Ani DiFranco Gets Real About Leaving Her Safety Bubble for Her New Documentary

The most powerful breakup scene to happen in a film this year isn’t between lovers, but between a musician and a producer.

During the pandemic lockdowns, iconic folk artist Ani DiFranco was trying to make her 2020 album Revolutionary Love with, for the first time, outside help—in this case, producer and frequent Bon Iver collaborator Brad Cook. But during a Zoom call included in the new documentary 1-800-On-Her-Own, Cook firmly declares that, in spite of his best efforts, he isn’t the right person for this job. The decision leaves DiFranco visibly shattered.

That moment is just one of many startlingly intimate scenes in this powerful film, and one that DiFranco only kind of knows is now out in the world. Though she’s seen a rough edit of the documentary and is touring the U.S. with the film and its director, Dana Flor, including a sold-out stop on Friday, Nov. 1, at the Tomorrow Theater as part of the movie house’s first anniversary celebration, she hasn’t seen it since.

“I just go have dinner while the film is playing,” DiFranco says. “I don’t even remember what happened, what she filmed, and what’s in there really. I do remember deciding during the time that she was hanging out to just not think about it, not worry about it. I felt that that’s what I can contribute: no control and no strategy. Just honesty.”

Candor has never been in short supply for the 54-year-old artist. The 23 studio albums DiFranco has recorded to date—all of them via her defiantly independent label Righteous Babe Records—are steeped in personal admission and political rage, and performed with an energy that has earned her millions of fans worldwide. With that has come all the expected trials of being a public figure, including business problems, stalkers, and critical invective.

All of that is touched on throughout 1-800-On-Her-Own. Named after the toll-free number for the Righteous Babe offices, the doc is in part a brisk overview of DiFranco’s life and career and, yes, her many fabulous hairstyles. But what anchors the film is the unfiltered look at the artist’s personal life. Flor’s camera is omnipresent at DiFranco’s bustling home in New Orleans, capturing the calm and chaos of trying to balance her creative and family life. In another heartbreaking moment, we are in the car with DiFranco as she fights off tears talking about the rough patch her marriage is going through all while driving to a photo shoot.

“It was not easy,” DiFranco says of being so nakedly emotional on camera. “Though I bring a lot of honesty or whatever onstage, when I go off stage, I like to be invisible. That was tough. [Dana] was around for a good year, so it was just surrendering to being, you know, visible.”

DiFranco’s desire to retreat to the shadows is understandable if a little hard to square with how much she has been in the spotlight lately. In addition to supporting both the new documentary and her most recent album, Unprecedented Shit, she spent a good chunk of the year on Broadway, reprising her role as Persephone in a revival of Anaïs Mitchell’s Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown.

“It was so humbling performing for a Broadway audience,” DiFranco says, “because they don’t greet me like my audience. It’s a super-humbling experience of locking eyes with people in the front row and being glowered at. It’s like, ‘Whoa, I hadn’t realized what a bubble of love I’ve been performing in.’”

DiFranco will soon be returning to that bubble as she kicks off a tour for Unprecedented Shit at the start of the new year, but will also have plenty of time to bask in the glow of her fans beforehand as she continues to do events with Flor and 1-800-On-Her-Own. If anything, the film and her regular posts to her Patreon account are a way for her devotees to feel even more connected to DiFranco as both present her as wholly human.

“It’s really cool for me to experience the film vicariously through other people,” she says. “I’ve heard from a lot of people that they felt inspired and less alone. Like, oh, right, you go through all the same shit as me, which I already sort of felt through your music, but now I’m feeling it and seeing it on a whole other level.”

SEE IT: 1-800-On-Her-Own at Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St., 503-221-1156, tomorrowtheater.org. 7 pm Friday, Nov. 1. Sold out.