It's difficult to underestimate the significance of Boulder (Short Story), the latest album by out women's music legend Ferron. Boulder, produced by Bitch, consists of nearly a dozen Ferron tunes spanning her lengthy and influential recording career, reimagined with a brilliant cast of guest musicians including Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, Julie Wolf, Ani DiFranco, JD Samson, Tina G, Bitch, and Ferron herself on lead vocals. It's full of songs you know and love like "It Won't Take Long," "Shadows on a Dime," a drum-driven, chanted "Misty Mountain," and a stunning version of "In the Meantime" guaranteed to blow some minds. I spoke with Ferron about the project shortly before its release.

Gregg Shapiro: Ferron, it's good to talk to you again. I love the new CD.

Ferron: Tell me what you love because I was the most dubious about this whole process. Oh, yes. She had to fight me. Well, we didn't know what it would be. Basically what she had proposed was, "I want you to sing into a microphone, then I'm going to go away and make a record, and I don't want you to bug me." And I was like, "Uh, but I'm singing on it! So I want to know what's going on." No, that wasn't the deal. So I finally understood it was like, if you're gonna let your kid drive the car, you don't go with them.

Much of the material on Boulder consists of songs drawn from your albums Turning Into Beautiful, Driver, Phantom Center, Shadows on a Dime and Testimony. What was involved in the selection process?

No, I had no role! That's what you have to understand. Finally, when I agreed, it was more like, I understand what's going on, the torch needs to be passed, and B's trying to reach across the generation. And the only way you can be a really good teacher is to be a really good auntie. So I just had to say yes or no. I had no choice in the songs. She just said, "I want you to sing this song, that song." So she followed me around, and I avoided for her for two years. I mean, we're friends, but I avoided this project. I couldn't get my feelings around it. It was probably a possession thing. I own me, I don't own my songs. Finally, she said, "I'm coming to your house, you can't get away from me." She came and asked me to sing these songs, and one day I sat and sang them in front of a microphone, having no idea she even knew how to record!

Was she playing violin there while you were recording?

No, just me and the guitar. Everything else happened later. That's what's so curious about the whole story. She didn't have any money, and she went around to people who loved Ferron, or have always loved this particular song, like Julie Wolf loves "Our Purpose Here," so does Emily [Saliers], so they're both on it. At one point, I thought that I better not hear this halfway through because it's not finished, and if I get scared, for whatever reason, I'll blow it. So I just said, I don't want to hear this until it's done.

But she truly does honor the work. She honors the material.

Absolutely. What some people have been remarking on is the thing that they may have wanted all along from Ferron, which was just the voice up close and personal, and then this other thing going on behind which sometimes is really melodic, and sometimes it's really kind of modern to me.

Modern is a good word, because you have the presence of JD Samson from Le Tigre, and Tina G from God-dess and She. I think Bitch took the modern hip-hop interpretation of what a remix is, she "remixed" them.

She's 32 or something, and I'm 55. So we've got a couple of decades between us, and a lot happened in those two decades. We went from tape recording to digital. All the way down to MP3. I don't know that a lot of these younger ears have heard music that isn't cramped down into MP3s.

I do adore B. I love her, actually. When we do shows together and she looks at me, it's just so loving, and we're about as odd as a turtle and rabbit together.

There's something big sister and kid sister about it, don't you think?

It can seem like that, although she teaches me just as much. I come out with green hair.

And dreads.

Yes!

Ferron will perform at CafŽ du Nord in SF on July 14.