Singer Allison Russell Shares Personal Saga Of Trauma And Triumph On 'Outside Child'

Over the last couple of decades, Allison Russell has preferred to do her songwriting, singing and playing alongside others. She's been the consummate collaborator, bringing exceptional emotional intelligence to a series of respected roots groups. In the process, she's gained necessary perspective on her own experiences and abilities, and worked her way toward readiness to step out front. On her first solo album, Outside Child, she's proved that her voice can carry a story of tremendous weight — of desperate youthful survival and imaginative applications of agency — and command the spotlight in the revelatory telling of it.

In "4th Day Prayer," a track that lands on the silken, Al Green side of Memphis soul sensibilities, she marvels with grown-up comprehension at the resilience of her younger self: "These are the best years of your life" / If I'd believed it, I'd have died / Something told me that they lied / Oh I, oh I survived.

During an interview on her Nashville front porch, Russell twice