Allison Russell

folk · singer-songwriter · alternative pop

Allison Russell is a Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Montreal, Quebec, who plays guitar, banjo and clarinet. Born to a Grenadian father and a Scottish-Canadian mother, she left home at fifteen and settled in Vancouver in 1998, where she began performing in the Celtic folk band Fear of Drinking. From 2003 she co-led the roots group Po' Girl with Trish Klein, recording seven albums, and from 2012 she worked as half of Birds of Chicago with the singer-songwriter JT Nero, whom she married in 2013. In 2018 she joined Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah in Our Native Daughters, a banjo-centered quartet that drew on the histories of Black women in America. Her solo debut, Outside Child (Fantasy Records, 2021), addressed the abuse and foster care she survived as a child; it was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and drew multiple Grammy nominations. The Returner followed on the same label in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize, and the song Eve Was Black from that record won the Grammy for Best American Roots Performance in 2024, her first win from eight nominations. She has also received two Juno Awards and four Canadian Folk Music Awards. In November 2024 she made her Broadway debut in Hadestown, and her third solo album, In the Hour of Chaos, was released by Fantasy Records in July 2026. Russell is openly queer and has used her platform for LGBTQ+ and social-justice organizing, often building benefit shows around her touring band. On stage she leads a band that leans on her clarinet and banjo playing and on the layered vocal harmony arrangements that carry her records.

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Upcoming shows in Massachusetts

The Milk Carton Kids — Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 7:00 PM at Mass Audubon Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary
Allison Russell — Sunday, October 18, 2026 · 7:00 PM at Royale