Righteous Babe

9. Ani Difranco - Revelling:Reckoning
I fell in love with Lisa Loeb about halfway through high school. I saw her play on Austin City Limits, and was absolutely enamored. In fact, I taped the show and watched it from time to time (this is something I did often, since we didn't have cable; PBS has some great stuff every now and then). How many female musicians did I admire before Lisa Loeb? Does Debbie Gibson count? I guess the point is that my adolescent male brain had been so focused on the offensively loud and unabashedly shallow stuff, I totally overlooked everything else. That's sort of a cop out. The real reason I liked Lisa Loeb had everything to do with how cute she was but also had everything to do with her lyrics, voice, guitar playing, all of it. But my eyes had been opened nonetheless, to the beauty and emotion and anger and depth that came along with a female point-of-view.
PBS was also the vehicle for my intro to Ani Difranco. I saw her play on a late-night show called Sessions at West 54th(I believe I also watched Beck do a mindboggling solo show on this same program when he released O Delay, I would do anything to track down those performances on DVD). Admittedly, I didn't listen to many of Ani's lyrics or really pay attention to much of anything other than her right hand. She had her fingers all taped up and was playing the hell out an acoustic guitar that was nearly as big as her. I had never seen anyone play a guitar with such force and still create intricate lines and hooks that were discernible from the percussion of the strumming. She was simply amazing.
During my freshman year in college, a girl that lived in my dorm asked me to play the guitar for her in an Ani Difranco song at a talent show on campus. By that time, I was more familiar with Ani's credo of girl power...so I agreed to play for her and enjoyed every minute of it, but I felt a bit like an impostor. In effect, the whole experience turned me way off to Ani for good (I assumed).
Once again, everything changed. That phone call in Ellensburg (see Ryan Adams post) turned into a bit of a recurring thing, and eventually included seven hour drives back and forth to the Boise area. Of course, the person on the other end of the phone happened to like Ani Difranco; in fact, Ani was her favorite. Needless to say, it didn't take too long for me to come around (love does that to you), but it was more than just tolerance in the face of infatuation. In hindsight, Ani was a natural match for me. She played acoustic guitar, wrote her own stuff (prolifically), used elements of jazz, was dynamic on her own or with a band, and she supplied not only that unique female perspective but also a DIY attitude about all things political (without a hint of apology). All of these elements are present on Revelling: Reckoning. But it wasn't instant. It took me a couple of years to fully come to appreciate that album. Then, we went to see her in concert and I was so blown away that my mind was changed for good. Every negative preconception I'd had about Ani was wrong and every reservation I'd felt in regard to her lyric subject matter was based on stereotypes I no longer held onto.
Simply put, Ani Difranco is one of the best songwriters I've ever listened to and her music has affected me on every level. I often used her songs when teaching the Rock 'n' Roll History class at University of Arizona for a singer/songwriter project. I used to wish that I could play guitar and write lyrics like Dave Matthews; now I wish I had just the tiniest bit of Ani's talent, that I could write and play with that kind of substance and passion.

The Depths of Ellensburg

8. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
I tried living alone once, in a town where I knew no one, and had three months of hot, dry, windy summer to kill. Actually, I was supposed to be working, but in a college town that is a quarter of its normal size when the university is out of session, jobs are not too forthcoming. Well, I spent my days in a tiny studio apartment, waiting for the phone to ring and trying not to think about what I might have left behind in Idaho. Depressing, eh. A bit I suppose, but I had my guitar, a pile of books to read, and a very cool CD store a few blocks away called Rodeo Records. Ellensburg, Washington is just a short, beautiful drive over the Cascades from Seattle, but it felt like nowhere that summer. A few weeks before I was to start graduate school, I wandered in to Rodeo Records and bought two albums on a whim: Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker and Laura Veirs' The Triumphs and Travails of Orphan Mae. While Laura Veirs has had more staying power with me, it was Heartbreaker that made all of the drudgery of that summer worth something.
The first time I listened to Heartbreaker, I got so emotional that I drank all of the beer in my apartment and had to climb the hill up to the store for more. It was as if Ryan Adams had peered into my soul and wrote heartachingly poignant poetry about what he saw. Not the way of it I guess, but it was so refreshing to know that someone else was fighting the same demons that I was. He had the written the words I had been unsuccessfully trying to express for years. "Come Pick Me Up" quickly worked its way on to my "all-time best lyrics" list (a project for later). It reminded me of a few songs I had written a couple of years back, only about a million times better. It was all too much. Every night for a week, I sat at my kitchen table with Heartbreaker on repeat and stared out window. Then, the phone did ring. And everything changed in a flash. But that is a story just for me and the person who was on the other end of the line.
I guess that Heartbreaker is one of those albums that can take me back to a very precise moment in time, to a very specific set of emotions. And sometimes I need to recall that dreariness, to remind myself of how incredible it felt when it all melted away.