Despite her horror childhood, Allison Russell is overflowing with joy

Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Russell wears her heart on her sleeve. And never more so than with her 2021 debut solo album, Outside Child.

A searing depiction of the abuse she suffered from her adoptive father from the age of five to 15, Outside Child manages at the same time to be a joyful and defiant celebration of survival.

On the heartbreaking 4th Day Prayer, Russell sings,“Father used me like a wife, mother turned the blindest eye. Stole my body, spirit, pride.”

Allison Russell’s first album is heartbreaking and at the same time a joyful celebration of survival.Credit: Getty Images

And then on the infectiously upbeat track Persephone, she writes about an adolescent love that helped ease her pain, “My petals are bruised, but I’m still a flower/Come runnin’ to you in the violet hour/Put your skinny arms around me, let me taste your skin.”

I wonder whether this openness about her nightmare childhood – she has talked about it in many interviews – might risk re-traumatising her.

“The choice to publicly discuss my childhood trauma was [from] an empowered place, in that silence was forced upon me,” she says down the line from her Nashville home. “Silence ultimately kills us. I believe silence often dooms us to repeat the cycle of violence and abuse. And I feel really, really strongly, particularly since I became a mother 11 years ago, that I want to be part of breaking those cycles of harm. To me, harm reduction is everything.”

It was art in general and music specifically that gave Russell a literal lifeline as she was growing up in Montreal.

“I would not have survived my childhood without it,” she says.

She recalls Sinead O’Connor’s appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992 when the Irish singer sang Bob Marley’s War then tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II in a protest against institutional child abuse.

“That was a song of freedom and a beacon for me to understand what I was enduring,” she says. “I was not alone, and I did not need to die of the shame. That there was a life beyond this, that other people had endured this and survived it.”

At 15, she ran away, eventually relocating to Vancouver where she began her career as a singer-songwriter and formed her first band – folk/americana outfit Po’ Girl – with Trish Klein of the Be Good Tanyas.

It was to be the start of a Grammy-winning musical career that has been characterised by broad and generous collaborations with other artists.

“[Collaboration] is a focus for me with every project and every album and every show,” Russell says. “No artist works in a vacuum. We are all in a conversation with every artist that’s come before and we’ve ever listened to, whether we’re aware of it or not.

“Collaboration is everything. I think it reflects our human experience. The only reason we’ve survived as a species on this planet is our ability to collaborate, to form coalitions, to co-operate, to pool knowledge, to pool resources, and to care for one another.”

In recent years, Russell has been welcomed into Joni Jam, the all-star circle of artists that performs and records with veteran Canadian folk singer Joni Mitchell. The group includes such luminaries as Elton John and Brandi Carlile (Russell’s “beloved chosen sister”).

Allison Russell has coaxed Annie Lennox (left) back into the studio for the first time in eight years.Credit:

There’s a symmetry to this particular collaboration that delights Russell. One of her earliest memories is hiding beneath the piano while her mother played along to the Joni Mitchell album Ladies of the Canyon. One deep cut in particular, For Free, with its slightly incongruous jazz clarinet outro, stayed with the young Russell, ultimately leading her to pick up the clarinet herself. Now she contributes her clarinet as well as vocals on Joni Jam projects.

“Joni Jam has been such a wonderful practice in deep, deep, active listening and putting aside any kind of ego because it’s not about any one of us,” she says. “I think that that helps us in every aspect and avenue of our lives if we’re able to listen deep and generously and to contribute what feels needed as opposed to just whatever we want in the moment.”

‘I’m a hopeful agnostic who doesn’t really know how to pray. My prayers are these little songs.’

Allison Russell

It was through Joni Jam that Russell met Annie Lennox, coaxing her back into the studio for the first time in eight years to record the duet Superlover, released two weeks ago.

Originally recorded by Birds of Chicago, a group Russell formed with husband JT Nero, the song is a moving paean for peace.

“I’m a hopeful agnostic who doesn’t really know how to pray,” Russell says. “My prayers are these little songs.”

Allison Russell plays the Recital Centre, Melbourne, on April 15, City Recital Hall, Sydney, on April 17 and Bluesfest, Byron Bay, on April 18, 19 and 20.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).