Ani DiFranco's Red Letter Year begins with a psychedelic New Year's Eve party and ends with one of the loosest and liveliest New Orleans jam sessions you'll ever hear. In-between, the prolific musician-activist muses on current events, love, insecurity, and her new role as parent amid arguably the most beautiful and sophisticated arrangements of her career.

When we spoke recently, DiFranco was in her New Orleans studio, getting ready to get ready to hit the road again, beginning with a Saturday solo slot at this weekend's moe.down festival. Until then, she's busily been working on new albums by self-described "cosmic tranny" Animal Prufrock and folksinger Anais Mitchell while juggling the dual responsibilities of work and motherhood, pretty much like every other contemporary parent.

What's going on down there?

I've been buried in these records. I should be getting ready for my tour. I'm coming off of my summer vacation. We spent a month at my mom's place in Quebec, on a lake without electricity or running water. I find that a month is plenty long enough to forget everything you know.

Who's in your band these days?

Todd Sickafoose, my left-hand man, and Andy Borger, a new drummer I've never met. Can you believe it? It's like an arranged marriage. In a week or so we'll rehearse for a couple of days and – bam! – we'll take a mystery journey onstage. Todd has an FK1, a little tiny keyboard that makes atmospheric sounds, and we've been traveling with a Wurlitzer, too, so he'll jump over to that. But our relationship with this drummer will be a tabula rasa, so I don't know what we'll be doing this tour. We’ll just be making it up.

Have you played moe.down before?

Yeah, I played at the very first one ten years ago. This year I'm playing solo, by the way.

Do you do anything different at festivals as opposed to audiences of dedicated Ani DiFranco fans?

Yeah, sure. When I'm playing to my own audience, I can assume certain things. And when I'm playing to a general audience, I try not to assume anything about who I'm talking to or what their political sensibility is. And generally, when you're outside in the elements, keeping people rocking is just the best thing to do. It's hard to do anything very subtle outside, with other stages bleeding into yours, and people drinking and getting sunstroke. It's not conducive to the sort of real finite focus you can get in a theater setting, so the setlist adjusts accordingly. You're there for the party. I definitely don't water down my politics, though, because I don't believe in that. Whatever you say with an open heart and inclusive motivation is cool. And it's amazing what people will listen to and take in if you come with the right vibe. There may be a slight shift in the way I introduce a song or in the flow of a set.

Since you moved to New Orleans, have you become involved in local issues apart from writing songs like "Red Letter Year"?

I'm a person who's really not home enough to build community in any one place. My community and the people I work with are international. The work I do isn't so much based in where I live because I don't really live anywhere.

What nonmusical things are you most involved with these days, politically or otherwise?

"Politically?" I was going to say my two-and-a-half-year-old. She's very expressive. She doesn't hide her fuck-off feelings and will deliver them to anybody, from her dearest comrades to a stranger on the street. Lately I've felt like I've been on full-time damage control. "She doesn't really mean anything by that screech in your face. We'll just be leaving now." I have a nanny, of course, so I can walk onstage and she doesn't walk into traffic while I'm there. As you can imagine, as soon as I get offstage I'm Mom again. There's very little time in my life for anything extracurricular – even songwriting. I feel as though I have just enough energy and leeway to play shows; to stay on the hamster wheel of my work, which is performing and interviewing and these album projects I'm involved with. But to write a song? That is so far down the list – past laundry and sleep – that I hardly ever get there. It's a little excruciating, but I'm also very grateful for this journey and mothering job. It's also a ton of fun, and I know I'll get back to having more time for my work and other interests soon enough.

How is Barack Obama's presidency working for you – or not – so far?

I lean toward empathy with the man. I relate to him. I have immense respect for him. I relate to him in the sense of where he comes from. He's an activist who's so smart that he got elected president. He's smarter than me, which I love in a president. So I look at him with unending gratitude and respect that he managed to do that. We have so many opportunities as citizens with him there. He's an enabler. I like to think of all of the work he will enable us to do.

That being said, of course, he's only one man, and I couldn't begin to fathom the oppressive pressures of his position. I hope the current health-care bill does not pass because it's too compromised. It's bullshit at this point. Read more »

So you think the health-care debate is complicated? Wait until you try to understand carbon credits. The only thing I took away from economics professor Nance Folbre's post on The New York Times's Green Inc. blog is that while I suppose I'll have to hunker down and come to grips with the Waxman-Markey bill's "cap-and-trade" scheme someday, I'm not particularly looking forward to it. Even Folbre's still baffled:

The remedies being proposed are devilishly complicated. The sale of permits is designed to increase the price of carbon and discourage its consumption. Under Waxman-Markey, it’s hard to figure out exactly who will benefit from the sale of the allocated permits. Read more »

The esteemed journalist Bill Moyers was on "Real Time With Bill Maher" Friday night, where he elegantly laid out the frustrations progressive voters are experiencing with the Obama administration, especially with regard to health care and the war in Afghanistan. Watch his half-hour interview (split into three parts) here, here, and here. A sample of his thoughts on the Democrats and health care:

"I cannot understand why this country has not embraced then notion of health care as a common human need to which everyone should have access regardless of their economic resources. I just can't understand that."

"The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives, who are the most outspoken champtions of health-care reform, to sit down and shut up. That's what Rahm Emanuel, in effect the Chief of Staff of the White House, told progressives when they stood up as a unit in Congress and said, 'No public insurance option, no health care reform.' And I think the reason for that is that in the time since I was there forty years ago, the Democratic party has become like the Republican party, deeply influenced by corporate money."

