Latest news with #AniDiFranco
Irish Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Event guide: Olivia Rodrigo, Van Morrison, and the other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week Olivia Rodrigo Tuesday, June 24th, Marlay Park, Dublin, 4pm, €119/€89.90 (sold out), Olivia Rodrigo 's debut single, Drivers License, shattered one streaming record after another when it was released in 2021. Her life, she said at the time, 'shifted in an instant'. Rodrigo's combination of lyrically insightful piano ballads and streamlined pop-punk has helped to make her one of today's biggest stars. This open-air Dublin gig is the singer's second stop in the city on her Guts world tour, which is about to segue into a summer of outdoor dates that include Hyde Park in London and the pyramid-stage headline slot on the final day of this year's Glastonbury Festival, on Sunday, June 29th. Fans can expect a 20-song set featuring hits such as Good 4 U, Traitor, Bad Idea Right?, Happier, Enough for You, Drivers License and Brutal. Support comes from the excellent English singer-songwriter Beabadoobee and the rising Irish band Florence Road. Gigs Ani DiFranco Sunday, June 22nd, NCH, Dublin, 8pm, €55/€45, Ani DiFranco By the age of nine Ani DiFranco was busking and playing cover versions of Beatles songs at bars and cafes in Buffalo, New York. Within a few years she was writing songs – and by the age of 15, when her mother moved to rural Connecticut, she was legally living as an emancipated minor. Since then DiFranco has lived by her own rules. In 1989 she founded the independent label Righteous Babe Records and developed a singular creative output that blends opinion, discourse, and manifesto. In other words? Pay attention. Van Morrison Monday, June 23rd, and Tuesday, June 24th, Europa Hotel, Belfast, 6pm, £331 (sold out) Rumour on Cypress Avenue has it that Van Morrison is back in the game. With his recent album Remembering Now – his 47th studio work – gathering plaudits, and his 80th birthday on the horizon – it's on August 31st – there is an expectation that the prolific songwriter and performer will revisit his classic-era recordings for these two homecoming shows. The atmosphere is more that of a softly lit nightclub than of a sweaty venue, however: the ticket price includes a three-course gala dinner, plus birthday cake. With new music that references the romantic lyricism of his 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, Morrison appears to have emerged from a post-Covid fugue into, if not the mystic, then a latter-day phase of serenity. Gang of Four Thursday, June 26th, and Friday, June 27th, Button Factory, Dublin, 8pm, €40, After the deaths of their bandmates Andy Gill, in 2020, and Dave Allen, this year, Gang of Four's two remaining original members, Jon King and Hugo Burnham, soldier on. The band – augmented by the American musicians Gail Greenwood and Ted Leo – originally formed in Leeds in 1976, and they visit Dublin as part of their Long Goodbye tour. The shows will feature two sets: a track-by-track rundown of the band's punk/avant-garde 1979 debut album, Entertainment!, and a best-of selection of fan favourites. READ MORE Stage Wreckquiem From Thursday, June 26th, until Saturday, July 5th, Lime Tree, Limerick, 8pm, €28/€25, Pat Shortt Is it really a problem if you own eight copies of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Not if you're the owner of Dessie's Discs, a beloved if somewhat ramshackle second-hand-record shop that comes under threat of closure when redevelopment plans circle around it. At the heart of this new play by the award-winning playwright Mike Finn is the worth of community spirit, underdog tenacity and the obsessive nature of committed music fans. Pat Shortt, Patrick Ryan, Sade Malone and Joan Sheehy star. Andrew Flynn directs. In conversation Frank Skinner Friday, June 27th, Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, Co Derry, 7.30pm, £22.50 (sold out), You might not have associated one of Britain's best-known comedians with literature, but for the past five years Frank Skinner's acclaimed Poetry Podcast (now in its 10th series) has featured discussions on and explorations of a wide variety of his favourite poems and poets (including Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney). Skinner is in conversation with the poet and critic Scott McKendry. Classical West Cork Chamber Music Festival From Friday, June 27th, until Sunday, July 6th, Bantry, Co Cork, various venues, times and prices, Rachel Podger With more classical performances than you can shake a violin bow at, this year's West Cork Chamber Music Festival once again presents a blend of prestige concerts, emerging musicians, sidebar events and interesting fringe shows. Highlights include Barry Douglas playing Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Minor (Saturday, June 28th, Bantry House, 7.30pm, €50/€40/€30), Meliora Quartet (Monday, June 30th, Amar's Cafe, Schull, 2.30pm, free) and the violinist Rachel Podger (Sunday, July 6th, St Brendan's Church, Bantry, 11am, €22/€16). Literature/arts Hinterland Festival From Thursday, June 26th, until Sunday, June 29th, Kells, Co Meath, various venues, times and prices, Heritage-town festivals don't come any sharper than Hinterland, which since 2013 has been bringing multidisciplinary artists and creatives to its base in Kells, Co Meath, for a four-day event that features history, literature, television, religion, memoir, music, futurism and current affairs. Must-see events include Lara Marlowe talking about How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying, her book with Lieut Yulia Mykytenko , the young commander of a Ukrainian drone unit; John Creedon on his acclaimed memoir, This Boy's Heart; John Banville discussing his latest crime novel, The Drowning; and the music journalist Simon Price talking about his love of The Cure. Still running Liam Gillick Until Saturday, June 28th, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, free, Mean Time Production Cycle, 2025 The latest exhibition by the British artist Liam Gillick, a 2002 Turner Prize nominee (and, with Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, one of the Young British Artists movement), features colourfully vivid work exploring forms of production in a postindustrial landscape. Book it this week Monty Franklin, Sugar Club, Dublin, September 17th, Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, Clonakilty, Co Cork, September 17th-21st, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Vicar Street, Dublin, October 7th, Caribou, Vicar Street, Dublin, December 10th,
New York Times
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ani DiFranco Tried to Collaborate. Then the Pandemic Hit.
Ani DiFranco's approach to her music career has always had a stripped-down, D.I.Y. vibe. In fact, Dana Flor's new documentary about the singer, '1-800-ON-HER-OWN' (in theaters) draws its name from the phone number for DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records, the label she founded in 1990 so she wouldn't have to work with a major company. It was an unusual thing for anyone to do back then, but especially for a 20-year-old female artist whose songs lay somewhere between folk and punk. That's just her style. The documentary mimics that handmade aesthetic, sometimes accidentally. The major arc follows DiFranco, now in her 50s and a mother of two, as she tries out collaboration as she never has before. Arriving as a guest of honor at a songwriting retreat held by Justin Vernon (a.k.a. the frontman of the band Bon Iver), she confesses that she's never written a song with anyone else in her entire career. Yes, DiFranco has often worked with others — she toured with a band, and the label was run by a team — but her solo songwriting and a more recent solo tour have sometimes felt lonely. DiFranco talks throughout the film about her career and her memories, often while sitting in a car. But while the film starts out conventionally, seeming as if it will focus, as she puts it, on finding 'some other way to be home more and still be an artist,' it soon pivots. When the pandemic strikes, being home more is not a choice — it's just life. Much of the footage thus becomes the twitchy recorded video calls we remember all too well, during which DiFranco discovers that collaboration, even for an artist as revered and experienced as she is, is not a simple thing. The pandemic-era documentary, full of footage shot by a subject who never expected to have to do so, will probably be showing up on screens for a long time, and it suits DiFranco's raw energy, her preference all along for doing things herself. This is the kind of relatively pedestrian musician documentary that's intended mostly for fans, who will encounter plenty of nostalgia. It's a vulnerable glimpse at an artist figuring out what the creative life looks like in a world that keeps changing. DiFranco belongs, as one person puts it, to the 'last generation born with both feet in an analog world,' one that's more or less gone now. But while it's mostly a fan-service film, the movie makes a case for her continuing relevance, too. The music clearly still resonates: Archival footage from shows across eras demonstrates just how vibrant and current the songs feel, decades after DiFranco started touring. It's still hard to be a woman in world that tends toward violence; it's still tough to be female in a male-dominated business. 'I see my life in political terms,' DiFranco says. She sees paving her own way as a path of resistance to a world built to keep outsiders on the outside. If she does it, she says, she gives space to others to do it, too.
