Born in snowy Buffalo, New York, just a few miles west of me, where her family owned and ran a bar/restaurant/inn frequented by folk singers making the rounds. Young Ani's ears perked up at their tunes and she chimed in, learning the guitar by age 10 and writing her own songs by age 15. Where most artists long for a recording contract, Ani just went out into the world hacking out her own albums. Her first full-length cut was titled "Ani Difranco" and released in 1989. The album marks one of the best debuts ever by a recording artist. The lyrical brilliance and language and musical mastery Ani was able to put into her first album is nearly unmatched in the recording industry. Oh, and she was 18.

She soon started her own recording company, Righteous Babe Records, which is based out of Buffalo and employs local workers (about 10) and maintains itself as possibly the most successful independent agency out there. Currently, Ani's discography features more than a decade's worth of hard work, great tunes, and a definite trail on the heart of music. If you aren't a fan, you should be. And if you are, see you at the next show.

Our story begins in Buffalo, New York, a rust belt city perched precariously on the edge of the Great Lakes, known best for its terrible snow storms and lost superbowls. It is here that our heroine, Ani (pronounced AHH-nee) DiFranco was reared on a mid-eighties diet of oat bran and radio mayonnaise, and launched into the world somewhere in the interim between Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty" and MTV's unplugged."
O.K. Just the facts. Ani is a punk folksinger who writes songs that can appeal to old folkies and simultaneously climb the college radio charts. She tours on the acoustic, college, and rock club circuits, shattering stereotypes and winning over unsuspecting fans everywhere. But of course, like all overnight success stories that were ten years in the making, the beginnings were much more humble.

Ani started playing Beatles' songs in local bars at age nine but didn't start writing her own material until age fifteen when she moved out of her mother's apartment. Living on her own, she played every Saturday night at the Essex Street Pub, and at sixteen she graduated from the Visual and Performing Arts High School. By the time she was eighteen she had played every bar in Buffalo a gazillion times and moved to New York City for a change of scenery. Now, five years and six albums later, she is still a steadfast independent.

To finance her first album, Ani looted her bank account and borrowed the rest from friends. She rejected offers from indie and major labels alike, and instead started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, in an industry dominated by multinational corporations. Ani has since sold over one hundred thousand tapes and CD's on her own. She not only writes and publishes her own songs, but also produces her own recordings, creates the artwork, and releases them. She employs like-minded people in management and staff positions, supports local printers and manufacturers in her hometown, and utilizes a network of independent distributors in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She tours extensively and damn near constantly on both sides of the Atlantic, repeatedly setting on-sight album sales records at music festivals and concert venues.

With a voice that can rock the boat one minute and the cradle the next, Ani DiFranco has a sound like no other. In performance she never ceases to stun and stagger her audience with her famous hundred-fifty watt smile and easy laughter juxtaposed against the brutal poetics of her lyrics and the reckless manhandling of her guitar. She has played to packed houses and rave reviews from Boston's Somerville Theater to San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, and from Toronto's Phoenix to a twelve-hundred-seat sell-out at Vancouver's Vogue Theatre. As a writer in Tampa exclaimed, "If folk music has a future it's Ani DiFranco."

"i speak without reservation from what i know and who i am. i do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. just take what you can use and go on."