Fresh Air - Allison Russell's Road To Self-Love

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Canadian musician Allison Russell talks and sings about the abuse she endured from her racist adoptive father — and about how she learned she was worthy of being loved. Her 2023 album is The Returner. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. This week we're featuring some of our favorite interviews of the year. Today we hear from musician Alison Russell, who sings original songs in a powerful voice that rings out. Some of her songs are about a subject that many people feel they have to keep secret. She was physically and sexually abused by her adoptive father through her childhood until she left home at age 15. She has a song about one night when she was in high school and had to escape him. She ran to the home of her girlfriend, her first love, and tapped on her window asking to be let in. As we learn in other songs, some nights she escaped him by sleeping in a park or a cemetery or sheltering in a cathedral. She also has songs about learning she's capable of being loved

and reentering her body after having had to mentally detach from it to survive. Her mother is white, her biological father is black, and her adoptive father is a white racist. She sings about that too. After performing in bands for many years, she now records under her own name. Her first solo album, Outside Child, released in 2021, won a Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. Russell grew up in Montreal. Her latest album, The Returner, is currently nominated for four Grammys.

When we spoke in September, Russell sang some of her songs for us. But we started with the opening track of The Returner. The lyric is about saying goodbye to her traumatic past. The song is called Springtime. So long, farewell, and do I do So long, farewell, and do I do To that tunnel I went through To that tunnel I went through And my reward, my recompense

My reward, my recompense Springtime of my present tense. Springtime of my present tense. But I used to think that I was doomed to die young to be consumed All of the bodies were violent Those winters of my discontent So long, farewell, I do, I do

So long, farewell, I do, I do So long, farewell, I do, I do To that tunnel I went through To that tunnel I went through That's Springtime from Alison Russell's new album, The Returner. Alison Russell, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. I love your voice and I love your songs. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

That song is about learning to live in your body again after having to dissociate from it when you were abused. How did you start writing such personal songs, sharing your story about being abused by your stepfather who became your adoptive father? Well, I think it's survival in a sense, you know, and it's also reclamation, and it's a way to, I was trained to silence, you know, I was conditioned to continually lie, and so for me, breaking silence has been very healing and empowering, and I do feel that these cycles of abuse and violence flourish with our silence

and that we need to get loud in order to break them. Did you keep it a secret because you wanted to or did your father threaten you that if you said anything to anyone, you would face severe consequences? Yes, I was threatened and I was also sort of brainwashed over many years, things like playing court, where after a violation, he would have me play court where he would pretend to be, you know, a police officer or a lawyer asking if I had been touched inappropriately, and I was to lie. And then I would be given a what in Canada we have girl guides rather than scouts I would be given a girl guide cookie after saying the correct lie so it was you know this was ongoing from before I was five years old you know so that's a kind of a

I think it's difficult for people that don't have experience of chronic abuse within a family to kind of wrap their heads around the depth of the brainwashing that happens for a child under those circumstances. But it's a lifetime of decolonizing one's own mind. And I don't know that I'll ever be fully done with that process. But for me, writing songs, singing about it, speaking about an issue that affects one in three women, one in four men, and one in two trans or non-binary or gender expansive people. For me, speaking up about it and singing about it has been very, very healing. I have never heard a story like that, where you were trained from the age of five to play court. And what's really interesting about that, too, is that later, you actually testified in court against your father after your parents took custody of your niece and nephew,

who you were very close to, and you learned that your father was alone with them, or at least with one of them. So after being trained to like lie in court, what was it like for you to actually testify against him so that he would not have custody? Well, luckily for me, I never actually had to testify. I charged him. And the investigators did such an excellent job of finding, unfortunately, other women that he had abused. The case was not just my word against his. And so his defense attorney ended up advising him to plead guilty to get a lighter sentence, which indeed he did get a very light sentence. But yes, I was able to charge him. And that was very cathartic and healing. I can imagine because he told you,

here's what you have to say. And you totally defied him. Yeah. And brought him down for that. Held him accountable. Yeah, right. So I want to play another song. And this might be my favorite song on the album, although it's hard to choose a favorite with so many good songs. But it's called Demons. And it's really about exercising those demons and how they don't like sunlight. When you sing the word demons in the chorus, you sound possessed. Before we hear it, can you describe writing it? Well, it was actually joyful to write it.

