Few musicians can match Ani DiFranco for finely-tuned sarcasm, articulate polemic and impassioned debate, writes Jim Carroll
'Ugh," groans Ani DiFranco, "here comes another train." She pauses so you can hear the sound of that there train rattling by on the other end of the telephone. It sounds a mite close for comfort. "Oh, I do love a train but it's kind of nice when it's in the distance." Unfortunately, the track runs alongside her home in New Orleans, effectively negating any such romantic notions. DiFranco reckons those pesky trains will be all over the new album she's recording at home at the moment.
Then again, it would take more than a runaway train to derail one of the most prolific artists in the US right now. Since she first emerged from Buffalo, New York, in the late 1980s, she's released some 15 albums (plus a clutch of collections, live sets and collaborations). It's an esoteric catalogue, mapping DiFranco's rise from singer-songwriter with a guitar singing battered folk songs like some sort of tomboy Woody Guthrie, to leader of a jam band who pushed all manner of funk and jazz buttons, as seen by the So Much Shouting, So Much Laughing live album from last year.
Along the way, DiFranco has gained a considerable audience, perhaps as much for her political stance as the songs she sings. As befits someone steeped in the protest singer tradition of Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, she's never stepped away from controversy. A vociferous and active supporter of countless liberal agendas, DiFranco established the Righteous Babe Foundation to financially support, as she puts it (with tongue slightly in cheek), "grassroots political, cultural and artistic endeavors working towards the eventual overthrow of the corporate regime".
Not surprisingly, the Ani DiFranco who spends her life making records and touring is an artist who adheres to a rugged, old-fashioned sense of independence. Her Righteous Babe label, with offices in London and Buffalo, ensures DiFranco's music is widely available without the help of the major labels, a business endeavour funded by sales and her never-ending touring schedule.
It's an easy stance to take now, she says, because she has created this position for herself through constant tours and releases. "I didn't find it easy to say no at the start," she admits. "It was very tempting when people came along and said they could help you out. It's tempting when you're living hand-to-mouth and you're driving around doing these little gigs and you don't have an audience and you can't get distribution."
She laughs about the "nice lunches" she shared with label executives keen to woo her to signing on a dotted line. "To be honest, it was an intuitive thing with me to say no. Then, I didn't have a big plan and I didn't have a fully formed political aversion to the whole corporate system. I'm a very moral person and I didn't want to get into bed with these businessmen in order to make rascal music. The interests of big record companies and music executives are contradictory to the interests of art and human beings."
Yet, people are not flocking to see and hear DiFranco because of what record label she's with. While there may be an element of preaching to the converted, few other musicians are applying the same sense of finely-tuned sarcasm, articulate polemic and impassioned debate to their music. And, besides putting these qualities into her songs, DiFranco is also prepared to talk the talk onstage when it comes to tackling the bigger issues.
She knows this puts her at a bit of a remove from many other musicians plying their trade in the US, the recent silence from many on the Iraqi war being the most recent case in point. "Yeah, a lot of people were deafeningly quiet about that," she says.
Not DiFranco though. "That war was just one of many acts of aggression by my government. I tour around and speak out against it and I'm surrounded by thousands of people every night who agree, people who absolutely loathe and abhor the government of this country. They're very excited to hear something other than the pro-war pro-Bush propaganda that's all over the TV, radio and media. To me, America is not what it appears like on CNN. There's this whole other America that's largely voiceless and powerless because there are so many systematic problems keeping us disconnected and invisible."
She views this as part of a greater shift in American culture. "We've been systematically mutated over the last 20 years in this country from citizens to consumers," DiFranco believes. "There's a generation of kids out there who are completely disconnected from the idea of themselves as citizens. People don't vote, even people who give a shit, unless they're rich white people. All the messages in our culture are about the stuff you need to buy to have a good life. The idea of politicians as public servants has evaporated.
"We've acquiesced by and large to being subjects of a 21st century monarchy rather than being citizens, but as long as gas prices stay low, people are happy enough to go along with it."
DiFranco seems resigned to fighting her fight from the margins, even though her record sales and popularity should allow her access to a larger platform. Does she ever wish she could have a smidgen of mainstream success, go shoulder to shoulder with the Britney's and Christians and put some politics into pop?
"I don't covet what they have. If I had wanted that, I would have gone for it," she says. "It's not what's important to me, that sort of fame. This remove is necessary to do what I've done. You have to have patience to spend 10 years building an audience like I've done and even then, it's never going to be the same size audience as if I was on a major label and was part of the mainstream corporate system and had all the promotional advantages that came with that. I'm not part of that game. Radio play [of her songs], for instance, is confined to college and community stations and that's not how you create a big commercial hit."
Instead, she sticks to her position on the far left side of the tracks. It's a busy place to be: more solo records are due, more live dates are in the diary, there's a collaboration with Steve Earle for a new Pete Seeger record to relish and probably more collections to oversee such as the live Woody Guthrie tribute album from 2000, Till We Outnumber Them, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg and the Indigo Girls. "I just follow my spleen," is how DiFranco puts it before heading back to work.
On cue, another train trundles by.
Ani DiFranco plays Vicar Street, Dublin, next Saturday. Her current album, Evolve, is on her Righteous Babe label. www.righteousbabe.com