A Force at Forty: Ani DiFranco Strums Her Fingers Raw at the Music Hall

“Hi, my name is Ani. I’m 40,” were Ani DiFranco’s opening words at her recent Sunday night performance at the Tarrytown Music Hall. I tend to think those cagey about their age just aren’t satisfied with where they’re at in life. Not so for Ani – with a folk career spanning over 20 years and nearly an album for each, she’s got plenty to be proud of.

Once categorizing herself as an atheist, Ani has eased lately into her own brand of spirituality. She attributes this to the other part of her life worth celebrating: marriage and motherhood. But like that other female musician, PJ Harvey, whose fans might have worried for a second that she would lose her edge post-childbirth, Ani still rocks. The word that kept coming to mind as I watched was muscular, both from the physical fact of her sculpted arms revealed in a tank top and from the aggression of her heavy strumming.

After every song, a bearded man appeared to trade off the spent guitar with a freshly-tuned one. Ani had to pause several times to glue her nails back on, which I could assume were not there for looks but to protect her fingers from that playing. Does it hurt?, someone shouted from the hall. “Does it hurt? No. I gave birth in my bedroom. Of course it hurts.”

I call her Ani here because that’s the kind of show it was – familiar, friendly, female. The kind of show where audience members felt welcome to shout out questions that the artist would answer at length. In folkster tradition, she fortold her songs. “I’m trying to do intros because that’s a good folk singer thing to do. Not my forté. To say anything is to leave so much out.” Sometimes in her effort not to leave so much out the song receded as she lost herself in the story.

How’s your baby? came another question. “Baby’s great, but don’t call her a baby.” This “baby” is four-years-old now and Ani, who has to be in the running for “coolest mom” prize, recounted at length the bedtime stalling her daughter performs. And for this little moment – an almost awkward diversion of gushing mother-love/frustration – I related; I became a fan.

There were of course those in audience who had followed Ani all along through her various incarnations – the lesbians, the gays, the straights, men and women, young and old, the male drummer sitting next to me (who lamented the lack of drums in this acoustic show only before it began) and his wife from Ani’s hometown of Buffalo. (Then there happened to be the male drummer on the other side of me, my husband, also originally from Buffalo, who like me was a bit of an Ani-neophyte).

You leave an Ani show not necessarily transported by the music itself but the message. Her lyrics reign supreme – for she is a poet truly – and she showcases them by almost speaking them, clearly if sometimes too fast to always grasp. Whatever type of people sat in the audience, the thing that most likely linked them was their progressive politics. For Ani the personal is political, and she’s overt with her messages – blasting nuclear power in a song about the sacredness of the atom, singing about oil from the angle of her adopted home of New Orleans; on overconsumption, on garbage. “We would buy local and we would buy less” went one line.

“I do feel sincerely spiritual, about my position,” she said between songs, and I felt remiss for largely missing out on the cannon of this female sort of Pete Seeger. But this show, which sampled old and new, properly introduced me to a woman who became a quick friend. A fellow mother whose world widened, whose politics got all the more pressing, whose art and activism deepened, when that precious girl-child was born. Her advice on navigating the troubles of our time? From “Zoo”: “Pour your love into your children until there’s nothing left to say.”

And as for someone’s shout out, How’s touring?, Ani answered, “very scant.” She explained, “I’ve been sort of working as little as possible just to hang out with my kid while she still wants to hang out with me.” And who wouldn’t? Consider us Tarrytowners lucky that we too got this chance.