It was quite playful to write it. I'm playing with a lot of different imagery, the idea that, first of all, black women, queer women, queer people have been demonized, playing with that. But also, the idea that we can be light, sometimes with our trauma, we can use humor to help us get through it. So let's hear it. This is Alison Russell from her new album, The Returner. The song is Demons. Demons Demons Demons

Demons Demons Demons Demons Demons Demons Demons Demons, and they can't ride on Oh, turn around, look them in the face

They don't like how sunlight tastes No, no, no, no, no, no, no Standing on the corner, waiting on a school bus She said, I have such bad luck I got the bad hair and the bad skin. I just could not understand it. Demons, demons, demons, demons, coming up from behind. Demons, demons, demons, demons, been there all my life.

Demons, demons, been there all my life Demons, demons, surely can I ride them Turn around, look them in the face They don't like how sunlight tastes No, no, no, no, no, no, no Demons in my three, in my six, in my nine No, no, no. Demons in my three, in my six, in my nine. That was Alison Russell from her new album, The Returner, and the song is called Demons. I just love how you sound on that, and I love the song.

So what was the meaning of demons to you? To me, demons is so layered. It's the inner demons. It's the ways that we are demonized unfairly moving through the world as a queer black woman. I have experienced a lot of that. I've been, you know, called the N-word. I've been called an Oreo. I've been spat on inhumanizing, you know, their fellow equal human beings under a kind of a misapprehension and fear, which turns into hatred. You know, of course, hatred is always just fear in a cemetery you sheltered in a cathedral you slept in a park did you feel safe? you know strangely I felt so much safer sleeping in the cemetery than I ever did in the home of the people

that called themselves my family and I was so lucky to be in Montreal that city has art at its heart And I was so lucky to be in Montreal. You know, that city has art at its heart. There are so many refuges. I was able to, you know, go to the free days at the Musée des Boursards. I was able to listen to the conservatory students and take a nap in the McGill students' lounge.

My high school was an alternative high school moving in new directions. And we had a student lounge and I would go in there and sleep before class. There were 24 hour cafes where I would go and play chess till all hours with the McGill students or, you know, the older men that would just seem to always be there playing chess. I found ways to somehow be safe and warm enough in the winter. And then eventually, when I met my first girlfriend, Persephone, I started to stay with her. And I found an apartment when I was 16 with three other girls from my class and started doing terrible telemarketing jobs, but it got me, you know,

I was able to get the rent together, which was only $150 in our shared apartment. And I got through it, and I was able to get through high school in my first year of cégep, which is sort of a junior college kind of a thing in Quebec. I want to point out, you grew up in Montreal. It gets cold there, really cold. Yeah, exactly. So you can only sleep outside for a certain time of year. But really, when you are sleeping in a cemetery surrounded by graves, some people are just spooked in sunlight in a cemetery. Did you feel comfortable there? Did you have a hiding

place? I felt so comfortable. I mean, the Mont-Rail cemetery is so beautiful. It's like a nature preserve as well. So there's, you know, you are surrounded by trees and grass. It's incredibly peaceful. There are mausoleums you can shelter in the kind of nooks and crannies of. It's beautiful. There's a lot of, I'm actually fascinated by cemeteries. I love them. And I think it's a very North American fear, the fear of cemeteries. I've noticed when I travel in Europe that they're often used as a park.

You know, you see young lovers making out, people having picnics. It's just part, life is going on in and around those who are no longer with us, but who are so beloved that we, you know, erected memorials in their honor. And there's just something so beautiful about it to me. I'm not afraid of cemeteries. I quite love them. And I love reading the inscriptions. And I love thinking about the lives and the different times. It's sort of a time capsule as well, a cemetery and the different ways that, you know, as you go through the decades, the things that you notice that are different. I'm fascinated by cemeteries. I quite love them. Alison, your father, your biological father was black and from Grenada. You never met him until you were 30. Your mother was a teenager. She was 17 when she had you. And then your stepfather became your adoptive father

after she married him when you were in foster care. Your adoptive father was a white racist. What message did he give you about being black? That I was less than human and that I was lucky to be raised by him because I didn't have the disadvantage of being raised within black culture. These are his words, obviously not mine. You know, he was ideologically abused by his community. When we raise children with violent ideologies like white supremacy, it's abusing those children. That's my belief. And it is also he was also abused by his family, you know, and and so he brought all of that pain and and anger and with him when he moved up to Canada. And, you know, we are all so closely interconnected.

