Allison Russell Finds a Way to Tell Her Painful Story Though Song

70 71 OPEN UP MYAllison RussellVOICE finds a way to tell her painful story though song by Hilary Hughes n the summer of 2019, singer, themselves. Native Daughters had begun to work on songwriter, and multi-instru- Every night, Russell would sing the album. While getting acquainted mentalist Allison Russell hit the “Quasheba, Quasheba,” one of her with him and her newfound family, she road with Our Native Daughters — contributions to the group’s 2019 album, learned that a distant cousin had delved Iher supergroup of a roots quartet with Songs of Our Native Daughters. Over deep into their Grenadian lineage and Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and mournful strings and a steady beat, traced its roots to its matriarch, Leyla McCalla — for a tour that was, quite Russell’s voice — luminous and Quasheba, who had survived the literally, a family affair. The moms in the empathetic, yet resonant with a vibrato unspeakable horrors of slavery. band brought their children along for steeped in sorrow — invoked the “She endured things that I can’t even the ride, which meant that Russell and strength of one of her relatives. Russell imagine — being ripped from home, her young daughter, Ida, shared a bunk grew up in Montreal, first in foster care culture, language, any kind of love from on the packed bus for the weeks-long and then with her mother and her her family,” she says of her muse. “She journey. During the day, the tour nannies adoptive father — a white supremacist survived the Middle Passage and took the kids on adventures in whichever who abused her, sexually and multiple sails. She survived constant city they’d stopped in while Our Native emotionally, throughout her childhood abuse and rape, and her children being Daughters sound-checked and prepared — before she left home at the age of 15. taken and sold. She survived all of that for their gig. At night, their mothers gave She eventually reported him to the — and that’s why I’m here, and that’s why voice to the deep pain, transcendent joy, authorities, and he served a brief my daughter is here.” and the traumas, both modern and sentence for his crimes. After her performances, Russell inherited, they’d experienced as Black Russell didn’t connect with her would return to her bunk, where Ida was women while reflecting on these sinister biological father and the Black side of sleeping, and she would write. A PHOTOS BY MARC BAPTISTE MARC BY PHOTOS afflictions on their ancestors and her family until 2018, right when Our floodgate opened, one that heralded a 72 73 breakthrough and a reckoning all at believed that he owned me, and that I home on each stage of the folk festival once, as songs started “pouring out” of was less human than he — that was at circuit. In 2006, she met Giddens, her her. Through telling Quasheba’s story, the core of his treatment of me. He was future Our Native Daughters bandmate, she had finally arrived at a place where the product of abuse himself, of course, at the Vancouver Folk Festival. she could completely, and candidly, tell as most abusers are. … I didn’t even Midwestern folk artist JT Nero came her own. understand, fully, what an intense block into her orbit when he toured through I had before finally delving into this Vancouver, and their musical Excavating History material and excavating that history, and admiration grew into a creative and stepping forward as an artist in my own romantic partnership: They first Outside Child, released by Fantasy name.” collaborated on Nero’s 2011 solo effort Records in May, is a debut solo album The 11-track album begins with the mountains/forests, and eventually she and an autobiography for Russell. She languid and jazz-inflected “Montreal,” a joined Nero in Chicago, where the couple had never before written directly about melancholic ode to her hometown and a formed their roots-rock duo, Birds of the waking nightmares of her childhood prologue for what follows: She weaves Chicago. The duo released its self-titled, and the scars they left behind, and the recollections of the abuse she weathered crowdfunded debut in 2012 and built an record serves as a testimony of her throughout the album, along with the international following with 2016’s Real survival. perspective forged by her internal work Midnight and 2018’s Love in Wartime. Though Russell understood the to overcome it. They started a family when Ida was born drastic differences between Quasheba’s After fleeing Montreal as a teenager in 2013. plight and her own childhood, she saw (an escape she details in “The Runner,” Although Outside Child didn’t several parallels as she wrote. “I had this the hardest-rocking track on the record), coalesce until Ida reached grade school, almost dissociative, strange Russell landed in Vancouver, where she the album really begins with her arrival. understanding of how similar our lives became an active member of the city’s “When I became a mother, a lot of had actually been,” she says. “My folk scene. She played banjo, guitar, and things shifted for me, and I started to childhood was essentially a form of clarinet in Fear of Drinking and Po’ Girl, have an urgency about telling my story, enslavement to a white supremacist the folk outfit she founded, as she honed because I know how all these cycles of man, my adoptive father, who essentially her chops as a songwriter, and found a abuse work,” she says. “You get shamed 74 75 “The delivery is paramount with a record like this. You can’t over-sing it. You can’t under-sing it. You can’t over-shrill it or over-stylize it or over-effect it, and you must feel it in every line.” Yola into silence, and that aids and abets a inspiring about this record was that it titled “All of the Women.” Moments of Without its shades, dynamics, and embodies it — as do the loving life, and continuance of the cycle. When I became was nothing but nuance,” says Yola, who relief are precious throughout, and vulnerable imperfections, the album is family, she’s built for herself in spite of a mother, I realized I couldn’t be part contributes backing vocals to “The “Poison Arrow,” which sees her incomplete. “The subject matter alone the hate she’s faced. It’s a conduit for — even tacitly, or implicitly — of Runner.” “It doesn’t cast a broad returning to Montreal and reclaiming can you take you on a journey, but I can that pain, but also proof that it did not continuing that cycle. In order to break brushstroke across the nature of what the street of her childhood, feels tell you with confidence that if you silence her. After the tumult of 2020, it, truly, not just for me but for hopefully happened to her and the story as she especially hard-won. delivered that with less poise or with a Russell is adamant that the threads of future generations, would be to directly walks you through her childhood, [and] Language, both literal and figurative, tonality that was shrill in any way, it Outside Child remain untied: This is her face it and deal with it and talk about it how she moved through these moments is vital on the record. Russell often would be hard to get the message chapter, but it’s unfinished, and it’s part and sing about it and do whatever I could and that trauma … moments of beauty, transitions between vivid descriptions across,” Yola says. “The delivery is of a broader story — one that started to shift it.” and moments of horror, and moments of and fantastical metaphors: escapism paramount with a record like this. You even before Quasheba, and will continue stagnancy, and moments of movement, reigns on “Hy Brasil,” where she sings of can’t over-sing it. You can’t under-sing it. after Ida is grown. Voice as a Vessel and moments of growth, and moments mystical black rabbits and daffodils on a You can’t over-shrill it or over-stylize it or “Birds of Chicago is literally my of love.” fictional island in the style of the over-effect it, and you must feel it in family, it’s my partner and I. Our Native Today, Russell and Nero are based in At times, Russell is so forthcoming traditional Scottish folk melodies her every line.” Daughters, those are my sisters, my Nashville, and they share a home with with her story, so vulnerable and present grandmother used to sing. “The She continues, “It would be easy to chosen family,” Russell says. “I have felt soul singer Yola, who’s been their dear in the pain of it, that the sadness and Hunters,” which invokes magic-realist sing her way through this without that very empowered in these projects, but at friend since the moment they met at the violence that informs Outside Child are imagery of a pack of wolves being less depth, to take that level of depth for the same time, I was hiding, you know? Calgary Folk Festival in 2017. When nearly too much for the listener to bear. savage than her parents, alludes to the granted. It’s not easy to do vocally. It’s not In some ways, I was still running. Even Russell set out to record Outside Child in When she sings of putting the length of violence she faced without obscuring it. easy to not get drawn into style over just putting my own name on a record 2020, she invited Yola and other close the country between her and her abuser She also alternates between French and substance.

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