Allison Russell Is Changing People’s View of Americana — The Grammys Are Next

THE STARS FULLY ALIGNED for Allison Russell during the creation of her second album, The Returner. Last year, for six days during the week of the winter solstice, Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles was her home base. Through its walls, she felt the creative buzz lingering from when Joni Mitchell recorded there, and Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper were there to record “We Are the World.” That time of renewal intertwined with the history surrounding Russell was only amplified by the Rainbow Coalition, an all-women collective of 15 singers and multi-instrumentalists who performed on The Returner.

Russell considers her collaborators to be her chosen family, the people she was destined to encounter and create with. She even co-produced the record with Dim Star, composed of her partner JT Nero and Drew Lindsay. Her introspective work on The Returner is a product of the healing, safe space Russell assembled in the studio, as well as the confidence she drew from close friends like Brandi Carlile and Wendy & Lisa to use her voice to the fullest extent, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Across the LP, Russell spills dark lullabies and disco-colored breakthroughs, emerging on the other side reinvigorated.

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“None of us make music for accolades or awards. Of course, it’s an amazing, incredible, life-changing, career-changing gift when they come, but we don’t do it for that,” Russell says, adding: “You live it, you breathe it for six days, and then [there is] this archive that will, hopefully, outlive us and be of some comfort or joy to someone 100 years from now. That’s my dream. When people are asking, ‘What’s successful?’ I don’t know. I won’t know till I’m gone.”

You first began receiving Grammy praise for your work nearly two decades into your career. What does that sudden influx of recognition mean to you?
To me, it really represented hope that things are changing. Because it’s not like I became a different person, you know? It’s just that, for whatever reason, there was a critical mass of people who were more ready to hear art and writing shared by a queer, Black woman. Moving within roots music, Americana music — spaces where in the past I had to do a lot of explaining of why I was in the room at all — I think it’s a testament that there has been really a lot of growth in our roots-music community. Genre is such a slippery, weird little biased construct to begin with, but I really mean we’re a community of people, and we’re identifying as such.

It all stems into circle work and chosen family and community — how we talk about people when they’re not in the room. What happened for me in my career is because of how Brandi Carlile talks about me when I’m not in the room. In the middle of lockdown, I’m getting calls from Fantasy Records, calls from Concord Music Publishing, because of the way Brandi talked about me when I wasn’t in the room. That level of advocacy, of care, of wanting, I think we all do that for each other because we’ve had to. Because all of us who live at an intersection of identities, we’ve had to help each other, uplift each other, because the systems weren’t designed to support us.

Recording at Henson Studios, have you found that the energy of the space your music is created in is connected to the creative output?
You really do feel the good ghosts in the walls in that place. It’s one thing to hear about all the amazing records that were made there, and it’s another to walk in and just have that palpable sensation of communion with all of the art that has been made there over the past. And it has a really storied history because it began actually as Charlie Chaplin’s studio back in the day in West Hollywood. Then there’s a picture of the “We Are the World” sessions and I have a vague recollection of seeing footage of that in my childhood. There we are in that same space where Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper sang and there is this good mojo that radiates out of the walls. So, definitely it is in terms of inspiration and getting out of our own way.

How has your relationship with songwriting and following your creative instincts been influenced by the musicians you worked with?
They were hearing early versions of the songs and we were all thinking about it together, but what happened live, none of us could have written it. None of us could have predicted it. Yes, the bones of the songs were written, but the way they’re animated, the way they come to life, the way the circle put flesh on those bones was an unprecedented kind of communal conversation. For me, it’s the most joyful studio experience I’ve ever had and the first one that I’ve come into feeling a level of confidence, trust, and love and feeling ready to step into the co-producers role. I’ve never had the experience before of writing to my community and for them in such a specific way. As I was writing, I was thinking about, “Oh, I wonder what Elenna [Canlas] will do on this.” You know, “I wonder what Larissa [Maestro] will do. I wonder what SistaStrings will do.” It was exciting. I was specifically thinking about them. It’s not a bunch of hired guns, right? It’s literally our circle of love and trust.

What kind of community building do you do with your collaborators in order to be able to flow freely together in this space?
I think the reason we can make a record in six days is because I cast the room very, very specifically. It’s not like, “Oh, I need to only play with women.” These 15 other women on this record are some of the most inspiring artists in the world to me. They’re all brilliant, multi-instrumentalists. They’re all brilliant singers. They’ve all been producers and writers and lead singers in their own right. It’s really a chosen family on this record. And there’s a level of trust in each other and in our abilities — and in all of us understanding that it’s not about ego and it’s really truly about communion. That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That’s why we were able to do that.

When you have a record that spans rock & roll, disco, pop, and more, how do you think about redefining what Americana or American roots is?
There is such a whitewashed, limited, narrow view of Americana. It’s like people thinking that there’s rock & roll because of Elvis, when there’s rock & roll because of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It is the constant and continual devaluing of all artistic, financial, creative, intellectual, academic contributions of the Black diaspora. Americana, it’s such a broad genre. It reflects the American — and again, I mean, Caribbean to Canada — experience, and all of those roots and influences can be heard. To me, hip-hop is as much Americana as folk music. Chaka [Khan] is as much Americana as Lucinda Williams.

None of us make music for accolades or awards. Of course, it’s an incredible, life-changing, career-changing gift when they come, but we don’t do it for that. But I realized I was wrong about what I thought the Grammys were. I used to think, “Oh, that’s not for me. That’s for superstars. It’s a closed club.” It was meeting Brandi and having her [say], “If we don’t show up in the room, how does anything change?” It profoundly affected me, and it changed the way that I engage with our institutions within the industry.

Some songs on this record feel like lullabies, but are a bit darker and capture physical and spiritual journeys. What role does inner-child healing play in your creative process?
Very deeply. It will be ongoing for all my life. No one gets to choose the circumstances of their birth, or their childhood. I can’t change the fact that I was raised by a white-supremacist, expat-American adoptive father old enough to be my grandfather who was intensely abusive. That’s something that I will be unpacking and protecting my little inner child from for the rest of my life. But I’ve chosen to lean into the empowering side of that. I’ve been growing my chosen family, living in communities and circles of mutual respect and love and support for much, much, much longer than I was ever in that abusive childhood home.

Tell me about the significance of creating the album at the start of the winter solstice.
We all felt it in the studio. We almost felt like we were high, we were so giddy and joyful. It was like we were all on the same ayahuasca trip or something — finishing each other’s sentences, finishing each other’s musical sentences. We were all falling in love with each other, too. It’s hard for me to put into words how healing and magical and beautiful it felt. That time of the longest night being passed, returning to the light, the renewal — we felt it in our mitochondria. When I listened back, we could never make that record again. I hope that people listening to it feel invited into the circle and feel loved and feel magical and powerful. Because that’s how I felt making the record together.

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