We want to compartmentalize things, and it's impossible to do so. I want you to play a song for us. You brought your banjo with you. It's one of the instruments you play. You also play clarinet and guitar. So Eve Was Black is about what we've been talking about. So would you, before you play it, would you talk to us about writing it? It started off as a poem and then slowly evolved into a song.

And my dear, my dear chosen sister, Sister Strings, helped me with the first iteration of it. And it became clear to me that it lived in the world of The Returner, and in fact is one of the backbone songs of that record. It's sort of a little trilogy backbone within the record of Eve Was Black, Demons, and Snake Life. So Eve Was Black is really kind of an open letter of truth and reckoning, but also of forgiveness, that there's always a way back to the circle. And my abuser has no power over me anymore, and I can begin to have some compassion and some pity for them at this point.

But we can't hide from the truth, which is that we are one human family, inalienably, intrinsically, undeniably equal. And the work is really just to have that acknowledged, protected under the law everywhere. One of the lines in this song that we're about to hear is, do you hate or do you lust? And I kind of think you gave us the answer already. He did both. Correct. He hated and he lusted. Yeah. And he was able to fulfill that lust with you because of how much he hated black people and saw them as less than human. So would you play Eve Was Black for us? And I'm going to ask you to just do an excerpt because there's so much I want to squeeze into this interview. Sure. Happy to. Eve was black, haven't you heard? The mother of ours was dark and good.

Eve was black, didn't you know? Is that why you hate my black skin so? Is that why you hate my black skin so? Do I remind you of what you lost? Do you hate or do you lust? Do you despise or do you yearn to return, to return, to return back to the motherland, back to the garden, back to your black skin, back to the garden, back to your black skin, back to the

innocence, back to the shine you lost when you enslaved your children. What do you hope for as you tie the rope? What do you hope for as you hoist me up? What do you hope for as you watch me swing with the witness trees salvation bring? Do I remind you of what you lost? Do you hate or do you lust? Do you despise or do you yearn to return, to return, to return? Back to the motherland Back to the garden Back to your black skin

Back to the innocence Back to the shine you lost When you enslaved your children Oh my father Oh my mother Oh my sister Oh my brother Oh my cousin I oh my sister Oh my brother, oh my cousin I'm not packing

Can't wash this in, can't wash this in Can't wash this in with my black blood With my black blood Turner. So your adoptive father was from a sundown town in the U.S. A sundown town was a town where black people are told, you can't be here after the sun goes down. Where did he grow up? Like, what city? What state? He grew up in Indiana, in White County, Indiana. I'm not sure of the exact time. I know the family moved around a lot. I just want another thing I want to mention about him is that I don't know when this was, but after you had moved far away, a woman came forward and accused him of sexually assaulting her. And he did time for it. I think he was sentenced for three years.

Well, so I charged him. And during the investigative process, the reason I didn't have to go to court was because the investigator did a very thorough and good job and found other women that he had abused. Oh, that's how it happened. So it was through you. Through the investigation. Correct. Good for you. Yeah. So did he serve the whole three years? He did. He could have been out in nine months if they had granted his first parole, but the prison psychiatrist

believed that he was a high risk of reoffending and so recommended that he serve the full sentence. Do you know if he has, in fact, reoffended? I really hope not. I know that he is now,

you know, he is on a list of sex offenders. He has to check in with the police. He's not allowed to be unsupervised with children. So I have high hopes that he's not able to do to any other child what he did to me. Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Alison Russell. Her new album is called The Returner.

