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Ms: "The lone ranger of the music business"
The Nation: "DiFranco creates her own forms of resistance."
Billboard: "DiFranco and Righteous Babe have set the grass roots ablaze."
Robert Christgau, Village Voice: "The most successful cottage industry in the history of indiedom."
Alternative Press: "The premier example of what can be done when an artist insists on doing things her way."
Righteous Babe Records was founded in Buffalo, New York in 1990 by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco out of necessity and convenience, as an alternative means of distributing her music. DiFranco, then 20 years old, borrowed money from friends to cover the costs of incorporation and studio time in order to record an album of her original compositions. In seven short years Righteous Babe has evolved from a living-room-and-car-trunk operation into a viable independent label, which has sold more that a million copies of Ani's nine solo albums and related projects. In the process, RBR has become a model for many established and emerging artists seeking greater control over their own output.
As the head of her own label, Ani is free to release albums as often and as quickly as she can write and record new songs. She oversees album and t-shirt design, directs her own videos, and makes all major career decisions herself. At the same time, however, Righteous Babe Records is far from a one-person operation; Ani's income from concerts and recordings is fed directly back into the organization, allowing her to support an office staff of 8 and a road crew of 10. Throw in independent show promoters throughout the country, a booking agency (Fleming-Tamulevich) based in Ann Arbor, MI, a publicity firm (The Press Network) in Nyack, NY, and a network of indie distributors in the US (Koch International, Goldenrod, Ladyslippers, and Zango), Canada (Festival), and Europe (Cooking Vinyl), and you've got a sense of scope of Ani's "sub-corporate" cottage industry.
"The bottom line is not at work in determining the way I live my life. That's not what drives Righteous Babe. For me, it's about art and politics," DiFranco told The Los Angeles Times in one of many recent articles (in Forbes, Daily Variety, Billboard, and other publications) drawing industry attention to the artist-run label. DiFranco's choice to establish and maintain Righteous Babe in Buffalo is a deliberate one; she works with local printers and manufacturers as much as possible, for instance, as part of a conscious effort to support the Western New York economy. For Ani, "keeping it at home" is an example of "thinking globally and acting locally. Every business, every person who stays in Buffalo really counts. Besides, that's where me friends are; I want to work with people I love and trust."
Ani envisions Righteous Babe as an opportunity to share the resources she developed with like-minded artist who have been excluded from the dominant discourse of the culture. "Being a Righteous Babe is not a matter of gender or age or hairstyle," Ani says. "It's not just about twentysomething feminist self-expression." It should come as no surprise then, that RBR's first release by an outside artist would be The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, an 1996 album of stories by 61-year-old folk singer/activist U. Utah Phillips, which Ani selected, set to music, and produced. This initial collaborative project, hailed by critics and fans as a cross-generational fusion of campfire storytelling and hip-hop aesthetics, is intended as the first in a series of releases from an unexpected roster of acts.
"I don't think the music industry is conducive to artistic and social change and growth. It does a lot to exploit and homogenize art and artists. In order to challenge the corporate music industry, I feel it necessary to remain outside it. I could be selling a lot more albums. Life could be a lot more cushy. But it's much more interesting to try and hammer out an alternative route without the music industry and maybe be an example for other musicians. You don't have to play ball."
-Ani DiFranco, quoted by Ira Robbins in Newsday, June 10. 1995
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