Ani DiFranco Coming to Park Theatre

The Park Theatre has been attracting some big names lately, but the latest artist to book a show at the historic Cranston arts and entertainment landmark could be one of the biggest yet.

Ani DiFranco, a Grammy winner, mother and outspoken activist, will be performing at the Park Theatre on Nov. 7.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on April 26.

"My guess is that it'll sell out quickly," said Michael Cerio, spokesman for the theatre.

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 twenty something 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.

For much of the last decade she’s been based in New Orleans— but at her core she’s always seen herself as “a traveler,” covering pretty much the four corners of the earth by now, both solo and with her band. (There’s less corner-covering these days, now that she’s consciously slowing down a bit and raising a daughter with partner and co-producer Mike Napolitano, but she still gets around just fine, playing venues like Madison Square Garden for Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday bash and another star-studded lineup at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for Wavy Gravy’s seventy-fifth.)