Q&A with Ani DiFranco: On Music, Motherhood, and Finding Hope

Ani DiFranco has long been a trailblazer in the music industry, with a career spanning over three decades and 23 studio albums. Ahead of her upcoming show in Milwaukee this April, she sat down with Milwaukee With Kids for an honest conversation about her new album, her new children’s book, and what parenting has taught her about creativity, patience, and self-love.

Listen to our conversation on the latest episode of the This American Family Podcast.

Milwaukee & Touring

Calie Herbst, Milwaukee With Kids: Hi, Ani! Thanks so much for talking with us today. You’ve been to Milwaukee to perform several times, and you were just here this past fall to promote your new film “1-800-On-Her-Own“. I’m curious, what are your impressions of our city?

Ani DiFranco: Oh, well, I mean, I grew up in Buffalo, and so it’s really a similar vibe—just very familiar in a lot of ways. The demographics, the architecture, that kind of Rust Belt city feel, and, yeah, the beer and sausage underpinnings.

Unprecedented Shit and Working with BJ Burton

MWK: Your new album, Unprecedented Shit, is your 23rd studio album—such an incredible accomplishment. All of them are so brilliant. What makes this one feel different or special to you?

Ani DiFranco: Definitely the involvement of BJ Burton, who was the producer this time out. I think on, you know, 22 of my 23 records, I was pretty much the producer. It finally occurred to me that maybe it would be cool to bring another creative mind into the cockpit, so to speak. That really changed the sound of the record. There are all kinds of different production vibes on this album compared to my past releases. So that’s what I was looking for—a departure from the familiar.

MWK: Did working with BJ Burton change your relationship with the music? How did it shift your process?

Ani DiFranco: Well, the process for me was kind of the same in that I write—I go off on my own. I write my little song with my little guitar. I record it at home. So all of that is kind of what I’ve been doing for many decades. But this time, instead of getting into the studio myself and making all the choices—like what’s the instrumentation? How are we going to do this? What do we overdub? Mixing it myself… This time, I just sent my demos off to BJ. I sent him voice and guitar, pretty much. Sometimes I did some overdubbing myself, but mostly, I sent him the basics.

And then he sort of did the rest. He made all kinds of sounds out of my guitar and my voice. A lot of the vast production that occurs on the album is just manipulations of the raw materials I sent him. So, for me, the process was super simple. But I guess the new part was just delegating—just handing over the reins.

MWK: That must have been freeing in some ways. Did you two go back and forth a lot?

Ani DiFranco: A little bit. But that was hard, because we were not in the same room. It was very much a 21st-century adventure. We did it all remotely. I mean, we were in the same room for one day at the end. So it’s hard to collaborate that way, you know? That sort of made me have to lean even more into just giving over and saying yes. Because saying, A little to the left… oh, too far, you know, all of that remotely was just kind of a fool’s errand.

Voting as a Life Lesson For Kids

MWK: Your children’s book, Show Up & Vote, came out last year, right?

Ani DiFranco: 2024, yes.

MWK: It’s such a vivid recollection of an experience from a kid’s perspective—going with their parent to vote. Can you tell us all about it? What inspired the book?

Ani DiFranco: Well, I just feel so strongly about voting. I wish that every eligible voter voted. I think it would save our democracy, you know? Because that’s what democracy is based on—people participating. That’s been one of my main issues that I’ve talked about for decades.

When I got this opportunity to make two children’s books—that’s my second—I wanted to use the opportunity to talk to future voters.

Because voting, of course, is not an inherent part of being a child. It’s not a part of a child’s world. They are not a part of society yet—they’re still gloriously alien. So it might not come up, you know, between a parent and kid.

And I think that’s where the disconnect begins. Because we teach our kids, You gotta brush your teeth, and you gotta eat balanced meals. You teach them all of these things—what it means to be a healthy, happy, self-sufficient human being.

But voting is just not a thing that comes up in your daily life with a kid. So I wanted to make a book that could provide an occasion to start talking about that. Because I think it’s really important that kids learn right away that this is another essential part of being a grown-up and being a part of a society—which they will become.

And I hoped to not just put it on the list of things you gotta do—like brush your teeth—but maybe even on a list of exciting things. Like, Someday, I’m going to be able to do that. Someday, I’m going to have a say. Someday, I’m going to have agency and help decide very important things that are going to affect my life and everyone I love.

