Joyful Girl Ani DiFranco's career as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist is proof
positive that "alternative rock" can mean much much more than a
group of guys with electric guitars and a hefty record contract.
In a culture where multinational corporations sing the praises of the
"indie" aesthetic, Ani has created a truly provocative means of
producing music on her own terms and getting it to listeners. She
has broken just about every rule of the music industry, and in the
process has paved the way for other artists, emerging and established
performers alike, seeking real alternatives to corporate control. Born in Buffalo, NY in 1970, Ani's first interests were dance and
visual art. Her earliest awareness of music came not from pop albums
and radio airplay, but from first-hand encounters with working
musicians in Buffalo bars, many of whom stayed overnight with her
family on their way across the Northeast. The intimacy and
hand-to-mouth economics of the folk tradition fueled Ani's own
passion for live performance, and she began singing and playing
acoustic guitar in these same Rust Belt bars before she was 10 years
old. By age 15, she was writing songs of her own and hitting the
regional coffeehouse and club circuit herself. By the time she decided to record a cassette in 1990, Ani had more
than 100 original compositions to choose from. Ani's lyrics, then as
now, were as plainspoken as they were poetic; she wrote about the
world around her, using her own experience as a starting (never an
ending) point. Like countless performers before her, Ani chose to
release that first album herself, without the financial backing of
a able. Borrowing money from friends to cover the costs of
incorporation and studio time, 20 year old Ani produced her own
self-titled debut album and sold it from the trunk of her hand-painted
car while blazing a path across the college campuses and seedy dives
of America. Those live shows, along with fourth-generation dubs of several early,
acoustically spare recordings, sparked interest in Ani from coast to
coast. Fans invariably asked for not just one album but every album
Ani would ever produce; which then became fodder for homemade mix
tapes passed from friend to friend. Offers from labels large and
small began to pop up more and more often, but unlike most young
artists under similar circumstances, Ani decided to continue
releasing albums herself (11 of 'em by early 1998), which allowed
her a far greater degree of artistic control than any outside
interest would have provided. To this day, Ani has the last word on
how often her albums come out, what songs they contain, what the
graphics and accompanying merchandise look like, which singles and
videos get released, and so on. But Righteous Babe is no longer a dining-room-table operation. In the
eight years since the first album, Ani has played larger and larger
venues (currently averaging 2-6000 seats), sold more and more records
(over 1,120,000 at last count), made the covers of various national
magazines, and appeared several times on network television. Each
of these developments, while not an end in itself, has provided the
impetus for new opportunities. Ani's income from concerts and record
sales get channeled directly back into future projects, which in turn
allow her to support like-minded fellow artists, Buffalo businesses,
and grassroots culture workers. Everything happens organically in DiFranco-land. After figuring out
for herself over the course of many albums how to capture her sound
in the studio, Ani has become a sought-after producer (Janis Ian, Dan
Bern) and guest vocalist and guitarist (Bruce Cockburn). She has
contributed to the soundtracks of films from low-budget student
projects to "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "The Jackal". And she
has even begun to release work by other artists on her label,
starting with her critically acclaimed collaboration with folk legend
Utah Phillips, "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere." There is no single sound or song which encapsulates the range of
Ani's craft. Over the course of her career so far, she has performed
solo, with accompanying bass and drums, and, on one memorable occasion,
with the Buffalo Philharmonic; in the studio, she has employed horn
sections, gospel singers, sample, and answering machine recordings;
she has released spoken word tracks, dance remixes, and a double live
album. The only constants in Ani's world are her commitment to writing
and performing intensely personal songs, her fans' deep connection to
her work, and her intuitive insistence on doing things her own way.
-Righteous Babe Records
A short bio of Ani DiFranco
Picture from Ani DiFranco Lyrics
Bio taken from Ani DiFranco Org
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