Allison Russell

Allison Russell is a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, actress, and activist born in Montreal to a Grenadian father and a Scottish-Canadian teenage single mother. Her mother struggled with postpartum depression and schizophrenia, and Russell was placed in foster care before her mother regained custody following a marriage to a white-supremacist American expatriate. Between the ages of 5 and 15, Russell endured physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive father. At 15 she left home, eventually settling in Vancouver in 1998, and later attended Dawson College.

Russell began her musical life as a member of the Vancouver-based Celtic folk band Fear of Drinking before co-founding Po' Girl in 2003 with Trish Klein of The Be Good Tanyas. The band recorded seven albums together: Po' Girl (2003), Vagabond Lullabies (2004), Recordings (2006), Home to You (2007), Deer in the Night (2008), Live (2009), and Follow Your Bliss (2010). In 2011, her work with the second iteration of Sankofa Strings resulted in the release of "The Uptown Strut" on the Kingswood Records label, a recording that featured Grammy Award-winning artist Dom Flemons, the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, Grammy-nominated Professor Louie (Aaron Hurwitz), Súle Greg Wilson, and Ndidi Onukwulu. Russell wrote "If Wishes Were Gold," the sole original composition on that album.

In 2012, Russell formed Birds of Chicago alongside JT Nero, her future husband, whom she married in 2013. The group released three studio albums — Birds of Chicago (2012), Real Midnight (2016), and Love in Wartime (2018) — as well as the live album Live from Space and the 2018 EP American Flowers. Russell and Lindsay's daughter, Ida, was born in 2014.

In 2018, Russell joined the musical collective Our Native Daughters with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Amythyst Kiah. The group released Songs of Our Native Daughters on the Smithsonian Folkways label in 2019 and was featured in the Smithsonian Channel documentary Reclaiming History: Our Native Daughters. Russell and Brandi Carlile released a re-imagining of "You're Not Alone," a track from that album, on August 18, 2022.

Russell released her debut solo album, Outside Child, on May 21, 2021, under Fantasy Records. The album draws on her experiences of childhood trauma and recovery. Ahead of the full release, she issued several singles, including "Nightflyer" in March 2021 and "Persephone" in April 2021, followed by "Montreal" and "The Runner." She performed "Nightflyer" with Brandi Carlile and Brittney Spencer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on May 25, 2021, made her Grand Ole Opry debut on May 28, 2021, performed at the Country Music Hall of Fame that same year, and appeared on CBS This Morning Saturday on July 24, 2021. On September 25, 2021, she performed at the annual Farm Aid event in Hartford, Connecticut. Outside Child earned Russell four Canadian Folk Music Awards, a long-list placement for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize, and a nomination for Emerging Act of the Year at the 2021 Americana Honors and Awards, both as a solo artist and as a member of Our Native Daughters. The album also received three Grammy nominations: Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song for "Nightflyer" — co-written by Russell and Jeremy Lindsay — and Best Americana Album.

Russell's second solo album, The Returner, was released on September 8, 2023. It received four Grammy nominations — Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song, Best Americana Performance, and Best American Roots Performance — and won the Grammy Award for Best American Roots Performance for the single "Eve Was Black." The album was also shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize. In total, Russell has received eight Grammy nominations and one Grammy win, along with four Canadian Folk Music Awards and two Juno Awards.

In March 2023, Russell organized Love Rising, an all-star benefit concert held at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville in response to Tennessee's anti-LGBT+ legislation. In July 2024, she provided the voice of Teddi Barra in the Country Bear Musical Jamboree at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. On July 16, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear test, Russell performed Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" alongside the Kronos Quartet at the University of Chicago, closing the Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Russell made her Broadway debut in the musical Hadestown, performing the role of Persephone, with performances beginning on November 12, 2024. The production marked her first appearance on Broadway, a credit verified in her stage record for 2019 alongside the Hadestown credit. Russell is queer and has spoken publicly about her identity, noting that she has been in love with women, men, transgender people, and non-binary people, and that her marriage to a man does not make her straight. She has stated that "Persephone," a song from Outside Child, was written about her first love, a woman she met during her teenage years. Russell signed the October 2023 Artists4Ceasefire open letter addressed to President Joe Biden during the war in Gaza following the October 7 attacks.