We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. I can't think of a thing that hasn't been shot through with pain. Like a nightingale's song in the dead of the night. Goodbye, so long, farewell, all I'll be. Ooh, oblivion. Throw me in the ocean Ooh, see if I can swim I'm wild again

I'm a sad child again I come tending my eyes Ooh, I'm burning I'm a summer dream I'm a real-life dream I'm worthy Of all the goodness and the love That the world's gonna give to me I'ma give it back ten times before I'm ready

Hi, this is Molly. And I'm Seth. Give it back ten times, people, are you ready? Hi, this is Molly. And I'm Seth. We're two of the producers at Fresh Air. If you like listening to Fresh Air, we think you'll also like reading our newsletter. You'll find the interviews and reviews from the show all in one place. Plus, staff recommendations you won't hear on the show, behind-the-scenes Q&As, bonus audio. It's also the only place to find out what interviews are coming up. We keep it fun, and it comes straight to your inbox once a week. Subscribe

for yourself at whyy.org slash fresh air. Let's get back to one of our favorite interviews from 2023, my interview with songwriter, singer, and musician Alison Russell. Her first solo album, Outside Child, was released in 2021 and had several songs about being abused by her adoptive father throughout her childhood. She left home when she was 15. Her first album, Outside Child, won the Americana Award for Album of the Year. Russell's latest album, The Returner, is currently nominated for four Grammys. The album has several songs about healing from the pain of her childhood and casting out the demons. I want to play another song, and this is another of my favorites, and this is from your first album,

your first solo album, and that album is called Outside Child. The song is called Persephone, and this is a song about a night you had to escape your adoptive father when you were in high school, and so you tapped on the window of your girlfriend, your first love, and asked her to let you in because if you stayed home, you, two rip buttons, might have killed me that time if I let him. Nowhere to go and had to get away from him. So I'm quoting these a little out of context, but those are some of the things you say in the lyric. So let's hear it, and then we'll talk about it. Blood on my shirt, two red buttons Might have killed me that time Oh, if I'd let him He's slow and he's drunk

And he lost his grip on me Now I'm running down La Rue Saint-Pas Trying to get out from the weight of it all. Can't flag a cop because I know he won't stop. I go see Persephone. Tap, tap, tapping on your window screen. Gotta let me in Persephone. I know where to go but I had to get away from here

My petals are bruised and I'm still a flower Come running to you in the fire But I'll put your skinny arms around me Let me taste your skin That was Persephone from my guest Alison Russell's first album, which is called Outside Child. That is such a catchy song and so troubling at the same time. And I'm wondering, did your father know you had a girlfriend? Yes, because he would wiretap the phone in our house. And this was back in the day when we had landlines.

Wow, things weren't bad enough. Yeah. So, yeah, he knew. It's funny. To me, it's a joyful song. You're right. The first stanza is disturbing because it is being clear about the abuse that was occurring. But to me, the joy of that song is first love and is a sexual awakening that is

consensual. You know, she was the first person to teach me what it feels like to be loved consensually and freely and without pain and duress and misery. It was this incredibly regenerative, healing, life-saving, really life-saving relationship. And when you have your whole life believed yourself to be unlovable and lesser than, and to have someone love you just as you are is transformative. What was your father's reaction, your adoptive father's reaction to knowing you had a girlfriend? Fury, and I left home very shortly thereafter. I can imagine the fury was on two levels. One, that he had competition, because he probably felt like he owned your body, but also competition from a girl. You know, I think that, yeah, he certainly is someone who his violence is directed at women.

But also, I wasn't fully human to him. I mean, this was a man raised in a sundown town, born in 1936, who believed what the Constitution of the United States wants. You know, he's an American expat born in a sundown town born in 1936, who believed what the Constitution of the United States wants. You know, he's an American expat born in a sundown town in Indiana, and believed that black people are three fifths human beings. I mean, he absolutely thought that he owned me. You know, he went to court to get me back out of Child Protective Services, and adopted me. And in his mind, absolutely, I was a piece of property. Were you in foster care? Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, I was in foster care for three years before I went back to live with my mother and her new husband. And why were you there? Because my mother was a teenager when she had me and had no support. And in those days of the early 80s in Catholic Quebec, to be an unwed mother, to be an unwed white mother with a black child was quite a severe stigma. And she also was suffering quite severely from postpartum depression after my birth. severe schizophrenia and it's something that she has struggled with, you know, her whole life and been on and off of medication and goes in and out of psychosis. So she went through a period of

being harmful to me in sort of the first depths of psychosis. What kind of harmful? Hitting me, you know, burned a cigarette on my skin one time, doing things that were inappropriate, leaving a baby alone for hours and hours. Was she abused by your adoptive father? Absolutely. Do you think why she didn't intervene? Because she was such a victim to you. I think there's a lot of layers.

