The iconic performer Ani DiFranco is bringing her latest project out on a book tour, which leads her back to Illinois.
The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom is a collaboration between author Lauren Coyle Rosen and the queer Grammy Award-winning Ani. This duo takes on a journey as guides down a spiritual highway with a manual full of advice and intriguing stories.
DiFranco has released 23 albums over the years and founded her own private label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990. She came out publicly as bisexual in her twenties and wrote about it in a personal song, “In or Out,” on the album Imperfectly in 1992.
She previously wrote a New York Times best-selling memoir in 2019 titled No Walls and the Recurring Dream, plus two children’s books, The Knowing and Show Up and Vote.
Chicago Public Media’s organization WBEZ is presenting An Evening with Ani DiFranco in conversation with Mary Dixon, host of Say More, at Cahn Auditorium, located on the Northwestern University campus.
This unforgettable folk rock musician called up Windy City Times to talk about her appearance and upcoming tour.
Windy City Times: We last talked for an interview in 2012. How have you been?
Ani DiFranco: I am as well as I can be these days on a sometimes sinking ship.
WCT: I spoke with your opening act, Wryn, last time you were in Chicago in 2025 and also saw you play Riot Fest in 2023.
AD: Cool, that was a fun time.
WCT: In 2024, you played the role of Persephone in Hadestown. How was that experience?
AD: I was connected with that show from when it was a glimmer in Anaïs Mitchell’s eye until I showed up to be a part of the Broadway cast for a little stint. It is very dear to my heart and it’s an absolutely extraordinary show on every level.
Being on Broadway for six months kicked my ass. It was grueling with an eight-show-a-week gauntlet with rehearsals and the media that surrounds it. It’s a very intense life and I have a lot of respect for Broadway performers.
WCT: How did you find time to write a book?
AD: I squeezed it in amongst all of the other things. We made that book almost two years ago now. It has taken all of this time to get it out into the world.
That’s the downside to the busy lives we lead. There’s a lag time. It has always been crazy for me as an artist to talk about an album that just came out when I am already five steps down the road.
WCT: There are tips throughout the book, such as unplugging from social media and teaching readers to center themselves. What inspired this spiritual approach?
AD: I hope there is some solace for somebody who picks it up. It was Lauren’s big idea and she approached me about making it. She had read my memoir and was impressed with some of the spiritual themes that came up in that. She wanted to explore it together further, so we played it by ear and started talking without a clear idea of where we were going or what we were doing. We found our way eventually.
WCT: You two worked on the book over Zoom meetups, similar to what we are doing today?
AD: Yes and we still haven’t met in person.
WCT: Is Lauren meeting you at some of the book events?
AD: Apparently not, so it is just me out here this week.
WCT: What is the plan for the Evanston stop?
AD: It will be in a conversation with Mary Dixon. Once again, we have no plan and we will be living in the moment with whoever shows up in the room.
That will lead to a Q&A where we will get to know each other.
WCT: There are pictures of your paintings in the book. Do you still paint often?
AD: Not so much these days. A few years back, I was trying to get into it again, but then my life got so full that I banished my paints and my easel from my she shack. I didn’t have room in my life, so I gave them all away to an artist in New Orleans who was very grateful. They were able to put them to use in a way that I wasn’t able to do.
WCT: How is your life in New Orleans?
AD: I love it. It is endlessly inspiring to me. It feels more like home more and more. I have been living here for 20-plus years now.
WCT: You have toured constantly over the years. What is one thing you require on the road?
AD: A good book. One of the blessings of touring is being pretty far from an everyday list of things to do. Being away from home leaves me marooned in the world and that’s a good thing sometimes. There’s not much to do on a day off besides get on the computer and email.
I will sometimes take a walk. That’s one thing I would never do at home because there’s always something to clean or shopping to do.
Touring can put me in a more zen state. It can be hard to come and go from my regularly scheduled life, such as family, relationships and children.
Being on tour also makes more space to spend time with my guitar and I am not talking about the onstage part. I feel I get a year’s worth of playing when I am out there on the road. Sometimes I will be in a basement of a theater or in a hotel room and suddenly my guitar is my only friend again.
WCT: You are back on tour in April with a queer duo opening act, Sweet Petunia?
AD: Yes. They are on my label, Righteous Babe and I have not seen them live yet, so I am excited.
WCT: How do you find musicians for your tour?
AD: These days, we have so many wonderful and dynamic people on Righteous Babe that we don’t have to reach far to find somebody for me to share the stage with. I rotate around and pull out different acts to go with me on tour.
I feel there is a community being built through the label, which I just love.
WCT: How do you narrow down a set list when you have over 20 albums to play?
AD: It is fun to have that many albums and songs to choose from. There are only so many songs that stick on the wall like spaghetti and it is always interesting to hear what requests fly at me from the audience.
The requests are often from out of left field, and it’s not the songs that everyone sometimes thinks it will be. I don’t mind a challenge, but it can be hard to meet the requests in the moment. I want to tell them that I will see them three days from now in Cleveland to give myself more time to prepare.
WCT: That’s understandable that you can’t possibly remember every tune onstage with your large catalog.
AD: That’s my running joke with the audience. If they want to hear a particular song, then I need the request a week ahead of the concert. At my age, send me an email!
WCT: We are the same age and generation X. In the middle of the book, there are nostalgic photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s of you.
AD: That was a random collection of photos that ended up in there. I just looked at the book the other day and thought, “That’s a weird collection of Anis.”
WCT: What would you say to that young person if you were able to speak with her today?
AD: I would tell her to slow down and there’s plenty of time. There is no hurry.
It’s funny to be mistress of my own destiny after all of these decades and to notice how much I pressured myself back then.
I gave myself unnecessary self-imposed deadlines and I ran around like a chicken with its head off. There is no one to blame but myself, but I don’t want to criticize myself too much because it has also been fuel for me along the way. Looking back, I would tell myself that I don’t need to rush.
In a macro way, when I look at the arc of the journey, there are some moments when I think it would have been better to step away entirely for a year or two. I needed to get offstage to find myself again instead of amplifying the pressure to get out on tour again for another show.
That is high on the list of what I could have done differently.
WCT: That is a pressure that many of our generation had back then to excel. You have nothing to prove anymore, so you can sit back and be proud of your previous work while in your fifties.
AD: Part of the reason that The Spirit of Ani took two years from our first conversation with Lauren and me until now, with the release, was that we took our time making it. I would receive emails from Lauren when things would come up and I would tell her, “It’s okay. We will do this book at the pace that the universe allows.”
We didn’t make a deadline. That’s my modus operandi now to take all the time in the world when I am in the world.
WCT: That’s the heart of the book.
AD: Yes, it is.
Ani DiFranco brings her Spirit to the Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston, IL, on Friday, March 27 at 7 p.m. Find tickets at wbez.org/event/wbez-presents-an-evening-with-ani-difranco.
Her Spirit of Love Tour kicks off on April 22 with more information at anidifranco.com/tour/.