Do you assume that artists who talk about real-life violence don't know how to laugh? Check out the love songs on the album. They could be about men or women - DiFranco says she's had lots of adventures.
"I'm the only folksinger I know who stage dives in her show," she says on the phone from New Jersey, where she's on tour - as she is almost all the time - that stops at the Danforth Music Hall on Friday (March 3).
"Don't expect it to be easy. Don't expect some chick to sit back and talk about nature and children."
This particular morning hasn't been easy on her. She's feeling the rigours of travelling and, worse yet, she never got her wake up call. But her voice, which starts out as a sleepy croak, soon clears and she's revved up to explain the unique mix she brings to her music.
Punk and folk, after all, are an unusual combination. Folk is usually an exercise in earnestness, punk and exercise in not giving too much of a shit. And DiFranco's dexterity on the guitar goes against punk's anti-technique tendencies.
She substitutes aching sincerity for folk's earnestness and righteous rage for punk's nihilism. And anyway, according to DiFranco, her two chosen genres form and easy partnership in other ways.
"I think one of the ways punk and folk connect is that both are subcorporate. There's a sense that we can do all this. They have everything to do with the community they come out of and they are politically and socially connected to the people around."
This fits well with DiFranco's business dealings. Fiercely independent, she has produced all six of her albums with her company - Righteous Babe Records.
She hired the musicians, designed the covers and promoted the discs, while building a solid fan base that crosses communities - she's embraced equally on campuses, in women's groups, and on the alternative scene.
More impressive, she's sold over 100,000 CD's and tapes, enough so that she can reject any idea of changing her business or stage style.
The independent streak was bred deep and early. DiFranco started out singing Beatles songs when she was nine and began writing her own songs at 15, which is also when she moved out into her own apartment and began toiling on Buffalo's bar circuit.
The scrounged for the money to produce her first recording, rejecting overtures from major labels just tuning into the teen sensation.
She moved to New York last year for a change of view, but taking a bite out of the Big Apple hasn't changed DiFranco's opinion of the machinations of the music industry. Obviously, her creative autonomy and the corporate climate don't mix.
Typical of her indie stance is the rider written onto all her discs - "Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing." A nice way of asking fans not to tape while making sure it doesn't look like she's joined hands with the industry in their profit-crazed battle against bootlegging.
"Punk and folk don't take place in the corporate stadium, where capitalism creates a distance," says DiFranco.
"It's so uninvolved. You can bridge a lot of space by turning up your amp. But there are other ways of bridging the gap - by making someone strain to meet you and then by meeting them halfway. Then you can talk."
That doesn't mean she's got any problem with women rocking out.
"I think the vocabulary of women's music is ever- expanding," she says. "The more examples we have the better. I think it can only help a lot. Where are the beefy, fat, juicy, hairy, dark, deep songs? Where are the songs you can fall into?"
She has a point. Her sisters in grunge tend to hide their lyrics behind a wall of sound. Both Courtney Love's latest and Veruca Salt's debut, where the writing is strong, don't bother to include the words with the CD package.
DiFranco, on the other hand, scribes highly articulate, tightly crafted pieces that revel in wordplay. What makes them work is that they're about something- and not just something overtly political. The songs, especially those about love lost and found, have a bold explicitness and depth of feeling.
Although many have marveled at the intensity and the risk involved in this kind of writing, DiFranco doesn't see it that way. She has no problem peeling back the layers to reveal the raw emotional core.
"It isn't so hard to talk about things so personal," she admits. "The way I look at it, there's nothing private - it's all universal. Saying it's too personal is a way not to talk about difficult things. Nothing's going to be solved if we don't open our mouths.
"Many things can become a song. I always wonder what would happen if we just burst into it. There's a flood of people all saying 'me too!' If we're all seeing this and living this, why am I seen as a freak for talking about it?"
Either way, DiFranco expects her audiences to do more than just get off on her talking about it. Life as the engaged artist, she says, can't be lived on a one way street.
The point of performance is not just to get a reaction, but to facilitate action. In one of the most powerful songs on Out Of Range, she makes a pointed remark to a fan who thanks her for saying all the things she says.
"It would be nice," writes DiFranco in response to the fawning fan, "if you joined in. It's really great to provide encouragement and inspiration. But it can't end there. I can't let people passively consume me."
Which is probably one of the reasons she takes such delight in playing with her physical appearance. The hair grows, it's dyed blonde, it's buzzed, then dyed white. It's all part of the game of controlling her own image.
"If I walk down the street with heels and a Cher wig, the guys love it and are in heat. When I chop off my hair and put on my boots, they want nothing to do with me.
"Ever since I was eighteen, I've worked overtime to look goofy and freaky - which is a step up from pretty. I think about beauty and who decides what we should look like. A lot of the content of beauty is about playing along."
Though Out Of Range is her sixth album - not bad for someone with less than a quarter of a century under her belt - she still confesses to having some difficulty making the transition from the stage to the studio. She craves the immediate response from a live audience.
"Taking a moment in time and making it permanent, the way you do with recording, that's something alien."
This means that she's all the more energized by the prospect of taking the stage. The one woman punk acoustic band feels like she can say it all, even if she does have to spend a lot of time deflecting the labels that get thrown her way.
"I was never able to describe myself," she says frankly. "But that's OK. Other people are always prepared to do that for you."