Allison Russell

A Canadian performer known for her skills as a vocalist, composer, and player of multiple instruments with deep connections to folk circles, Allison Russell first gained recognition during the 2000s through her role in the wide-ranging roots ensemble Po' Girl. In 2012 she formed the duo Birds of Chicago alongside her spouse and artistic collaborator JT Nero. Her compositions weave jazz, country, folk, Celtic, klezmer, and blues influences into a singular style, a breadth that echoes the versatility of fellow Our Native Daughters member Rhiannon Giddens and has positioned her as a central figure across roots music. After twenty years of collaborative work she issued her first solo album, the Juno Award-winning Outside Child, in 2021; two years later came the exuberant, Grammy-winning The Returner.

Montreal-born to a young Canadian mother and a Grenadian father who departed prior to her arrival, Russell spent her early childhood in foster care before joining her mother and stepfather at age five. Music offered an emotional refuge from the sexual abuse she suffered from her stepfather, and at fifteen she fled, surviving on the streets of Montreal yet completing high school. A relocation to Vancouver placed her within a supportive artistic circle, leading in 2001 to the creation of Po' Girl with Trish Klein, previously of the alt-country group the Be Good Tanyas. Serving as co-frontwoman and handling instruments ranging from clarinet to banjo, Russell helped shape a repertoire of original and traditional material whose blend of old-time, jazz, folk, and additional roots styles attracted an international audience and yielded four well-received albums.

Following the 2010 release Follow Your Bliss, she moved to Chicago and began collaborating with musician and eventual husband JT Nero. Birds of Chicago’s self-titled debut appeared in 2012, after which the pair toured folk festivals and clubs across the United States. They wed in 2013 and welcomed a daughter; the Joe Henry-produced Real Midnight followed in 2016, elevating their visibility, and Love and Wartime emerged in 2018 on the Signature Sounds label. By then the duo had settled in Nashville, strengthening ties within the roots community.

Rhiannon Giddens invited Russell to join the banjo-centered ensemble Our Native Daughters, whose focus on Black women musicians and themes of race and slavery resulted in a 2019 debut on Smithsonian Folkways. Russell had meanwhile assembled a set of songs that directly addressed her own history of childhood abuse. Cut in Nashville across just four sessions with a circle of collaborators, Outside Child appeared in May 2021 on the Fantasy label, earned multiple Canadian Folk Music Awards, and captured the Juno for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year.

For the follow-up, Russell shifted direction toward a more groove-oriented approach less centered on autobiography. Recorded over six days in Los Angeles with co-producer Dim Star, the 2023 album The Returner celebrated present-moment joys. It received four Grammy nominations and won Best American Roots Performance for the track “Eve Was Black.”