I wanted it to… I mean, I think it is exciting—democracy and rights and having agency and being able to elect your officials. I think that’s one of the most exciting inventions of humankind. And we’re very blessed to have it still.

MWK: I’m curious… You’re such a brilliant writer, but writing for kids is so different than writing music for adults or for yourself. What was that like for you?

Ani DiFranco: Very challenging. Extremely challenging. It was like I had to just throw away my 30 years of experience. I just had to throw it away.

Because it made me realize that my normal writing mode is very adult. I do a lot of challenging social conventions. If you don’t know the social convention, that means nothing. I do a lot of double entendre—if you don’t know the reference, that’s meaningless. I do a lot of wordplay or just referencing… just a lot of adult mind games in my songs.

So I had to exit my normal mode of thinking and writing and creating. I mean, day one, when I was working with the publisher at Penguin Random House, she was like… I think I submitted a first draft. And she was like, Yeah… kids are kind of literal. So all this kind of metaphor that you get up to? Maybe we should tamp that down a little.

MWK: But your voice is still so in it—the writing style—it’s still Ani, but for kids.

Ani DiFranco: That makes me really happy to hear.

Parenthood & Creativity

MWK: Many of our readers are parents. You have an 18-year-old and an 11-year-old, right?

Ani DiFranco: Yes!

MWK: How did becoming a parent change your creative process? I find it’s so much harder to find that time for deep work, or to find big chunks of time to work. How was that transition for you?

Ani DiFranco: Excruciating. Absolutely brutal. Just brutal for years. And I have so much empathy for the fellow child rearers of this planet, especially the ones that have missions that they are on, that they’ve been on, that they are captivated by work. They want to do things that are holding their imagination and their creativity—burning desires to do their work.

I found it really hard to have all that time and agency and freedom just snatched away from me. My experience was—you just have to give over. You have to go, Right. I’m only going to think half-thoughts for potentially years, and I’m never going to have the amount of quiet time and space that I need or that I’ve been able—that I’ve been graced with before.

But it will come back. It will come back. And so, the patience to just shift gears and say, This is a time for me to give to my family and to this little being that I love more than anything. This is my work. This is my project. I have to put the other ones down more often than not.

And I think just getting to that place of acceptance is so, so key, because it is hard.

But, you know, I gotta say—I found that depth of patience that being a parent taught me—not only the patience you have to access for your child, who’s being ridiculous most of the time—but the amount of patience for yourself and your work that you want to do, and all the—your list of things to do, the clothes that need washing, or whatever.

That patience is my new favorite tool in my life—in my toolbox of life—and I apply it now to my work. And my work is better. So, allowing the kids to destroy my work life has made it rebuild itself better and stronger.

MWK: What about now that your kids are older? Any advice for those of us entering the tween and teen years?

Ani DiFranco: Boy. Well, my 18-year-old is my daughter, and I would say that along the way, you know, the relationship of mothers and daughters is very complicated. Mine certainly was with my mother. And along the way with my daughter, there were so many junctures where we could have—and did—begin to drift apart.

I can remember some of them acutely—the pain of it. Our bodies were so close when she was little. I held her so much. I put her to bed. And then, at some point—and I’ve talked about this with her—I was not there enough for her, you know, in second, third, fourth grade. Right in there.

I was touring a lot. I was working a lot. I was exhausted. My relationship with her father was not going well, because Mommy that leaves and comes back—it’s a very tall order for a family. And I think especially when you’re flipping the gender dynamics that we’re so used to accepting—where the dad comes and goes with work.

So, it was hard times for years. I am so grateful that my daughter—each time (and that was not the only time)—when, you know, again, I was not there for her at a time when middle school was kicking in, and stuff was getting hard, and she needed her mom, and her mom wasn’t there for her… and anger and resentment built up in her.

And there was a distance. I felt it in our bodies. Suddenly, we didn’t even touch. Suddenly, she wouldn’t even look at me.

And this was not the only juncture in our 18-year relationship so far where I felt this happen, right? The distancing. And she helped me repair those distances each time.

So, I was blessed with a lot of help from a very—you know, I mean, every parent feels this, and it’s true—extraordinary child. Children are extraordinary in so many ways that we can learn from. And my kid helped me. She helped me bring up the issues that had come between us—bring up the anger and the resentments, the sadness.

