Fresh off a headlining performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last weekend, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco brings her Spirit of Love Tour to the Ryman Auditorium Friday night. While the DIY pioneer has played the historic venue numerous times in her career, it will be her first show there in 14 years and her first in Nashville in a decade. A feminist icon who launched her own label — Righteous Babe Records — in 1990, DiFranco has released 23 albums and authored a number of books, including her 2019 memoir No Walls and the Recurring Dream, which was a New York Times bestseller. Her latest book The Spirit of Ani — a collaboration with cultural anthropologist Lauren Coyle Rosen that discusses DiFranco’s creativity, spirituality, personal experiences and evolving consciousness — was published on March 3. At Friday’s show, DiFranco will perform material from across her celebrated career. She will be accompanied by Todd Sickafoose on bass and keys, Jharis Yokley on drums and Eric Heywood on pedal steel and guitar. Singer-songwriter Valerie June will open the evening with backing from a pair of Memphis-based musicians — violinist Alice Hasen and cellist Tamar Love.
8 p.m. at the Ryman
116 Rep. John Lewis Way N.
