THIS is what being a survivor sounds like…
And now Allison Russell is using her voice to fight abuse ‘of all kinds’
‘Without literature and music I would not have survived my childhood’
‘Trump, who has no impulse control, had his hands on the nuclear codes’
Allison Russell
On Springtime, the opening song on Allison Russell’s excellent 2023 album The Returner the Canadian-born, Tennesseebased musician sings ‘so long farewell adieu adieu’. But it’s not an affectionate nod to The Sound Of Music, it is instead the sound of a survivor of abuse facing bravely into the future.
The 41-year-old Americana artist says her 2021 Grammynominated debut solo album, Outside Child, addressed the horrific experiences she suffered in her childhood so she wanted the follow-up album to reflect what a survivor sounds like.
‘It’s a record that leans into the present and survivor’s joy,’ she says.
‘Survivor’s joy is hard won but it’s even more powerful because of the journey to get there.’
From a biracial background, Allison was fostered as a child but her mother, who suffered from depression, regained custody of Allison when she was five. Allison’s mother married a white supremacist who abused Allison until she ran away from her Montreal home at 15. She made her way to Vancouver in 1998 and, at 18, after leaving education joined her first band. Her mother is still with the man who abused Allison.
‘Without literature and music I just wouldn’t have survived my childhood,’ she says.
‘The music community became my chosen family and they are the ones who kept me going. I have a wonderful, caring partner and a beautiful nine year old daughter. I was always supported, and Ida [her daughter] was always surrounded in a circle of love and still is. My mom, on the other hand, was a teenager who was disowned by her family. She wound up in a home for unwed mothers. Then she met a predatory man, who is, by the way, almost 30 years her senior. I charged him when I was 20. He went to jail for three years. There are black kids languishing away for life in the US for personal use of pot but I had him charged in Canada. My mom went back to him as soon as he got out, and she remains there to this day in this awful abusive, toxic relationship, and it breaks my heart, you know, it breaks my heart.’
The Returner which has just been nominated for four Grammys is the sound of a woman who has fought all her life to be heard and now revelling in that freedom. Music has given her the platform to do that. She has played in bands such as Po’ Girl and Birds Of Chicago. In 2018 she co-founded the musical collective Our Native Daughters that also counts Irish resident Rhiannon Giddens in its number. Allison married her Birds Of Chicago bandmate Jeremy Lindsay in 2013 and Ida is their daughter but she identifies as
‘queer’ and says that the battle lines are drawn with forces pitted against the LGBTQ+ community, black people and women, and that fair-minded people need to unite against right-wing radicalism.
‘We have to raise our voices to break the cycle of abuse of all kinds,’ she says.
‘There is this horrific rise of fascism happening globally but intensely in America. They’re engaging in redistricting, voter suppression, and other anti-democratic practises. We don’t have to fear our history we just have to face it. If we don’t we are doomed to repeat these awful patterns that harm us even more. People laughed when Trump started campaigning; we soon stopped laughing. Never mind all the many things to abhor about the man, as someone with no impulse control he had his hands on the nuclear codes.’
She says it is ‘all hands on deck’
to stop Trump returning to power and to protect a woman’s bodily autonomy.
‘There is an ongoing form of legislative terrorism designed to make us feel fearful, that it is inevitable and can’t be fought,’ she says.
‘The vast majority of American people do not think the government should have anything to say about our bodies. It is a small percentage of very, very influential bad actors who are setting up the scenario. They only win by divide and conquer.’
She says even though her daughter is only nine she is already hungry to join the battle.
‘My daughter is nine years old and already has become a freedom fighter because of what is happening around her,’ Allison says.
‘Everyone, not just artists, has a sphere of influence. This is not the time to be quiet or to stick our heads in the sand. We need to get really loud and get really organised to push back against fascism.’
The Returner is now rising.
Allison Russell plays St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on January 26 as part of TradFest 24.
See tradfest.com for details.