Lyrically, her songs are often unashamedly political, typically drawing from her deep social conscience that explores and exposes injustices across multiple societal fronts. DiFranco’s business acumen is also legendary. From the outset, she has released all of her albums—at least one a year—on her own Righteous Babe record label. During its 15-year existence, Righteous Babe has evolved into a highly successful business with an artist roster that includes singer/songwriters Andrew Bird, Arto Lindsay, and Hamell on Trial.

DiFranco also bucks the status quo when it comes to her powerful and sometimes ferocious acoustic guitar approach. Her songs are usually propelled by a combination of percussive fingerpicking, dramatic strumming, and full-on thrashing. She uses several dozen alternate tunings that ensure her guitar tech David Reilly’s hands are never idle. DiFranco generally arrives at her tunings intuitively by turning pegs at random until something appeals to her ear.

Surprisingly, DiFranco chose to temporarily switch to standard tuning for many of the songs on her latest CD, Knuckle Down. The album also represents a couple of further creative and collaborative shifts for her. The disc has a more personal focus than her other recent releases, with lyrics exploring familial reflections and splintered relationships. And after helming all of her previous records herself, she asked Joe Henry, a renowned singer/songwriter in his own right, to co-produce.

What made you want to bring in a co-producer for Knuckle Down?
My last record, Educated Guess, was a totally solitary endeavor. I’ve always been one for contrasts in life, so after making a record alone at home and being alone a lot in my life, I felt it was time to get out of my own little head and world and collaborate again. In the past, I’ve worked with my own band on records. We would come off the road totally rehearsed and tight and just go into the studio and perform the songs to tape. But the way Knuckle Down was made, with session musicians, was very different. It was more of “Hi, my name is Ani! Okay, this tune is in D [laughs].” The other big difference was that I’ve always had a close hand in the recording and mixing of my records. This time, it was [engineer] Husky Hoskulds who did the mixing, so Knuckle Down has a very different sound to it.

How did Joe Henry’s approach affect how the album came together?
The way this record was made was a first for me. In a nutshell, Joe was an old-fashioned producer in that he brought along his team that he usually works with on records, including an engineer, drummer, and keyboard player. All of those people that worked on Knuckle Down have made a bunch of records together at the Sound Factory in West Hollywood. I sort of plugged into Joe’s scene there in LA and brought in my tunes, my fabulous bass player, Todd Sickafoose, and a few guest musicians. So, Joe was really involved in the pre-production and the assembling of the cast. Then, when we got in the studio, I just went to work with the players. We tracked two tunes a day, and that included teaching the songs to the band. We laid down the record live in six days.

Tell me about your songwriting process.
For me, songs are born with a guitar and my journal at my side. My various guitars have different voices and they function as my singing and writing partners. The unique qualities of a guitar’s voice have a real effect on what comes out. I don’t have a specific sound or formula that I rely on each time. The songwriting process is either really visceral, emotional, and immediate, where I sit down and write something from start to finish, or it’s an ongoing meditation that gets sculpted and re-sculpted. The latter method has more of the intellect involved. For instance, “Parameters” was a real vomiting of words, whereas a song like “Lag Time” was more of a process that I worked on for months. It represented the “Oh! I finally got the bridge!” kind of writing.

What effect does playing the songs in concert before recording them have?
I’m always touring and performing, so throwing things out at an audience is often part of the writing process for me. It’s certainly part of my song development. I’ll write a song and the words and chords will be there, the melody will mostly be there, but performing it is where the song grows up and really becomes itself. A lot of that has to do with audience interaction. For instance, I’ll write a lyric and won’t realize it will be misunderstood until I sing it at people and see that they’re taking it the wrong way. Or I’ll write lyrics that I didn’t realize were funny. It’s very enlightening to be a public, performing writer.

How did you get started on guitar?
When I was very young, I took a few guitar lessons and learned some basics. I actually learned how to read music when I was nine or ten, but I can’t do that anymore. I also learned some folk fingerpicking patterns. Then I kind of put down the guitar for a few years around age 11 or 12. I was doing other kinds of art and expressing myself in other ways. When I picked the guitar back up at age 14, that’s when my self-teaching started and I personalized my approach.

How did your unique fingerpicking style develop?
That really percussive fingerpicking thing I arrived upon had a lot to do with the fact that I started playing in bars as a teenager in Buffalo. They weren’t the easiest gigs, especially when people are just there to drink and pick up the person next to them. They typically couldn’t care less about the chick with the acoustic guitar in the corner pouring her little teenage heart out [laughs]. So, I was developing ways of making people shut up, turn around, and get interested. Becoming more vehement with my playing was just necessary for the job at hand, which was survival in bars.

Are the fake nails you use an extension of that desire to play with more intensity?
Yeah. It was part of the technique I developed for playing really hard on the acoustic guitar and has very much influenced my playing along the way. I use one kind of fake nail called Nailene “action length” nails that are three times as thick as a human nail. Because they’re so thick, I can play way harder. Without them, I would just shatter my God-given nails. They’re superglued on and also secured with electrical tape. The tape prevents the string from getting caught behind the nail on a down stroke and ripping the superglued nail off. I tape down past the first knuckle on my right hand because otherwise I just bloody myself when I play.

