Red Letter Year

And it has been a long time coming. Red Letter Year was sculpted over the course of two years, a period in which Ani continued to hone her songwriting, performing and recording skills, all the while balancing her new role as a mom. "I think I sorely needed to be slowed down, and finally a little person came along powerful enough to do it," Ani reflects. The end result is an album of focused, layered, panoramic music.

Ani's band - upright bassist Todd Sickafoose, vibraphonist/percussionist Mike Dillon and drummer Allison Miller - is a major source of Red Letter Year's singular personality. On "Emancipated Minor," Miller's driving beat tethers to Ani's killer electric guitar hook, while Sickafoose's bass adds the perfect counterpoint to Ani's acoustic guitar work on "Way Tight". And on "Alla This," Dillon's vibes are as rich and open-minded as Ani's defiant, anthemic lyrics.

Add to the inspired, re-invigorated Ani the uncanny production skills of Napolitano (Joseph Arthur, The Twilight Singers, Squirrel Nut Zippers), the otherworldly string arrangements of long time collaborator Sickafoose, and the inspired playing of guests such as Jon Hassell on trumpet (Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Ry Cooder), and you've got the makings of a DiFranco classic.

Album Description
Prolific feminist singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco began performing at the age of nine, establishing her independence by living on her own from the age of 15 onwards. Literate, ebullient and a natural live performer, she quickly won converts drawn equally from Folk and Rock audiences. Her debut album confirmed this promise, its lyrics informed by feminist theory but never subsumed by rhetoric or preciousness. As she told Billboard magazine in 1995: `It`s not like I have an agenda in my music. It`s just that to me, the world is political. Politics is music - is life! That`s the lens I look through.` 12 tracks.