Righteous folkster Ani DiFranco [ tickets ] is set to release her latest studio set, "Knuckle Down," on Jan. 25--an album that bears a few noticeable differences from her recent efforts.

For one, DiFranco invited someone else to share the producer's chair, guitarist-songwriter Joe Henry. She also took a sharp turn from 2003's "Educated Guess"--on which she performed all of the instruments herself and served as engineer--by enlisting several guest musicians on "Knuckle Down." Among them: Todd Sickafoose (upright bass), former bandmate Julie Wolf (melodica), Tony Scherr (electric guitar), Noe Venable and Niki Haris (vocals), Andrew Bird (violin, glockenspiel), Patrick Warren (piano, samples, chamberlin) and Jay Bellerose (drums and percussion).

DiFranco has released at least one CD each year since 1990, all through her Buffalo, NY-based Righteous Babe label. She spoke to liveDaily while continuing her "15-year-tour," commenting, "I'm in New Jersey somewhere. The way I conceive of being a working musician has nothing to do with [promoting] records. That's more of a pop music mindset."

liveDaily: "Knuckle Down" is quite the 180-degree-turn from "Educated Guess," where you did everything in your room. Where did you meet Joe Henry, and how did you come to invite him to co-produce?

Ani DiFranco: I invited him out on the road to open some shows, so we became friends that way. After years of solitude, having had the experience of making a record by myself, I was open to collaboration once again. I don't know what I expected, but the whole process was different. I'm really pleased with the outcome of the collaboration, which was many-faceted.

The guitars on songs like "Manhole" really jump out, there's a clarity.

The sound of the record, it's definitely unique in my body of work. The big sound of the record has to do with [S.] Husky [Hoskulds], the recording engineer and mixer. That was a pretty big deal for me, a major difference, to not be at the board. I'm really excited with the sound palette that Husky brought to the table.

There are many different guests on the album.

There's a whole bunch of people popping up on my new record, for sure.

Let's talk about a couple of them, like your bass player, Todd Sickafoose.

Todd is sort of my full-time collaborator these days. I've been touring with him in a duo format, and just lovin' it so much. I brought him to the tracking sessions, and he'd been touring with me for a few months, so we'd been honing the tunes. Then [he helped in] the process of recording. It all went down in six days at the Sound Factory, two songs a day, including teaching them to the other half of the band, so it was a real challenge.

Where did you find drummer Jay Bellerose?

He was one of the people Joe brought to the project, Jay and [pianist] Patrick Warren were part of Joe's team. I've been a fan of the work that Jay and Patrick have done with Joe's recent records, the projects that they've done together. With Joe, a lot of the roles he played were catalysts for things. I had a great relationship with Joe in the pre-production phase of the record, where a lot of scheming and dreaming about the cast of musicians and the instrumentation came together. So that was really cool to have a partner in that imaginative phase.

The spoken-word "Parameters"--can you take me through where that came from?

It came through an experience that I had, of having an intruder in my home, when I came home one night. Writing about that experience was very therapeutic. I've always been very aware of writing as my sort of method of therapy. The writing is communicating its own truth, and like most of my writing, it comes from my experience--whether it's literally me or somebody I know.

On "Paradigm," you talk about your mother, who was quite the activist when you were growing up.

She was active. Socially conscious. All kinds of things, like being a member of a food co-op in our neighborhood, or campaigning for local progressive people for city council. Basically, I've begun to look back, I'm at a phase in my life where I'm just far enough away from childhood to be able to look back at the pain, and also at all the gifts that my parents gave me--great, great gifts--as well. One of those was to understand my responsibility, I guess, as a citizen; to be accountable. And awake.