Q&A With Allison Russell
By Christopher Treacy, with Allison Russell
Allison Russell has been having a mighty busy summer, playing dates with Brandi Carlile and sharing the stage at Newport with Joni Mitchell while she continues supporting her phenomenal solo debut, ‘Outside Child.’ Russell has released music with multiple projects in the past—Po’ Girl, Birds of Chicago, and Our Native Daughters—but the Dan Knobler produced ‘Outside Child’ has reached a wider audience than any of them, and though only out since May of last year, listeners are already clamoring for more.
“You’re Not Alone,” Russell’s new single, came as a total surprise when it was announced week before last, and when it dropped last Friday, we swooned: it’s truly a remedy for all that ills. The song was first performed on the 2019 album ‘Songs of Our Native Daughters,’ a rootsy tour de force of banjo-playing black women that also included Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Rhiannon Giddens. While that version is plenty striking, what Russell gets up to with Brandi Carlile on the new update of the song hits greater emotional heights via the pair’s coiling vocals and a stronger accent on melody. They’re joined by Sista Strings who take the new arrangement right over the top into hair-raising territory.
Russell made time in her crazy summer schedule to answer our questions about the new “You’re Not Alone,” and we’re very grateful.
The version of “You’re Not Alone” recorded with Our Native Daughters is lovely, but the new recording is significantly more lush. In all the best ways. Have you known you wanted to take another run at it for a while, or was this a fairly spontaneous happening?
I’ve known that I wanted to make a new recording of “You’re Not Alone” for some time – the song has grown since I first recorded it with Our Native Daughters, and my chosen family of musicians, our ‘Rainbow Coalition of The Loving’ has also grown. I also wanted to step out of the shadows as a producer, writer, curator, intentional collaborator and caster of the room. I wanted to widen the protective circles of coalition actually, metaphorically, sonically.
For me, music is an emotional catalyst. When needed, it’s a balm. I can’t help but think that maybe some of the desire to bring the song to wider audience relates to how dire things have become for so many of us in the wake of this never ending pandemic. It’s clear that we’ll never be quite the same. Maybe you could talk about how the song speaks to you differently now than it did when you wrote it.
We’ll never be the same – and honestly going back to the “old normal” would be suicidal. We have to find the resolve, the creative communion and creative problem solving to dream better…. It’s anti-bigotry or bust.
Yes, very much so, this song has taken on new layers of meaning for me with each blow to our human rights, civil liberties, justice system, our bodies, our bodily autonomy, our children, our democracy, our critical thought, our ability to discern and agree upon facts. It’s all hands on deck, 11th hour, come together time. I actually believe the survival of our species hangs in the balance. I do fervently believe we are the beloved community every time we choose to be. I believe what Alice Walker wrote: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” I believe that the strength and resilience of our Ancestors sustains us all – and I believe that active love & empathy are our Super Powers not weaknesses. Radical love, courage, and coalition are imperative for us to collectively pull out of this reactionary devolution tailspin.
Did you hear Brandi’s voice on this track in your head? Had you performed it together before recording it? The plucked banjo keeps the track anchored in something rootsy, but the coiling, semi-melismatic vocal takes it in a gospel direction. The song feels significantly loosened up.
Yes – my dream was to have both Brandi and her brilliant wife, Catherine, sing on this with me. We may yet pull that trio off live sometime…Brandi elevates everything, always, and I am obsessed with her vibrato. I wanted to hear her mystical harmonics/overtones resonating and tessellating with the banjo’s harmonics and overtones in particular – I believe they have magical healing powers!
“You’re Not Alone” is steeped in images of nature, something so many folks ignore or forget about in their day to day. Musically, it’s also very organic sounding. It projects a back-to-basics feel, not unlike Joni’s image of needing to “get ourselves back to the garden.” Is it your belief that nature holds the key to our finding ways to heal our broken world?
We are quite literally nothing without our Earth Mother – the extractive, hierarchical abusive practices that we enact upon our Earth are echoed and mirrored in the extractive, hierarchical, abusive practices we’ve tortured ourselves, particularly our intersectional communities, with. I do believe that valuing nature, understanding and celebrating that we are part of nature and completely dependent upon nature—not in dominion over it—is key to harm reduction and healing for our human family right alongside our planet and climate.
All Bandcamp proceeds of “You’re Not Alone” will benefit the Looking Out Foundation EveryTown For Gun Safety Support Fund and The Fight For Reproductive Justice Campaign.
Full Credits for “You’re Not Alone”
Written and produced by Allison Russell
Strings arranged by Larissa Maestro & SistaStrings ( Monique & Chauntee Ross)
Performed by ( in alphabetical order by first name)
Allison Russell: banjo, vocals
Brandi Carlile: vocals
Chauntee Ross: violin, vocals
Larissa Maestro: cello, vocals
Megan Coleman: drums & percussion
Megan McCormick: electric guitar, vocals
Monique Ross: cello, vocals
Recorded at Moxe in Nashville, TN
Producer: Allison Russell
Executive Producer: Carissa Stolting & Unmanageable
Engineered by Ebonie Smith
Assisted by Jordan Hamlin
Mixed by Brandon Bell
Mastered by Paul Blakemore
Christopher Treacy has been writing about music and the music industry for 20 years. He’s contributed to The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Herald, Nashville Scene, and Berklee College of Music’s quarterly journal, as well as myriad LGBTQ+ outlets including the Edge Media Network, Between the Lines/Pride Source, Bay Windows and In Newsweekly. He lives in Waitsfield, VT.