DiFranco "Knuckles Down" for Armageddon
by Michael Lovett
Publication: The Post and Courier, April 21, 2005
Ani DiFranco has the capacity to make you feel like a slug. "Knuckle Down" is the 15th release in as many years from the 34-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist.
Fueling the vitriol of her socially conscious lyrics is DiFranco's deep commitment to a variety of activist causes. In 1990, she founded Righteous Babe Records, an independent label that serves not only in the promotion of her records, but also in the support of such noble causes as women's reproductive rights, homosexual issues, prisoners' rights and historic preservation.
DiFranco's activism could guilt-trip any hippie with a conscience into attending her performance Friday night at The North Charleston Performing Arts Center. Still, the best reason to come out to an Ani DiFranco show is to hear some excellent music.
"Knuckle Down," the album's first and title track, announces DiFranco's sure return to the style that has made her an idol of folk singers and guitar-slingers alike. The lines, "I think I'm done gunnin' to get closer/To some imagined bliss/I gotta knuckle down/And just be OK with this," delivered over a percussive, finger-picked guitar vamp, could serve as a working thesis for the album as a whole.
On "Knuckle Down," DiFranco enjoys doing what she does best; writing progressive folk songs that are every bit as oblique and imagistic as they are direct and political.
In a recent interview with Preview, DiFranco discussed issues as serious as urban sprawl and environmental degradation with an easygoing charm that can only come from someone who puts her money where her mouth is.
Preview: I had a friend in school who was involved in nearly every activist activity on campus - everything from "Free Tibet" to "Babies with No Heads." She was a very cool and smart woman, and she was a big fan of yours. Do you ever feel like a poster-child for that type of woman (if we can call it a type)?
DiFranco: Well, if I am, I certainly don't mind it. You know, I think that active, independent, concerned, awake people are my favorite kind of people. I don't know. I guess like-minded people gravitate toward the same place.
At the venues I play, the sound crew and management are always coming up to me and saying, "Your audience is the best. They're so polite and cool and diverse." I feel fortunate that, due to whatever it is - the politics and the spirit that drives my music - I attract some pretty happening people to my shows.
Preview: Your songs don't get a lot of radio airplay, but your activism keeps you in the public eye. What would you say is the biggest misconception that people who haven't heard your music have about you?
DiFranco: Oh gosh (laughing). I don't know. There are many, I'm sure. I wouldn't know what they are, and I don't want to know, I'm sure.
Preview: You'd prefer to stay in the dark on that one?
DiFranco: Yeah - keep it that way. I suppose that's natural. I mean, you almost always hear of somebody before you actually hear them. For example, you said how you associate me with someone you knew who listened to me, and that's common.
Still, unless you come and check it out, you don't know what it is. I mean, it's certainly true for me in the assumptions I make about performers I haven't seen but only heard about. I go to the show and then I'm like, "Wow. I guess this is how it is."
Preview: You've expressed distaste for the strip-mall sprawl that consumes the American landscape. You're also involved in historic preservation, which is something people in Charleston take seriously. In your opinion, are these things - sprawl and historic preservation - the problem and its respective solution?
DiFranco: Well yeah, I think sprawl is a factor of capitalism and greed. It's easier to spread and sprawl and continue on this fossil-fuel bender. You know (sarcastically dramatic): The cars that ate our world and transformed the landscape.
Of course, it's a little more complicated than historic preservation alone. We're going to have to become more conscious and make regulations to contain cities and preserve the country, not to facilitate this isolationist lifestyle where you have your own car and your own television and it all fosters this disconnected, soulless consciousness. I grew up in the city and I think that the concept of a city is a great concept - ideas and culture and art and commerce. Cities are very valuable in that sense. Endless sprawl works against all those things, whereas we have all these old buildings that allow us to reach out and touch history. To live amongst history is to understand your connection to the past and to the future.
Preview: Coming from Buffalo, you've got firsthand experience with urban sprawl. The last time I was there, I was walking downtown on a Friday night and the streets seemed bombed-out and abandoned.
DiFranco: Absolutely, Buffalo has been an abandoned city for 30 years, the victim of free trade and deregulation of industry. It was one of those huge steel towns like Cleveland or Detroit. The industrial belt of America. All the work's gone and the factory is closed. Growing up in Buffalo certainly influenced my political consciousness.
Preview: I grew up in Cleveland, so I feel your pain there.
DiFranco: Cleveland's come up nice in the last decade or so. I think Buffalo's poised to resuscitate.
We're the last blighted town. In the 21st century, water is going to be the hottest commodity. Forget about oil ... when the water wars start, they'll all move back to the Great Lakes.
IF YOU GO
WHO: Ani DiFranco
WHERE: The North Charleston Performing Arts Center
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday
COST: $22.50-$30
TICKETS: 554-6060 or www.ticketmaster.com