Links we're in like with:

The Boston Herald interviews Dr. John. "Did Katrina make you a political artist?" asks Jed Gottlieb. "I’ve been at that political stuff since the second record I made," replies the Night Tripper, adding, "People outside of New Orleans have no idea what it’s like in the city. Half the population is missing. And the other half has been beat so bad from every direction, from the government, from the insurance companies."

The Phoenix New Times sees what happens "When Tragedy and Politics Turn into Popular Music," from Shona Laing's "Glad I'm Not a Kennedy" to R.E.M.'s "Exhuming McCarthy."

A survey by a UK music-industry pressure group warns that 80% of British kids use file-sharing services on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, a European report discovers that one-third of all Europeans have never used the Net.

Trey Anastasio records "You Want to Stay High," a catchy, Beatles-y plea for moderation, with the Fab Faux's Rich Pagano. Hear it here.

SMAP (Sports Music Assembles People), a Japanese blend of Menudo and the Monkees, endorses the country's ruling Liberal Democratic Party on the eve of national elections expected to be dominated by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

It took him twenty years, but the former head of corporate communications at Cigna, one the country's largest insurance companies,has had a radical change of heart regarding his industry. In various interviews and in front of a Senate panel, Wendell Potter has courageously revealed the lies and deceptions behind the insurance industry's massively funded campaign to prevent either a nationalized, single-payer health care – or even the watered-down so-called public option – from becoming reality in our lifetimes.

The best of his recent interviews appeared in Guernica, where Wendell spoke frankly about how insurance companies generate huge profits by denying their customers care. He also spoke about how industry front groups such as the Health Benefits Coalition disseminate misinformation about the rest of the modern world's national health-care systems (by attacking Michael Moore's Sicko) and attempts to reform our own (death panels!).

Here are some quotes from Potter's Guernica interview with Jack Whitney:

“When I saw [Sicko], I’ll be honest: I thought it was a real good documentary. I knew from my own studies of other healthcare systems that it was an accurate portrayal of those systems and how they are able to provide universal coverage.” Read more »

Farm Aid teams up with Headcount each year to register concertgoers to vote at our annual Farm Aid concert. But Farm Aid is about much more than incredible music. Started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young (Dave Matthews joined the Board of Directors in 2001), Farm Aid’s mission is to keep family farmers on the land. We work throughout the year on issues that affect family farmers and we also work to inform folks about why they should care about their food and who grows it. Only together--farmers and eaters--can we create a food system that brings us healthy food grown with care, protects our natural resources, and creates thriving local economies and strong communities.

One of the coolest things about Farm Aid is the diversity of people we get to work with. We work directly with farmers, helping them access the resources they need to get on the land and grow. We have artists who are totally dedicated to good food at our annual concert. We collaborate with chefs and eaters who are super-enthusiastic about food. We get to conspire with HOMEGROWNers: those of you who are choosing to separate yourselves from the industrialized food system by seeding, growing, baking, preserving, brewing, building it yourself.

This year we’ve tackled some tough farm policy issues like farm foreclosure protection, the dairy crisis, and making sure farmers have access to the credit they need to plant their seeds. Our most recent advocacy campaign is a petition to the Secretary of Agriculture to stop funding the creation and expansion of factory farms.

Here's the basic problem: A current USDA program is funneling taxpayer money to fund new and bigger factory farm operations. This lending is leading to the gross overproduction of hogs and poultry. So much livestock is being churned out that it has caused a long-term depression of producer prices, forcing family farmers out of business. This gives us fewer options at the grocery store and gives factory farms more power.

Not only that, but these factory farms pose a real danger to our communities, our natural resources, and the livelihood of hardworking family farmers who dedicate their lives to raising poultry and livestock in ways that safeguard our air, water and public health.

It's time for Secretary Vilsack to end this destructive lending and focus USDA resources on helping those who need it most: the family farmers who have been supplying America with healthy, safe food for generations. Click here to sign our petition now— and thanks for standing up for family farmers. Read more »

Argentina's supreme court ruled unanimously on Tuesday that punishing adults for personal marijuana use is unconstitutional.

The decision is grounded in common sense. What you put into your body is your business as long as you don't infringe upon the safety and rights of others.

The Argentine court ruled that: "Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state."

Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti said private behaviour was legal, "as long as it doesn't constitute clear danger".

"The state cannot establish morality," he said.

Now thats personal liberty. Read more »

Ted Kennedy's political career paralleled the evolution of liberalism in the United States. Here's what writer, professor, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich had to say about Kennedy's legacy:

America has had a few precious individuals who are both passionate about social justice and also understand deep in their bones its practical meaning. And we have had a few who possess great political shrewdness and can make the clunky machinery of democratic governance actually work. But I have known but one person who combined all these traits and abilities. His passing is an inestimable loss.

Most Americans will never know how many things Ted Kennedy did to make their lives better, how many things he prevented that would have hurt them, and how tenaciously he fought on their behalf. In 1969, for example, he introduced a bill in the Senate calling for universal health insurance, and then, for the next forty years, pushed and prodded colleagues and presidents to get on with it. If and when we ever achieve that goal it will be in no small measure due to the dedication and perseverance of this one remarkable man. We owe it to him and his memory to do it soon and do it well.

Many more links to his life and career can be found here.