You’re well known for using lots of alternate tunings, but for Knuckle Down, you chose to often rely on standard tuning. What made you go that route?
My old guitar tech quit [laughs]. I had been working with him for many years and because I use so many open tunings, I keep a guitar tech very busy over the course of the show. When he left, I was suddenly in a very vulnerable state. There I was with all of these crazy-ass tunings—a different one for every song—and the man who knows the mad science is suddenly gone. So my practical nature kicked in and I started writing in standard tuning.

How did switching to standard tuning affect the way you wrote the music?
It was really fascinating because after years and years of playing in open tunings, it seemed like standard tuning was the most bizarre open tuning ever. That’s how I approached it. For instance, the song “Knuckle Down” is in standard, but I’m just making vertical chords. The verses are sort hammering on the 7th and then the 5th fret. So it goes seven, five, seven, five, just fretting the top and bottom strings. I’m playing it like it’s an open tuning because that’s how it strikes me. I think that’s because I had completely abandoned the concepts of the chords you’re supposed to make in standard tuning.

Did playing in standard tuning influence the vibe of the songs?
Some people have noticed that the songs on Knuckle Down kind of have my version of a classic rock flavor to them [laughs]. I think what they’re hearing is standard tuning, which is different for me.

What are some of your favorite alternate tunings?
I have so many, but lately I’ve been into a lot of Cs. One of my favorites is where I drop the low E way down to a C, bring the B string up to a C and the high E down to a C as well. So, I kind of have Cs framing the guitar. I’ve also written a few songs recently where just the B string is up to C and the rest is standard. Little tweaks like that can inspire a whole new direction. On my latest record, the few songs that aren’t in standard are below DADGAD with the two Es at D, the B string down to G and the G string is down a half-step below that. That’s the tuning for “Lag Time” and “Paradigm.”

Did you track your guitar and vocal at the same time on Knuckle Down?
I always do. I’ve done 20 records where I’ve recorded vocal and guitar at the same time and I still don’t know how to do it. Over the years I’ve become very tuned in to phasing. My ear can immediately hear when there are phasing issues going on. So, basically you throw a mic in front of the guitar and a mic in front of the chick singer’s face and you hope it works out. You have two mics picking up both things, so only one of them is going to be entirely in phase most of the time. Do you compromise the tone of the guitar so the vocal is fully there or do you sacrifice the vocal so you get the rich, completely in-phase guitar signal? During the making of Knuckle Down, I was saying, “Can we try flipping the polarity of the guitar?” or “If you pan the guitar in a certain place, it will allow the vocal to be more in phase in the center.” It’s always really difficult to track live with an acoustic instrument and that certainly held true for Knuckle Down.

Do you ever record the guitar direct?
Well, one thing I typically do, particularly with the last bunch of records and on stage as well, is run my acoustic through an electric guitar amp. A lot of my guitar on Knuckle Down has a little crunch or distortion. It’s almost an electric sound. So I’ve got a mic on the instrument and usually an amp signal, and sometimes there’s also a D.I. mixed in there for punch.

What guitars are you currently using?
I typically bring six guitars to a gig. I have two Alvarez Yairi Ani DiFranco models and an Alvarez Bob Weir that are tuned or capoed in variations throughout the show. Then I alternate between an Alvarez MDS1 “Baby” and an Alvarez Veillette Baritone. The remaining guitars are a 4-string Cromwell tenor guitar and a custom Alvarez Bob Weir WY1 model with an extended neck to facilitate heavier strings and low tunings. All the guitars are strung with D’Addario Phosphor Bronze strings.

What amps do you typically use?
I have a little bitty Ampeg Superjet that I adore. It sounds really good with my acoustic guitars if I keep the tone knob turned all the way dark. Onstage, I play through a Rivera Sedona 100 for an even more driving rock sound. I also use an Ampeg SJ-12T. I have volume pedals for both amps, so I can use the straight pickup sound of the guitar or I can add in one or the other amp to color the sound differently during the course of the night. When recording, I like to use an old Premier 88N amp that sort of opens up like a sewing machine. It has these great tone toggles and about four instrument inputs and two mic inputs. It’s absolutely my favorite old amp.

Did you do anything unique in the studio when recording your guitars for Knuckle Down?
I did something interesting that I learned from Husky the engineer. He’s developed a crazy way of miking things through an old, big metal gramophone horn—the kind the RCA dog is listening into. If you put the wide end of the horn in front of the guitar amp and put the mic in the hole at the other end, it funnels the sound. You get a whole other vibe instead of straight miking the amp. On the tune “Manhole,” I’m playing an electric baritone and the really killer element of that sound is miking the guitar amp through the horn. That’s a Husky trick that has changed my life. I actually went out and got my own gramophone horn on eBay!

Describe your relationship with the guitar.
I think of my guitar as my best friend. It’s always been there. Since I was nine years old, I’ve turned to my guitar for company, for release, and for solace. I didn’t have a good family life when I was young and when I started writing songs at 14 or so, it felt good to express my pain and let it out. There’s a reason the guitar is such a universal instrument. It’s a perfect accompaniment for singing. It’s also a perfect tool for making music in solitude. I think I’ve led a pretty solitary life and the guitar is the one friend that’s always been there to console me.