We are looking forward to having you at MASS MoCA, Ani. When you’re on tour, do you explore the city where you’re playing?
We don’t have a lot of days off, but whenever we do, then I have time to wander around and check a place out. On show days, I’m pretty ensconced with interviews and setlists. Making a setlist takes me a weirdly long amount of time, just trying to figure out what the flow is going to be like. I’m usually in the venue most of the day.
Your setlists vary depending on the venue?
Yes, definitely. A rock club will be more rock and roll, and then in a seated theater, I can bring out the chill stuff. This spring is the first time I’ll be touring with my latest album, Unprecedented Sh!t. I haven't played any of those songs live.
I listened to the album again last night and really enjoy it. I'll ask you about that a little later. We have daughters who are a similar age, 17. How do you think your daughter’s life is different than when you were that age?
I guess the biggest difference is the smartphone. She's growing up in a whole other way, in a whole other world than those of us who were pre-internet creatures. I feel very grateful to have known the world before that. It sort of contracted from three-plus dimensions to two. She has her own world there in her headphones and with her phone and TikTok, which is typical of this generation of kids. I feel like these devices—having the world in your pocket—is expansive in some ways because you certainly are aware of much more than maybe we were at 17 just entering the world. But I feel it's also a deterrent to actually going out there and striking your own path in the world. It’s an intimidating amount of information. Anything that a young person could think to do, they can pull their phone out of their pocket and see somebody who's doing it better than anyone ever has. And I feel like that makes kids feel like, well, why would I bother? I can't be that pretty or that good a dancer or that smart of a designer or whatever it is. I feel like it's almost a repressive force. That’s just coming from my mother's instinct. It seems like a lot of young adults seem wary to leave the house and go try to do something.
What stands out most when you were 18 and on your own in New York City?
New York was so different back then, in 1989, when I moved there. It was much rougher around the edges, more dangerous and edgy, but really fascinating, really vibrant. With money comes cleanliness and safety and convenience and all those things, but it also dulls down the spirit of a place. I'm also happy that I'm old enough to have known the old New York, where there were found sculptures everywhere and still chickens running around the Lower East Side, squats and artists and a less shiny and moneyed and rat race-feeling city. It was rough. Even though I grew up in the city in Buffalo, landing in New York at 18 was daunting. I had a sublet for two months, and I didn't know a soul. I had to get work. I had to figure it out real quick. I remember I cried a lot. It felt cold to me at first, but I was determined. I acclimated, and, of course, I fell in love with it. I would live again in New York in a heartbeat.
What would you tell your younger self?
I would mostly petition her to be more patient, to take more time doing everything. I was very driven and very determined. For whatever reason, I was flinging albums into the world twice a year, just churning out songs and throwing them against the wall and seeing what stuck. I would advise her to take more time—there’s no hurry—and even step back from making music, from making albums, from being on stage more than I did. I think it would have served me and my art, and in that sense, my audience, for me to remove myself and rebuild myself and regenerate my own cells more than I did.
Your kids must think you're so cool.
I guess I'm doing okay in that regard. They're not mortally ashamed or embarrassed of me. It's amazing how little relevance the culture of one's parents has to their culture and their world. When I joined the Broadway show, I went up a notch with my daughter.
She got to experience New York and see her mom on stage, so I can understand why. Did you grow up wanting to be a musician?
Yes, when I was nine, I started playing guitar, and right away it was the best medicine I'd ever had. It was the most healing thing to sing and to play guitar and to make music. Instantly, I wanted to do it and not stop. I didn't have a big plan for myself. I just knew that this was the best thing I found in terms of making art for me.
What did you listen to growing up?
A lot of folk singers, so to speak. singer-songwriters of the ’70s, ’80s; I was fortunate to have a lot of them live and in person in my life.
How did that come about?
When I was just a kid starting to play guitar, I made friends with this fellow in Buffalo, Michael Meldrum. He was a singer-songwriter, a troubadour playing in all the bars and running the open mics. I became his shadow. Another thing that he was doing was booking concerts. He had what he called the Greenwich Village Song Project, and he would bring songwriters in from the city. So, I met and hung out with a lot of them. I saw all of them play. The model for music was something you do. He and I would sit around and sing and learn songs and play together, and I would play with him at all his little shows. Growing up, it was more of a social act, which, I think, is the genesis of music and what it really is. So, I had a good, long beginning of the essence of what music is.
From: https://www.berkshiremag.com/post/10-minutes-with-ani-difranco
