On December 7, 2004, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced that Ani DiFranco's 2004 solo album, Educated Guess, is nominated for two GRAMMY awards in the Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Recording Package categories. These nominations are the sixth and seventh of Ani's 15-year touring and recording career, and the second nod for the Little Folksinger in each category. DiFranco and longtime artistic collaborator Brian Grunert took home the GRAMMY for Best Recording Package award last year for Evolve (2003). Fellow Workers (1999), Ani's collaboration with friend and anarchist storyteller Utah Phillips, also received a Best Contemporary Folk Album nomination a few years back.

The album nomination is notable for Ani's truly singular accomplishment. If you're keeping track, you'll need to use both hands, because she wrote, played, sang, recorded, engineered, and mixed every song on this spectacular disc, hailed by Rolling Stone as "one of her sharpest, most honest works to date." From the personal ("Bubble," "Swim") to the political (spoken-word track "Grand Canyon," "Animal"), these songs are Ani's Educated Guess about love, life, and country.

While working with Brian Grunert to design the packaging for Guess, Ani wore even more hats as photographer, sharpie-and-white-out artist, and poet. The inside booklet is a collage of color and texture, with translucent paper complimenting cardstock, layering Ani's words, photographs, and original drawings to create an evocative whole that continually reveals fresh surprises. With its combination of lyrics and previously unpublished poems, this palm-sized artist's book proves that albums can still be visual and tactile treasures even in the era of MP3s.

From the songs themselves to the case that houses them, Educated Guess is a highly personal work of art. In an industry largely focused on moving "units" and placing "product" in the hands of consumers, it's always encouraging to see that there's room for a little music every now and then.

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