Ani DiFranco Covers:
Greg Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs, Nat King Cole & more!
January 19th, 2011 — 06:25 pm
I’ve seen Ani DiFranco live in concert twice – once in a packed concert hall, and once outdoors, at a folk festival – and in both settings, she provided an amazing show, full of passion and pain. But my memories of those two shows are easy to differentiate, and not just because the vast difference in space and time framed her work differently.
In the first, which I attended as a chaperone for a busload of high school students, I remember bright lights and stagecraft, an electrified performer with a back-up band, a hard-rocking duo of an opening act entitled, embarrassingly enough, Bitch and Animal, and a crowd of screaming, bopping teenagers and young folks. In the second, I recall a girl with a guitar, intimate but self-assured, who fit right in amidst both the other predominantly solo acoustic acts who played that year’s Clearwater Revival Fest, and the old folkies and young acousti-punks who peppered the warm summer field that bright afternoon.
Different, indeed, in crowd and tone, space and subtext. And yet both rank up there in my top 50 concerts of all time. Because seeing Ani is a revelation, just as hearing her is.
On paper, Ani DiFranco can be hard to pin down. Two camps – the sensitive-yet-grungy indie-alt-rockers and the hardcore folkies – claim her as their own, in part because her music works both ways, in part because her work as a feminist and a champion of social justice fits neatly into both worlds. She has a child, and she has had two husbands, but she identifies as bi, and thanks to her proudly feminist stance, her most avid fan base includes a disproportionate number of lesbians. Her style is diverse: this is an artist unafraid to evolve, and equally sensitive to the nuances of stripped-down solo work and high-concept rockers. She channels anger and despair poignantly – many of the songs I turn to when I need a good cry are Ani’s – but she also does proud defiance exquisitely, too, as befits her rightful place in the canon of modern feminist music.
But much about the artist and her work is, ultimately, consistent. The utterly crushing emotional core, that gleeful yet determined grin, that slippery, throaty voice, the hanging notes and the punk chordplay, the deeply personal narratives which blossom into critical cultural reflection and biting satire, are an innate part of her charm and her success. Call her what you will: Ani is Ani, and one of the factors that makes her such a powerful voice in the community is, indeed, that ability to be her strong, joyful self, on stage and through song.
Unlike many artists, Ani doesn’t generally place cover songs on her full-length albums – though she did include three on her 2000 EP Swing Set. Indeed, in a prolific career of over 20 albums since her 1990 debut, she has released just one cover, a deconstructed electrofolk take on Amazing Grace, amidst her studio originals, which we first shared way back in our first Single Song Sunday feature.
It’s tempting to suggest that her work is so proud and so personal that it crowds out the songs of others, that the deep, raw soul-delving journey of each of her albums overwhelms influence, that it would make little sense for her to interrupt her own narratives with even transformed takes on the songs of others. And for this, she can be aptly forgiven: her lyrics carry such emotion, and her albums hold together so cohesively, it’s easy to see why Ani would want to keep her narratives closed, though as cover fans, we’re grateful that she often performs a cover or two in concert these days, something which was much less true of her earlier sets.
But over the course of her career, others have clearly sought out the power of Ani’s voice, both as an advocate and as a performer. She’s done two songs with Prince, appears as Persephone on Anais Mitchell’s acclaimed “Orpheus meets the American Depression” folk opera Hadestown, and features as a vocalist on Dr. John’s 2008 New Orleans tribute The City That Care Forgot. Her take on Wishin’ and Hopin’ on the My Best Friend’s Wedding soundtrack is too-cute and best forgotten, but her interpretations of the songs of others with more meaning in their lyrics stand-out on tribute albums for the likes of Springsteen, Greg Brown, Pete Seeger, and more.