And when we talked about it enough times, the distance started to shrink—every time.

And I feel so grateful that I didn’t just allow it to keep going, because now she’s 18—but I still feel connected to her. I still feel that she can talk to me, and I can talk to her. And we are allied. And she allows me to support her emotionally—which I’m so grateful for. And that could have gone a different way at a bunch of points along the journey.

So, my only advice is: Be present when the chasm begins to open between you and your kid. Because that happens. It just—I think—it can’t not happen. Things happen. And try to make it unhappen. Try to use that presence and that awareness to find your way back.

Aging with Joy and Self-Love

MWK: You’ve talked about aging in your music—you’ve said, If you’re not getting happier as you’re aging, you’re not doing it right. How have you managed to do that? What has it been like for you in these years between 40 and now?

Ani DiFranco: I mean, I think basically all of the damage of humankind can be broken down into the core issue of lack of self-love on all of our parts, right?

I think when you don’t give yourself love, then you can’t—that’s how we learn how to give other people love, right? And so, this is why love and respect and kindness are breaking down so extraordinarily between people—it’s because, fundamentally, we’re at odds with ourselves.

So, I mean, I think one of the gifts of aging—and it has everything to do with parenting, for me—is once you give yourself over fully to your kid, and you love them unconditionally, and you practice unconditional love and service to another human…

You can take that patience and apply it to yourself. You can take that unconditional love and turn it on yourself.

You can go, Oh, maybe I should have mercy for myself as I come back from tour, and I’m completely exhausted and jet-lagged, and I can’t make a meal for a week, and I can’t even know my name, and I feel like a shell of a mom and a human.

And instead of beating myself up, pressuring myself, shaming myself—the way that I would have in the past as a young person—I turn my mothering skills on myself and say,

Of course, you’re exhausted. It’s okay to order in. It’s okay to have missed getting up this morning and getting them off to school with Dad. It’s okay to this. It’s okay. You’re okay. Let me support you in this ride, which is hard.

And I think that has made life better in my 50s than when I was in my 30s. And it would never have occurred to me to treat myself that way.

Finding Hope in Difficult Times

MWK: Your music has always had this undercurrent of hope, even when you tackle really difficult topics. You don’t shy away from challenges, social justice issues, or the hard stuff—but it’s always with this undertone of connection and optimism.

One of my favorite lines of yours is from Landing Gear: “You’re gonna love this world if it’s the last thing I do.”

And then, on your last album, you had that call for people to reach out and ask questions of those they might not agree with—approaching opponents with respect and love.

So, I guess my question is—how have you kept that sense of hope alive? People are so discouraged right now. There’s so much going on. Can you speak to that?

Ani DiFranco: Oh…

You know, I mean, for me, the way that I’ve been navigating and surviving the sadness and the fear and the anger of the social and political situation we find ourselves in is to be fully in the flow of myself.

Because when you—again, it’s like, if you can find a way to love and care for yourself and support yourself into being, into being in your purpose—it’s like you have a superhero cape on.

And you can really fly above so much. You can conquer so much from that position.

And I find that that’s becoming true for me.

I am deeply immersed in these projects—these creative projects—that I feel so strongly in. And I’m so excited about them. And I feel so deeply inspired by the potential for these projects to change things for the better—to help and uplift people.

I’m so deeply in a state of positive momentum within myself and my own purpose and my work. This is how it’s all working for me—like, when I feel myself getting mired in the anger or the whatever, I just redirect my energy back into this life-giving, motivating purpose that I have flowing right now.

And that’s making all the difference.

MWK: It’s almost like armor.

Ani DiFranco: Yeah.

MWK: And you’ve talked about this in your music—how anything can kind of be a weapon if you hold it right. In a good way, you know?

Ani DiFranco: Yeah. Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

MWK: Exactly.

Ani DiFranco: It’s whatever tools you have available to you—of your mind, and your spirit, and your soul—to become yourself. Pick those up and just wield them with everything you’ve got right now. Because that—that’s how I’m surviving this moment.

See Ani DiFranco in Milwaukee

Ani DiFranco will be performing in Milwaukee this April. And if there’s one final message she wants to leave for the city, it’s this:

“Don’t steal my car.”

(Yes, it really happened. While she was performing at Summerfest.)