Allison Russell, one of Americana/folk music’s biggest breakout stars of the post-pandemic era, says she never intended to launch a solo career. In Episode 366 of The String, as we talk about the remarkable five years since her acclaimed solo debut Outside Child, and even in the glow of her Grammy Award, her starring roles at the Newport Folk Festival, and much more, she remembers that she was “really resistant” to start recording and performing as ‘Allison Russell’.
“I think it took me so long to step into my own name and story,” she says, “because of the pain of the abusive beginnings of my life, (because) I just felt safer always in the collective. And really, I have to reinforce that my solo career is solo in name only. In fact, the village and circle has just grown larger! There's more people than ever involved.”
Russell is referring to her band, a festive collective she calls the Rainbow Coalition, as well as the cast of fellow artists and singer songwriters who join her on her newest project In The Hour Of Chaos, which came out July 10 as her third release from Concord/Fantasy. While not billed as a duets album per se, that’s how it unfolds with featured guest vocals from an extraordinary cast, including Brittany Spencer, Norah Jones, Ruby Amanfu, Devon Gilfillian, Kashus Culpepper and Joy Oladokun.
“In The Hour Of Chaos is to me almost like the mixtape for a musical that I have yet to write, and I've populated it with a lot of the voices and people that I find the most inspiring.”
Those “abusive beginnings” Russell speaks of became a well known and jaw-dropping narrative in 2021 when Outside Child arrived, landing three Grammy Award nominations and Album of the Year awards at the Canadian JUNOs, Folk Alliance, and Americana. In short, Russell was forced to run away from her Montreal home at age 15 because of a decade of sexual and emotional abuse by her stepfather. Through a loving relative in Vancouver, she found safety and community and music, which have been guiding lights for her ever since.
We covered a lot of that in our first conversation for The String in 2021, so here, I wanted to get more into her early days making music, including her first band, a rollicking folk outfit called Fear Of Drinking.
“It was very intergenerational. Tim Redman, the band leader, was kind of a father figure to me when I got to Vancouver,” she says. “Fear of Drinking was a band that I did my first tours with and went to my first folk fests with, and (I) got bitten by the bug and wanted to continue on. I was doing a lot of dancing on tables, playing the bodhrán and penny whistles, and singing murder ballads and creepy lullabies that my Scottish grandma had taught me. So it was kind of like a Celtic folky bar band, basically.”
The first band Russell helped form was called Po’ Girl, an eclectic power folk combo that started as a partnership with prominent Canadian musician Trish Klein (The Be Good Tanyas). It’s the band where Russell’s songwriting flourished and where her unique instrumental mix of banjo and clarinet emerged as a force. They released seven recordings between 2000 and 2010, and they toured relentlessly, driven by a deep kinship. “We were all runaways,” Russell says. “We had all left home at 14 and 15, and that was one of the things that united us. And we were kind of growing each other up on the road, you know, and we were touring wildly, like 250 to 300 days a year.”
The folk scene led Russell to meet artist and band leader JT Nero, and after sharing stages they became romantically involved and ultimately - in his home base of Chicago - formed the duo Birds of Chicago. And they had success, including raising their daughter Ida Maeve, ultimately moving to Nashville, where they live now. And though his name is not on the marquee, to say JT is still involved in Russell’s life musically is an understatement. He and his brother Drew Lindsay, who work together as Dim Star, produced the imaginative and seductive soundscapes on In The Hour Of Chaos, as they did on her album The Returner of 2024.
“They are the people I trust the most in the world that I've been working with for 20 years,” she says. They “are so wide open, playful, and they understand that we've cast the room the way we've cast the room for a reason. We're never shutting down anyone's musical ideas. The best idea wins, and the atmosphere is experimental and joyful - and sometimes heated!”
The results - on both albums - are obvious to any alert ears. Chaos opener “Rainbows” conjures a magical dance between lead and two layers of harmony vocals as Russell offers something of a thesis statement about finding the guileless magic of childhood imagination in hard times. “Cold April” uses chimes against a slick and trippy beat to make a home for bluesy focals from Russell and guest singers Denitia and Kara Jackson, with a very well-handled finale by a children’s choir (including Russell and Nero’s daughter).
By the time the eleven tracks are over, one feels all possible musical neuroreceptors tickled and nuzzled. The boundaries of Americana/folk are challenged and reimagined along the way. After a harrowing and remarkable journey, we should be deeply glad that Allison Russell is a Bird of Nashville now.
Russell is on tour now with Sarah McLaughlin and will play the Ryman Auditorium with Neko Case on Oct. 30.
Watch Allison Russell and Brittany Spencer sing "Black Lavender" from In The Hour of Chaos.
