Allison Russell
Allison Russell had home-court advantage when she sold out The Basement East — twice — in January. The venue sits within walking distance of her Nashville home, where Russell lives with JT Nero, her partner in music and life, and their daughter, who goes to middle school not far away. Late into the first of her two shows, Russell introduced newly elected state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) as a friend and quite literal neighbor.
Russell has lived across Canada — early years in Montreal and almost a decade in British Columbia — and moved to Nashville a few years ago from the Chicago area. During COVID isolation in 2020, Rhiannon Giddens’ Madison, Tenn., home became a haven for Russell and her family. Russell’s family gardened vegetables and tried to survive the era of in-home music-making, with help from Giddens and a rotating cast of musicians and friends, including singer-songwriter Yola. That culture of creative collaboration brought them to Nashville for good.
“Rhiannon had found this place with about an acre in the back, and it ended up being a kind of cooperative living space,” Russell tells the Scene. “It was affordable, and it had this amazing plot of land behind the house. That was the real allure. We got through it together and figured out how to be our own terrible little DIY TV station — doing our best with what we could afford, to get through those hard times.”
Russell mentions other Nashville musicians/parents like Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Luther Dickinson, professional peers who became quick friends. The family moved from Madison into East Nashville, where they count Jess Wolfe (of Lucius) and Monique and Chauntee Ross (of SistaStrings) as neighbors.
Her January concerts showcased an artist whose work spans songwriting, vocal performance, political activism and community-building grounded in the American South. Her focus has been hyperlocal: In an encore, Russell shared a story about working with Behn to rename Forrest Avenue in East Nashville. At a recent concert in Bristol, Tenn., she brought state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) onstage, lending her star power to Johnson’s campaign to unseat GOP incumbent U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
“Here I am, a queer Black woman — all sides of my identity had to fight so hard for the vote, and it’s excruciating that I can’t vote,” says Russell, whose song “Eve Was Black” earned her a Grammy for Best American Roots Performance in February. A Canadian national, she’s pursuing dual citizenship with the U.S. “In Canada, I took voting for granted. I didn’t feel the urgency in the way I do now. In Tennessee, I see how precious that is, and want to use my sphere of influence to speak out about human rights and equality and nonviolence.”
Russell proudly claims Tennessee as her home, but on Feb. 12, state lawmakers refused to claim her back. The episode — in which Republicans killed a resolution commemorating Russell’s Grammy win despite approving a parallel honor for Paramore — thrust Russell into the national spotlight.
This month, Russell is releasing a new rendition of “Tennessee Rise,” an anthem for today’s civil rights struggle. Like movement music before it, the song preaches hope and progress in the face of political oppression. She brought in voices like Brittany Howard, Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Emmylou Harris, Brittney Spencer and Langhorne Slim to the Sound Emporium to join her on the track, a testament to her Nashville community.
“With each mass shooting and the violence in our state and country, I get a lot of pressure from my family to come home,” says Russell. “But Nashville is our home. We live here. We work here. It’s given us tremendous gifts. I don’t want to show my daughter that we run away from hard things, I want to show her that we face them and change them together.”
Photographed by Dana Trippe
Profiling some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from archivists and DJs to Americana star Allison Russell
