The mostly young, mostly female crowd that began queuing up early Monday outside Lawrence’s Liberty Hall huddled under blankets, braving the cold wind and blowing snow. The woman from Springfield, Mo., standing dead center in the front row had started the line at 5 a.m. No, this wasn’t the fanatical following of some choreographed boy band. This was a quorum of the devoted legion of Ani DiFranco fans, who came for something much more substantial and much less contrivedly sensual.

DiFranco is a striking presence in almost any way one chooses to regard her. She’s a glorious singer and musician, gifted with astute phrasing, a mastery of vocal dynamics and a propensity for idiosyncratic rhythms. She’s a deft writer whose songs, by turns, map out her inward examination of identity and quest for context or cast an outward, unblinking eye toward a world she did not make yet knows she, like all of us, is responsible for.

She’s also a striking woman with her broad smile and dreadlocks. Athletic in her grace, free in her skin, unconcerned with her beauty, joyous in her music, DiFranco appears open to the moment and an embodiment of celebration.

Her outstanding band consisting of Daren Hahn on drums, bassist Jason Mercer, sax and flute player Hans Teuber, Julie Wolf on keyboards and trumpet player Todd Horton accompanied DiFranco and her guitar through a 90-minute set of older material and new songs.

Opening with “Freakshow” from her 1999 release “To The Teeth,” she wryly gives away the game by singing “under the bigtop it’s about freedom, it’s about faking. There’s an art to the something and there’s a science. There’s a lot of love and compliance.”

DiFranco knows what’s expected of her and what’s inside of her. Her artistry as a performer is finding the intersection where they merge, rather than where they collide.

Though DiFranco’s prose is tautly woven, emotionally she permits herself no editing. Songs like “The Diner” and “Shy” are so revealing and filled with longing that their braveness is endearing. On the other hand, when she’s feeling angry she can appear downright self-righteous, as in “Napoleon” where it’s unclear whether she’s the one taking the successful pop star to task or casting herself as the object of the criticism.

A high point in the performance was DiFranco’s inspired delivery of her Sept. 11 poem-cum-diatribe “Hear The Train,” delivered over gorgeous improvisation by her band. Expressing her opposing view to the prevailing national sentiment might be considered recklessly brave in front of almost any but her own audience. In the safety of her choir loft, passages like “you can keep the Pentagon, keep the propaganda, keep each and every TV, that’s been trying to convince me, to participate in some prep school punk’s plan to perpetuate retribution” are delivered to ears inclined toward accepting alternate input, if not in ready agreement.