Ani in Savannny

The Heywood Connection dept.

I’m not sure how long it had been since I’d seen an Ani Difranco show.

At one time, like in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I saw her a lot.

It was my good fortune to open shows for her during that time.

I loved playing for her great, enthusiastic crowds.

But the best part of every night was when I was done and could go into the crowd, or hang out on the side of the stage, and watch her work her magic.

She was a 10 across the board. Songs? 10. Musicianship? 10. Singing? 10. Entertainer? 10.

So it was great to see her again, last week in Savannah.

Ani Difranco

With some performers, they’re really good, and then they kind of keep doing the same thing over and over. And that’s OK. Nothing wrong with that.

But the best artists are the ones that just keep growing and growing. Like, they were great when you first saw them, and the bubble keeps expanding.

That’s the kind of artist Ani Difranco is.

She gets you in the heart and she gets you in the brain, and she gets your feet and your hips going too.

She speaks to what’s going on right now. And she speaks to the timeless.

A Righteous Babe for all seasons.

The newest lyric that has stuck with me goes something like, “If you’re getting older and you’re not having more fun, you’re fucking up.”

Before this show, her guitar tech, Sully, showed me “the bible,” the laminated, bound sheets of all of Ani’s crazy tunings for each song. Sully’s job is not a simple matter of fixing the occasional broken string, or setting up a dropped D tuning here and there. Ani’s tunings are a complicated whiz-bangery of different setups for virtually every song, and are a testament to her never-ending experimentation with tonal harmonies, and are one of the reasons she sounds different from everyone else.

These days, Ani is touring with a backup band of Jharis Yokley on drums/percussion, longtime cohort Todd Sickafoose on bass, and Eric Heywood on pedal steel and electric guitar.

Jharis Yokley

Todd Sickafoose

Eric Heywood

Now, here’s the funny thing about Eric Heywood.

We come from the same town, in Iowa, of about 3,000 people.

Which means that .067% of people from Mt. Vernon have toured with Ani Difranco.

Put that on Jeopardy.

Eric’s Mom and my Mom were best friends.

I saw him all the time, growing up.

His older brother is a virtuoso classical guitar player.

I remember when Eric first started learning the guitar.

He would play blues in the manner of Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt.

He was really good, almost immediately.

At some point he started up with the pedal steel.

Pedal steel is mostly a traditional country music instrument. Hank Williams and all that.

Eric made it his own, and plays it all kinds of different ways.

He’s played with The Pretenders. Son Volt, The Jayhawks, John Doe and Joe Henry. Ray Lamontagne. Michael Foucault. Alejandro Escovedo.

And now he’s adding new musical colors to Ani Difranco.

They mesh really well, Ani and Eric.

But still. Eric’s three years younger than me. And somewhere in the back of my mind there lingers that moment when he walked into the high school gym, where I was hitting serves against the wall. For some reason I served one in his direction and hit him square in the, well, in a sensitive area.

No other way to say it.

He was a freshman. I was a senior. I didn’t need to be doing that.

It happened. If it’s not too late, sorry Eric.

I wish my service aim had always been that good.

It doesn’t seem to have hampered you too much in your life.

You have offspring. So I don’t think I maimed you.

And you’re playing beautiful music, with Ani Difranco.

Good on you, Eric. Good on you.

—

Here’s the “Talkin’ Ani Difranco’s Mom’s Blues”

And here’s Ani covering my song, “Black Tornado”!