Ani DiFranco returns to Tucson with new music, old friends

On July 29, DiFranco will release a remastered version of the two-disc album on vinyl, the first of many anniversary re-releases she plans to drop in the coming years with her Righteous Babe Records.

“We just figured a 25-year anniversary marker was as good excuse as any to … remaster it and put it out on vinyl, which is something that people of all the physical formats sort of” remain interested in, said DiFranco, who brings her summer tour to Fox Tucson Theatre on Saturday, June 18.

Next up: “Little Plastic Castle,” which turns 25 next year. She’s also working on digitizing and remastering 1999’s “To the Teeth” and “Fellow Workers” albums, relying on old and sometimes dusty demos from her Righteous Babe Records.

“I’m finding all these really interesting odds and ends and outtakes and solo versions of band songs and all these unreleased (songs),” said the 51-year-old mother of two. “I think it is going to get more interesting as we go.”

Listening to those demos and rough cuts is like a trip through “here is your life,” she said. There are some good memories and some regrets along the way.

“It’s hard for me,” she said. “There’s discernible patterns. For instance, I was really into recording live with the band. At a certain point after the early group of records, I was like, what am I not capturing. Let’s just perform these songs in the studio; all these overdubs is killing (expletive).”

In the 1990s, using far less technologically-advanced recording processes than what she uses today, she found herself doing 15, 20 takes of a song before everyone sounded solid, even though her vocals were the best at take one, two and three.

“But it’s take 18 that went on the record,” she lamented. “For me, reliving these sessions and all the choices I made, there’s a lot of regrets. But I just have to trust that however subjective my process was or my decision-making logic, it all led me here. And I have a beautiful life and I have a beautiful relationship with my audience that maybe could’ve been bigger if I had that team of sort of professionals and more objectivity or something. But in my better moments, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Over the years, DiFranco has developed a devoted following in Tucson, which could explain why Fox Theatre is stop No. 2 on DiFranco’s summer tour. She was at the Fox in February 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down.

Her summer tour is her first time on the road since a trial run tour last fall that came after 18 months of COVID shutdowns and tour cancellations.

“It was hard,” she said of the fall run. “It was organized as a bus tour … but there are no bus drivers. We ended up in a Penske van and a passenger van. … People are testing positive and getting sent home and it was nightmarish. But it really brought us together. You feel like war buddies at the end of it. Touring is always a bit like that, but it does feel like it’s been a long time.”

DiFranco tiptoed back on stage at a small New Orleans festival last month and admitted “I was terrified.”

“I feel very out of it in all the ways,” she confided in a phone call from home in New Orleans. “When you are really playing a lot, you can decapitate your head and your body would still rock the tunes. Now it just feels like, ‘Can I do this?’ Psychology for me, when I’m not on stage for awhile, all my shyness comes back to the surface and my introversion and I think, ‘Can I do this?’ The other night, hopefully, is an example. I walk out there and it was like, ‘Oh, wait. This is the best job in the world and this is the best feeling in the world to share love with people and uplift each other and just laugh together.’ It’s just the best. I know as soon as I get out there I’m going to remember why I love it so much.”

DiFranco comes here with her year-old, critically acclaimed album “Revolutionary Love,” which she released in February 2021 but has never really played live. And while it’s a sure bet she will play the title track from the album, the Buffalo, New York, native said that her show will draw from all corners of her 30-year career that has produced 22 career studio albums.

“I’m probably going to do what I do, which is pull songs off of 30 years of albums,” she said, from her eponymous 1990 debut released on her own Righteous Babe Records to “Revolutionary Love,” which sounds like nothing that DiFranco has done before.

The record criss-crosses the lines between folk, jazz, rock and soul, which have all been part and parcel to DiFranco’s musical DNA since she started playing professionally as a teen growing up in Buffalo. The jazz influences, many of them the byproduct of living in New Orleans since 2008, are more pronounced throughout, including on the title track.

Of course an Ani DiFranco concert would not be complete without social commentary. DiFranco is an activist going way back, speaking out on social injustices, race relations, politics and LGBTQ issues.

These times, she said, are “terrifying and awful and, hopefully, hopeful.”

“This (expletive) is on the surface; it can’t be ignored by a critical mass of people anymore,” she said, citing worldwide protests against gun violence and racial discrimination, women’s issues and human rights. “Those of us who have been in the struggle for a long time are feeling less and less (like) voices in the wilderness and more like part of a movement.”

Catch Ani DiFranco in concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 18, at Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. Tickets are $27.50 to $55 through foxtucson.com.