Allison Russell

The long way out of Montreal

Allison Russell was born in Montreal to a Grenadian father and a Scottish-Canadian mother. She was placed in foster care as an infant while her mother was unwell, and was later raised in a household she has described publicly and repeatedly in interviews as violent: she has said she endured physical and sexual abuse from the age of five until she ran away at fifteen. By 1998 she had settled in Vancouver.

Her first musical home there was a Celtic folk group called Fear of Drinking. None of this reads as backstory in her work, because she has spent two decades putting it directly into the songs rather than around them — the childhood material is the text of her first solo album, not a press-kit footnote attached to it.

Three bands before a solo record

Russell co-founded Po' Girl in 2003 with Trish Klein, and the band put out seven albums between 2003 and 2010. In 2012 she started Birds of Chicago with JT Nero, whom she married in 2013 and with whom she has a daughter, Ida, born in 2014; that project produced three studio albums and an EP before it wound down in 2018.

The record that moved her into wider view was a collaboration. Songs of Our Native Daughters, released on Smithsonian Folkways in 2019, put Russell alongside Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah, four Black women writing about slavery, resistance and inheritance through the banjo. It established the working method she has used since — a room of peers rather than a solo billing with hired hands.

She plays clarinet, banjo and guitar as well as singing, and all three still turn up in a single set.

Outside Child, The Returner and a Grammy

Outside Child arrived in 2021 and reached number 65 on the Billboard chart. It drew three Grammy nominations along with Canadian Folk Music Award and Juno recognition, and it remains the record most of her audience came in through.

The Returner followed in 2023, peaking at 47 and pulling four more Grammy nominations. One of them converted: "Eve Was Black" took Best American Roots Performance at the 2024 ceremony, her first win from eight nominations. The album was also a Polaris Music Prize shortlist finalist in 2024.

Around the same period she organised the Love Rising benefit concert in Nashville in 2023 in support of LGBT+ rights, and named her touring band the Rainbow Coalition after Fred Hampton's 1969 alliance — a piece of naming she explains from the stage most nights.

In the Hour of Chaos

The third solo album came out on 10 July 2026 on Fantasy Records, co-produced by Russell and Dim Star. It is structurally unusual: eleven tracks, ten of them billed with at least one credited guest, and somewhere around 28 contributors across the record. Norah Jones sings on "Really Real"; Brittney Spencer is on "Black Lavender"; Kara Jackson and Denitia appear on "Cold April" alongside a community pop choir; Joy Oladokun and Julie Williams take "No Springtime"; Kyshona and Sara Watkins share "Chaos Theory"; Devon Gilfillian is on "Love Is a Golden Lion", Kashus Culpepper on "Searchlight", Chibueze Ihuoma on "Two Stars", Ruby Amanfu on "Just Like Saturday" and Ahya Simone on the closer, "Good Omens".

It opens with "Rainbows". Reviewing it for No Depression on 8 July 2026, Henry Carrigan read the sequence as a deliberate arc from that opening brightness to the affirmation of "Good Omens", and called the album a testament to resilience and unity against political and personal chaos. Americana UK's Jonathan Smith gave it 9 out of 10, praising how coherent it stays despite the guest count while noting that "a touch of dirt or messiness might have been welcome" against the polish.

That split — admiration for the craft, mild unease at the smoothness — runs through the wider reception. The Album of the Year aggregate sat at 79 from four critic reviews, with some listeners finding it less tightly bound than the two albums before it. Musically it continues the folk-soul and dance-adjacent direction of The Returner rather than retreating to the acoustic austerity of Outside Child.

Where she stands now

Russell has spent the last two years widening the definition of what she does. In July 2024 she voiced Teddi Barra in the revamped Country Bear Musical Jamboree at Walt Disney World. In November 2024 she made her Broadway debut as Persephone in Hadestown. In July 2025 she performed with the Kronos Quartet at a University of Chicago commemoration marking the first nuclear weapons.

2026 has been a touring year framed by two different kinds of billing. She took part in a tribute to Joni Mitchell at the Juno Awards early in the year, then spent the summer in support slots — including Sarah McLachlan's tour, where she played the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City on 24 July — before stepping up to her own rooms in the autumn.

The headline run was put on sale on 14 August 2026 through Ticketmaster and AXS, opening on 15 October at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina and closing on 15 November at the UC Theatre in Berkeley, California.

The autumn run

The routing takes in Washington DC's Atlantis on 16 October, Irving Plaza in New York on 20 October, then a substantial Canadian leg: Massey Hall in Toronto on 22 October, Théâtre Beanfield in Montreal on 23 October, Impérial Bell in Quebec City on 24 October, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on 25 October, the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg on 3 November, the Winspear Centre in Edmonton on 5 November, Grey Eagle in Calgary on 6 November and the Chan Centre in Vancouver on 9 November.

Two dates sit outside the pattern. On 30 October she is at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in a support role for Neko Case rather than as headliner, and the Chicago show on Halloween night is an all-ages date. Autumn Nicholas opens the American shows; AHI takes direct support in Canada.