Allison Russell returns home to Canada ready to sing In The Hour of Chaos
The Grammy-winning Montreal singer is on tour supporting her third full-length album.
Last updated 11 hours ago
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Sometimes, an album title meets its moment perfectly. That certainly holds true for Allison Russell’s In The Hour of Chaos.
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The third studio release from the Montreal-raised former Vancouverite landed this summer as wars raged, forests burned, Canada faced a trade war with the U.S. and stormy weather threatened many Canada Day celebrations.
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Russell, who now calls Nashville, TN home, was already reading the room earlier in the year when she dropped the record’s first single, Cold April, in the spring. Featuring guests Kara Jackson, Denitia and the Explore! Pop Choir, whose members include Russell’s daughter Ida, the playfully upbeat track tackled sadness with a smile.
“I already know/ Sometimes to grow/ You break first,” counsels Russell in her warm, powerful and passionate voice on the track.
Her powerful singing has been the driving force behind the deeply personal, testimonial roots music she first pursued as a musical vocation with the lively Vancouver Celtic crew Fear of Drinking. After that group, she spent years in Po’Girl with former Be Good Tanyas guitarist Trish Klein, followed by Birds of Chicago and the all-star Our Native Daughters crew with folk powerhouses Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah.
Since dropping her solo debut, Outside Child, in 2021, Russell’s career has been on a star trajectory. From critically-acclaimed releases and a starring role on Broadway in the Tony-winning musical Hadestown, to historic turns onstage performing with Sarah McLachlan during the Joni Mitchell tribute at the 2026 Juno Awards, Russell has been on the move.
“Sarah and I actually met at the Joni Jam at the Gorge in Washington in 2023, and this summer, The Rainbow Coalition and I joined her tour to perform at lovely amphitheatres like Red Rocks,” said Russell. “Sadly, we wont be joining her for any of the Canadian dates. I’m a great admirer of her work and career.”
The list of admirers of Russell’s work, career and activism is increasing with every album.
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Russell’s debut, Outside Child, chronicled the trauma she suffered due to childhood abuse from her adoptive father. Songs such as No Shame became rallying cries for healing.
The singer has spoken openly about her experiences in interviews and online and thrown her support behind organizations such as the National Children’s Alliance, which supports advocacy centres for children experiencing hardship. Russell eventually took her stepfather to court and he was sentenced to three years in jail.
Outside Child began a cycle of regular nominations for Russell’s music at the annual Grammy and Juno Awards. She collected a 2023 Best American Roots Performance Grammy for the single Eve Was Black from her second album, The Returner. If Outside Child was the album where the singer found her sound, In The Hour of Chaos is where she cuts loose and enjoys it.
“I didn’t think I would ever put out solo music as I always felt safest in a collective group environment like Po’ Girl, Birds of Chicago or Our Native Daughters,” she said. “I think that a lot of kids who come up living through abuse don’t think that anything is for them and feel safest blending into a group. My fortune was finding an outlet in art and people to do it with.”
As on her previous two records, Russell is joined by a host of guests from her immediate Nashville neighbours to friends like Norah Jones, who croons on the easy-flowing single Really Real. Her upcoming cross-Canada tour will feature a collection of backing musicians drawn from her creative community.
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“I had over a dozen recordings with various groups before releasing one under my own name,” she said. “Nothing really changed with that as it is still really a solo career in name only. My albums have all been built upon community and amplifying the world of other artists, as well.”
That most of the musicians she works with happen to be from the United States, and while her adopted country is clearly her biggest market, that hasn’t changed Russell’s feelings about being a Canadian artist. The Americana label assigned to music like hers is nothing more than a convenient, and not-so-accurate, aggregate genre term.
“I sing in English and French and continually name and place myself as a Canadian artist. And I move through the States as a Black person from Canada,” she said. “The musical melting pot that gave us the music of the Americas, or Americana, involves all of the human cultures and musics that all are contained in this vast geographic area. I have never felt it just involved the area of the lower 48 states.”
Such insights into art and culture and their impacts upon people will be a part of what Russell will delve into in her soon-to-be published memoir.
The idea of writing a book that built upon the musical memoir that was captured on the album Outside Child, moving across Russell’s hardscrabble upbringing and years of ongoing physical and sexual abuse by her adoptive father to running away from home, was pitched by a colleague of her publicist.
“That album, along with the speech I wrote and published online for the Women’s March in 2020, inspired the pitch to write the memoir,” she said. “While it hadn’t been on my mind, I have always been writing and figured ‘why not?’ Then came the shocking situation of more than one publisher wanting to put it out at the same time, right at the time that a number of adjacent musical projects were taking off too.”
Russell laughs at the idea her work schedule sounds more like a lifetime of busyness. After the pandemic shutdown, she says everyone she knows is working every moment possible to make up for the lost time.
“Today, there is all of this life going on with Broadway, albums, Grammys, different projects and turning in the first draft of the book,” she said. “But during the pandemic, all of our lives came to a stop and we were suddenly facing very real housing and food insecurity. It changed how everyone I know approaches their careers now.”
Russell’s current tour includes a Nov. 9 show at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts where she teases there might be some surprise guests. Tickets are on sale at tickets.ubc.ca.
