126 Minutes With …Ani Difranco

The musician pays a visit to New York, and the ’90s.

- Rachel Syme

Less than two minutes into our interview, Ani DiFranco says the word fuck for the first time, and it sounds like music. Her f is fricative and percussive, much like DiFranco’s habit of thwacking the side of her acoustic guitar as she plays it. Then comes the vowel sound, which has a gentle lilt that mirrors the way DiFranco sings: in dulcet tones that sometimes release a guttural growl.

We’re sitting at a corner table in the Standard Hotel on Cooper Square. Geographically, we’re not far from where DiFranco lived in the East Village for much of her late teens and early 20s, but spiritually the posh café is as far away as you can get from her scene in the 1990s— the decade when she was a vital component of the alternative-feminist-rock wave. She’s visiting New York in part to see the Broadway premiere of Hadestown, a show written by the singer-songwriter, Anaïs Mitchell. In 2010, DiFranco helped Mitchell develop the show’s songs into a concept folk album originally released on DiFranco’s label, Righteous Babe Records. DiFranco and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver both sang on the album, which grew into a theatrical spectacle that was nominated for 14 Tony Awards on April 30. DiFranco is overjoyed to see the project hit Broadway, and didn’t realize there would be a whole red-carpet situation. “Now I’m in a panic because of I fucking … I didn’t pack,” she says. “I’m going to be underdressed. I was going to do black jeans and a T-shirt.”