After 20 years in the music biz, self-described “Little Folksinger” Ani DiFranco is still technically little, although her influence on fellow musicians, activists, and indie-minded people the world over has been huge. She still proudly identifies as a folksinger, too, but her understanding of that term has always been far more expansive than a bin at the record store or a category on iTunes, with ample room for soul, funk, jazz, electronic music, spoken word, and a marching band or two. Over the course of more than 20 albums, including the live double-CD Living in Clip (1997) and the two-disc career retrospective Canon (2007), as well as her latest, Which Side are You On (2012), Ani has never stopped evolving, experimenting, testing the limits of what can be said and sung. Her lifelong tribe of co-conspirators includes everyone from Pete Seeger and the late Utah Phillips to a new generation of twentysomething singer-songwriters who grew up with her songs and shows—and then there’s the motley crew of folks like Prince, Maceo Parker, Andrew Bird, Dr. John, Arto Lindsay, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Gillian Welch, Cyndi Lauper, and even Burmese activist and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom she has crossed paths in a myriad of ways. 

Opening the show will be female alternative singer/songwriter Melissa Ferrick, and three-time world champion spoken word artist featured on NPR, the BBC, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam Buddy Wakefield. 

For more info: www.righteousbabe.com

Through stories and song, Lauren Fox examines the creative genius–and conflicted desires–of two of folk music’s most enduring artists. Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen are widely known to be two of the best and most prolific songwriters of their generation. Less known about the fellow Canadian artists is that they had a relationship early in their careers that lasted only a few months, but had a lasting effect on their work. 

 
Many have speculated as to why the relationship didn’t last, and that’s what Lauren Fox explores here–BOTH SIDES– through their music, their histories, their triumphs and heartbreaks. Fox delves into the meaning behind the songs, giving us a better understanding of a painter and a poet who mesmerized the world through song. Highlights of the show include Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning,” “River” and “Both Sides Now,” and Cohen’s “Suzanne,” “Bird On A Wire” and “Hallelujah.”
Lauren was featured in an article about “the future of cabaret” in the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times, written by Stephen Holden, the noted Times Music Critic.  Holden raved about Lauren’s Joni Mitchell/Leonard Cohen show as “a knock-out…with startling depth and intensity”, “remarkable” “dramatically revealing” and “a spellbinding his-and hers-dialogue… that conjures the hippie culture of the Woodstock era.” 
 
“Remarkable!  Enthralling!   Spell-binding!  A knock-out”…Stephen Holden,The New York Times