In the year 2023, Allison Russell has come as close as anyone is to being the face of Americana music, even though there are any rock-solid artists who’ve been in the limelight longer than sh…
face of Americana music, even though there are any rock-solid artists who’ve been in the limelight longer than she has — like Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and her friend and mentor— who certainly count as poster boys and girls. She might even be the front-runner for the artist of the year prize at the upcoming Americana Honors & Awards show, which takes place in Nashville Sept. 20, notwithstanding that Billy Strings has been nominated again to defend his title.
Comparatively, this is almost a party album — although no one would call something as thematically loaded and dramatic as “Eve Was Black” a party song, and even the most upbeat, uptempo songs have some pretty heavy lyrics embedded in them. So it would be reductive to call it a good-time album. And yet…overall. You don’t have to take the cerebral journey if you don’t want to. It’s certainly there…
To talk again about this new record, there are some interesting aspects to the literal physicality of it. It has such great rhythms and switches them up a lot, but one thing that could be said pretty consistently through it is that is a record that makes you want to move. By the time you get to the groove of the third song, “All Without Within,” the sound of it hits you on a really basic, primal, even non-cerebral kind of level. And I was struck by a couple things that recur in the lyrics.
And I can’t wait for you to see the video for that, which will be out in October. I went to Prague for three days with one of my oldest, dearest childhood friends, whose name is Ethan Topman. We’re actually birthday twins, born the same year in the same city, Montreal. He was in Beyonce’s camp for a long time on the visual side of things, doing set design for “Formation” and all those amazing short films that were part of “Lemonade.
I think it’s so much broader, and I think that’s part of why I love and I feel comfortable identifying as Americana, because itso expansive. It really goes beyond genre. Of course it’s a paradoxical thing where, yes, it is treated as a genre, say, within the Recording Academy. But to me the Americana community and the history of the music and the music that has come out of this vast and unprecedented cultural experiment that is the melting pot of the Americas is such a bigger story.
For me, it’s really much, much more about the circle of artists that inspire me who populate this record. It’s the fact that Larissa Maestro is one of the great string arrangers and string arrangement composers of our time, as are SistaStrings, and that they are, by just who they are, so far outside of any box. They all came up in the classical world, but they were rejected by the classical world, frankly, because of racism and sexism and not because they weren’t brilliant genius players.
Elenna Canlas, Allison Russell and Ganessa James perform at the seventh annual Love Rocks NYC Benefit Concert for God’s Love We Deliver at Beacon Theatre on March 9, 2023 in New York City. What ended up happening was just this deep sisterhood and communion and being wildly inspired by not just by what everybody plays, but by the way that we show up for each other in community as well… and the things we don’t have to say, and the ways we don’t have to prove ourselves to one another.
And when we’re lucky enough to get to work with the amazing pioneers who are still with us, like Wendy and Lisa, like Joni Mitchell, like Mavis Staples, like Chaka Khan — like Willie Nelson, for that matter! — it is so galvanizing and empowering and there’s so many things coming out of it. I’m very excited about SistaStrings’ new record that they’re working on.
You announced some time ago you were working on your memoir, covering a lot of the traumatic events that were covered in the “Outside Child” album. Do you get annoyed by people asking, “How’s your book coming along?”
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