Ani has lent her voice to others, too, when she feels they need to be heard: through her label Righteous Babe, which she started at the beginning of her career in order to avoid the artistic compromises which she saw as endemic to major label affiliation, and which has produced the work of similarly strong female voices since its inception, and in partnership with labor organizer and hobo songwriter Utah Phillips, with whom she released two albums, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere (1996) and Fellow Workers (1999). And she spearheaded ‘Til We Outnumber ‘Em, a Woody Guthrie tribute concert to benefit the Woody Guthrie archives and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Educational Foundation, which was released through her label in 2000, and which you can hear sampled below.
The combination of Ani’s songwriting and her performance are stunning; if for some reason you haven’t heard them, I urge you to seek out mid-career fan favorites Not A Pretty Girl, Little Plastic Castle, Up Up Up Up Up Up, and 1997 live album Living In Clip – which Rolling Stone named one of “The Essential Recordings of the ‘90s” – among other strong albums from her catalog. If nothing else, pick up both her 36-song “greatest hits” package Canon, and the exquisitely produced Knuckle Down, which contains my two favorite tear-jerkers: the moody, jazz-tinged Studying Stones, and the pulsing Recoil, which hides a climbing anger under a language of malaise and ennui so perfectly, it never fails to chill me at its climax.
But this is a cover blog, and we celebrate through interpretation unabashedly – believing, as always, that cover songs provide an easier, more comfortable avenue to connect with the work of a new artist. A collection of Ani’s coverage, then, strong and passionate, with a few bonus tracks to follow by a few others from the folkworld who have tried to do justice to her own masterworks.
- Ani DiFranco: Amazing Grace (orig. John Newton)
(from Dilate, 1996)
- Ani DiFranco: Used Cars (orig. Bruce Springsteen)
(from Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, 2000)
- Ani DiFranco: When I’m Gone (orig. Phil Ochs)
(from the Swing Set EP, 2000)
- Ani DiFranco: My Name Is Lisa Kalvelage (orig. Pete Seeger)
(from Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger, 1998)
- Ani DiFranco: The Poet Game (orig. Greg Brown)
(from Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown, 2002)
- Ani DiFranco: Lord, I Have Made You A Place In My Heart (orig. Greg Brown)
(from Render: Spanning Time with Ani DiFranco [DVD], 2002)
- Ani DiFranco: Which Side Are You On (orig. Florence Reece)
(live on Mountain Stage, 2010)
- Ani DiFranco: Do Re Me (orig. Woody Guthrie)
- Indigo Girls w/ Ani DiFranco: Ramblin’ Round (orig. Woody Guthrie)
(from ‘Til We Outnumber ‘Em, 2000)
- Ani DiFranco w/ Jackie Chan: Unforgettable (orig. Nat King Cole)
(from When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You’d Hear, 2002)
- Dar Williams ft. Ani DiFranco: Comfortably Numb (orig. Pink Floyd)
(from My Better Self, 2005)
- Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco: Pie In The Sky (orig. Joe Hill)
(from Fellow Workers, 1999)
As promised, Today’s Bonus Tracks offer a few covers of Ani’s better-known works:
- Alana Davis: 32 Flavors (orig. Ani DiFranco)
(from Blame It On Me, 1997)
- Soulive w/ Dave Matthews: Joyful Girl (orig. Ani DiFranco)
(from Next, 2002)
- Allison Crowe: Independence Day (orig. Ani DiFranco)
(from Live At Wood Hall, 2005)
Having fun? A reminder, then: Cover Lay Down eschews advertising as a distraction from our core purpose: to provide the strongest link possible between artists and listeners, to the benefit of all. But as noted earlier this month, we depend on the kindness of strangers and friends to pay the bandwidth bills, and those bills rise each year as more and more people find their way to our little home on the web.
If you, too, like what you hear here, we encourage you to click on the links in this and every feature, to purchase tracks and CDs from the artists we find and promote. But if you have any goodwill left after that, we hope you will consider a donation to help cover our costs. All who donate will receive – at the end of the month – a sampler of bootleg cover tracks recorded by yours truly at various concerts and festivals throughout 2010, and available nowhere else. And until the end of this month, 20% of all donations will be paid forward to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, the better to support the local community through the long winter. Won’t you consider helping out?