1-800-ON-HER-OWN is the phone number Ani DiFranco fans call when they’re looking for the latest information on her tours, merchandise or general news.

It is the home base of her record label Righteous Babe Records. What is so unique about the hotline is that callers actually talk to a real person and not some pre-fabed computer message.

That is what has set DiFranco apart from the rest of the music industry since she started her recording career in 1990. Righteous Babe is still just a small office in her hometown of Buffalo, New York.

In the past few years DiFranco’s popularity has skyrocketed and she has done it without signing any corporate record contracts, without releasing any singles and without doing interviews with MTV’s Jesse.

To date, she has released 10 full-length studio albums, a double disc live album and a collaboration with folkster Utah Phillips, all totaling well over a $1 million in sales.

She has appeared on the cover of dozens of magazines, co-headlined a tour with Bob Dylan and made several appearances on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

Taking all of this into account, DiFranco could almost be classified under the superstar category. But in an industry where the glamour of the Spice Girls dominates that description, the genuinely tough, short in demeanor and openly bisexual DiFranco is the most unlikely addition.

As DiFranco says in the new collection of essays “Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters, In Their Own Words,” she doesn’t always appreciate what comes along with her newfound status.

“I’ve been inadvertently sucked into the pop music sphere and exposed to all the horrible things that come with it,” she says, “but I’ve been making a conscious effort to remain connected to the folk world’s values.

“I like playing folk festivals and coffeehouses where you can talk to people. I think it’s cool that there’s a whole community of people who perform as themselves without pretension or pomp,”she said.

She probably wouldn’t have built her loyal fan base by doing it any other way.

Some might even say her fans have a Deadhead-like vitality. DiFranco realizes this and gives them thanks in the liner notes of her live album, “Living in Clip.”

“Thank you for driving hours to get to the show, amassing speeding tickets along the way … I owe my job to you, and I owe my life to my job,” she writes.

This iconoclastic fan devotion seems to get a bit overbearing as DiFranco addresses it in the title track to her latest album “Little Plastic Castles,” her most popular album thus far.

“People talk about my image/Like I come in two dimensions/Like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind/Like what I happen to be wearing/The day that someone takes a picture/Is my new statement for all of womankind,” the lyrics say.

“Little Plastic Castles” has more facets than her previous nine, as DiFranco approaches songwriting with the introspection of a coffeehouse folkie while keeping her serious, punk edge.

The title track even includes a little mariachi, with a three-piece horn section, while she explores her beatnik jive on “Fuel.”

There are still some principal DiFranco elements with such songs as the radio-friendly “Gravel,” and the almost too romantic “Pulse.” The album is not sugarcoated with any superfluous language as other songwriters may approach the themes of globalization, conformity and sexuality.

But then again, that’s the only way DiFranco knows how to do it, and she doesn’t seem to be changing her style anytime soon.

She doesn’t have to.

Ani DiFranco will be kicking off a brief 13-night tour in Ames tonight at Stephens Auditorium. The show starts at 7:30 with tickets still available at the Iowa State Center box office and all Ticketmaster outlets for $22.50.