Ani DiFranco is in a cozy place these days. You can hear it in the way she laughs throughout the interview. The way she talks about being "happy again." The way she looks back on her loneliness as an angry young punk folkie.

A mom for over a year now, she's over the lesbians who bashed her for getting married (to a man).

A self-made indie conglomerate, the Righteous Babe label queen is flooding the market with product at the moment. There's the book of poetry and lyrics called "Verse." The recently released "Canon" retrospective goes back two decades. She rescued a crumbling 19th century church in Buffalo and recorded a concert in it (the DVD "Live at Babeville" came out Tuesday). And she's working on a new album she calls "f---ing huge, dude."

She drops by the Wells Fargo Center Friday night. Here's what she had to say before she took the stage at the Fillmore earlier this week:

How's motherhood out on the road these days?

Terrific. It's really fun. It's almost surprisingly easy. It's almost easier than being home. There's all kinds of people around to keep her entertained. The food just comes. I don't have to make it.

Does that change the way you appreciate touring these days?

It definitely makes it kind of fun again. Having a kid around, you see the world through new eyes, and they're ridiculous and funny and it makes it all feel new again, coming to the same venues where I've been a thousand times. There's definitely a freshness to it now.

What's your creative process like? Do you write out on the road?

I used to. I used to spend a lot of time by myself, even on the road, surrounded by people somehow. But, now with the kid, that's not the case. I find I have less and less time to write, which is kind of one of the difficult things. I feel artistically constipated.

With "Canon," how hard was it to go back through 20 years of music and revisit some of these songs?

It was incredibly hard for me. That's really my nightmare and I lived it.

Because you feel like updating stuff or you forgot things?

Well I made a lot of records without a lot of help. I was just a chick from Buffalo with a pile of songs. I started this habit of making records without waiting for a team of professionals to come along and help me or finance me or anything. No record company. No nothing. So when I listen back all I can hear is everything I do differently. Everything from the sound quality to the performances.

Picture a 22-year-old, shaved-headed, real dikey, little feminist chick with a guitar, alone in usually like a metalhead dude environment, with some studio house engineer squinting at me through the glass - like "What the f--- are you?"

And I'm supposed to perform these songs for posterity - forever, feeling totally uncomfortable, really alone.

So there were a lot of unfortunate circumstances in which I made records along the way. Of course I wish I could re-record all the songs.

Did you think about that at some point?

Yeah, but I'm no Prince. I'm not that crazy. If I had my druthers I'd do it all again and get it right and make better pictures of these songs that have these unfortunate snapshots.

Are you a control freak? And I mean that in the best possible way.

You know what - I don't think so. I really don't. I think that's probably a common perception of me because I've been in control of my career the whole time. But really it's not the control thing that I crave. That was not the impetus. In the beginning it was really more knowing what I didn't want to do than what I wanted to do. I didn't want to get in bed with business people.

As far as the DIY thing, punk and hardcore bands had done that before you, but there weren't a lot of female singers doing it - that was fairly revolutionary, was it not?

There wasn't a lot of precedent.

No how-to manual?

Or any guarantees. For me, my idealogy was driving my direction. It was hard. I had to keep reminding myself everyday - why? What am I doing this for again? Why can't I just get a record deal and a pile of money invested in my career like everybody else?

These young people come along and one day they'll be opening for me in a club and five months later they're on the cover of every magazine. And I'm still in the same club.

Yeah, but you're in control.

That's right! Woo-hoo!

It was from the ground up from the very beginning. Has your relationship with your fans changed over the years? I imagine it's been a challenge. We could talk about lesbians feeling betrayed when you got married.

Now, I love my relationship with my audience. It's really mutually respectful and kind of deep. I've always been willing to go there and those who have hung around are willing to meet me there. It's really cool now.

I think in year's past it was really frenetic and sort of rock-star fan dynamic. People screaming in your face and wanting locks of your hair and vials of your blood, which is not really human and doesn't really go anywhere.

But now that dynamic has long since leveled out. And the audience that still comes out to my shows, I think we've both matured and chilled out and it's a really sincere connection at this point that's fortifying on both sides.

I heard you stopped reading articles and reviews about yourself.

Yeah, many, many years ago. Pretty much cold turkey.

I always think of when I was on tour with Bob Dylan and I got a call from my manager (or my manager did, that's the way it happens, right?) and he said, "Bob is upset because Ani called him furniture."

And I'm like what?

It turned out I'd done an interview and said, "Well, I guess Bob Dylan isn't a direct influence on me, I don't have any of his records, but I'm sure he's a huge vicarious influence. It's like the couch in the house you grew up in. You sit on it your whole life, but you didn't know the house before the couch, blah, blah, blah..."

So I called him a couch - first of all what is he doing reading interviews? No wonder he's so miserable.

He should be going on five decades of not reading press.

I know, I need to give him some folk-singerly advice. I just think it's hard to swallow everybody's definition of you. You know how the world works, whenever someone is writing, they're sort of writing more about themselves.

It's true.

You know, the same thing with me, you, anybody.

There's no such thing as unbiased writing.

Right, you know. So when you're a public person you're at the whim of every writer's mission. So it can be understandably frustrating and debilitating to be constantly reacting to people's definitions of you. So I found that I'm just a much more healthy, focused person if I don't pay attention at all.

I imagine it was liberating at some point.

Yeah, definitely, but it takes a little bit of discipline. It's like driving past the car accidents. Just keep going, nothing to see here.

You see a picture of yourself on a magazine, don't open it up. No rubbernecking, just keep having your lunch.