The last time Ani DiFranco gigged in Wisconsin was in Madison and she was five months' pregnant. Last night, she played a knock-out show at The Riverside, but waited until halfway through the performance to bring up her 8-month-old daughter, Petah Lucia, whom she delivered in her Buffalo, N.Y. home last January.

"You may have heard, I had myself a baby," she said with a huge smile, inspiring a raucous ovation from the audience.

Clearly, motherhood transformed the almost 37-year-old (her birthday is on Sunday), who arguably redefined folk music in the early '90s with edgy lyrics and a signature staccato style of guitar pickin'.

Last evening, DiFranco appeared happier and prettier than ever before with naturally curly shoulder-length hair instead of her usual punkrockish 'dos, and practical black shoes instead of fat platforms. 

But don't get me wrong, Mister DiFranco didn't coo "Kum Ba Yah" in a pair of "mom jeans." No, the original righteous babe appeared lean and strong in a black tank top and a pair of cargo pants, ripping it up from the moment she opened with "Knuckle Down."

And Difranco never lost steam during the 90-minute performance, playing a variety of new and newer songs, while still tossing out old-favorite flavored bones like "Napoleon," "Fuel," "Fire Door" (probably my all-time favorite DiFranco tune, for whatever it's worth) and a killer encore of "Little Plastic Castles" featuring amazing opener, Melissa Ferrick, on trumpet.

Many of DiFranco's quips centered around environmental politics and her new mom-dom. She commented on the challenge of showering with a new baby by joking to the audience, "Maybe you're all fine and fancy and fresh, but keep that to yourself," and later confessed she was trying to write happier songs.

"It's f-cking hard, but it's my new mission."

And indeed, most of her material is more hopeful, definitely inspired by baby Petah, but also by the resilience of her new community in New Orleans where she moved after Hurricane Katrina.

"It's a city of good people that history forgot," she said. "Now y'all can perform an act of activism and go down there and drink your faces off.  New Orleans needs you."