I think she was suffering from sort of a double think as well. And yes, she was also a victim herself. She was not, she's also not, you know, I think of my mom as my sister. I don't, she has, she does not operate in the world as a fully realized adult and has not had the opportunity to do so. There's a lot of, I've read a lot, even in situations where there's not severe abuse, but of women who have children very young when they're still children themselves, there's a kind of an arrested development that can happen. And I think that certainly happened for my mom. Are your parents still married? They are. Yeah, she still lives with him.

Do you keep in touch with them at all? I keep in touch with my mother, but I don't have contact with my adoptive father. How did you survive being traumatized by both of your parents? Music, I think. Yeah. Music and art. I mean, my earliest childhood memories that don't involve trauma involve music. And music was always how I felt love and how I felt safe and

how I translated anything that was scary or difficult. I'm sorry, this is so horrifying. I'm so glad you survived it. And you're also giving us the gift of your music. It's remarkable well music is the healer you know and children i think are incredible incredibly resilient and we find we look and find goodness and i was lucky in that i had a grandmother who was loving you know i had music i had teachers and schools where i felt safe one of the tragic things for me as a as a mother raising my child now in the U.S. in Nashville, I've been able to break cycles of abuse in our home, but my daughter has nightmares about being shot to death at school. And that was not, that was, school for me

was a refuge. School for me was a sanctuary. You know, school was the healer from what I had to endure at home. And it absolutely breaks my heart as a mother now to have been able to stop the cycles of abuse in our home, but to be powerless so far to get our legislators to do anything about the gun violence that's just killing our kids. When you left Montreal to get away from your parents, you moved to Vancouver, which is kind of as far away as you can get in Canada from where you grew up. Yeah. And you started, I think, like in the folk music scene,

and one of your instruments, as we heard, is banjo. Did you feel like that was going to be your home more like folk oriented music well you know to me i have a broader definition of folk and americana probably than most people um i think that it is a kind of such a vast umbrella it encompasses every genre of of song really and so me, it's all just sonic explorations that naturally lead one to the next. And the reason I play banjo is because of Kermit the Frog, you know. What? It's Kermit the Frog. I didn't know anything about the black diaspora growing up with white supremacists.

I didn't know anything about the cultural heritage connection of the banjo being, you know, the America's African instrument. I didn't know any of that when I first fell in love with the banjo. I fell in love with it because of the Rainbow Connection and Kermit the Frog. Right. And your band is called the Rainbow Coalition. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nod to both Jim Henson, Kurt Rock, and of course, Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, who were able to form an incredibly healing, harm-reducing coalition between the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, who were a Latinx group, and the Young Patriots, who were white Appalachians, formerly white supremacists, many of them, who found common cause in the 60s in the south side of Chicago to help one another with after school programs, with medical programs. And it was incredibly successful. And that was what, of course, eventually led to Fred Hampton being assassinated, was the fact that he was very, very successfully building this multi-ethnic, multi-heritage coalition to help disrupt the poverty cycle. Congratulations on probably being the only person ever to bring together Fred Hampton and Kermit in one tribute.

I think that they're very closely related in spirit. I really do. Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Alison Russell, and her new album is called The Returner. We have more music and conversation coming up after a very short break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Alison Russell, a great singer and songwriter whose new album is called The Returner. So you write songs with your husband,

and I'm interested in what that process is like. And I say in case people are confused, you identified as queer and eventually married your husband. Well, I think sometimes people get confused about orientation and commitment. It's like when a straight person gets married, they're still straight. When a queer person gets married, they're still queer. You know what I mean? Well put. That's just what it is. But it turned out no one was more surprised than I

when I ended up falling in love with a man, a straight man, a straight white man. All of these things were surprising, but JT has a very strong inner goddess. Okay. I want you to sing another song for us, if that's okay with you. I'd be happy to. To me, this sounds like a song that's in part dedicated to your daughter, but also dedicated to everybody who is a survivor of abuse and to all the children who are enduring it now. It is all of that, but it's really for all of us. In fact, we're all survivors. We're all returners of some kind. There's not a human on the planet that gets out of this life without experiencing trauma. You know, being born is traumatic. So that's the mother of empathy in many ways, I think, for each other. Would you sing You're Not Alone for us? Yeah, I'd be happy to. Hey, my little evening star How bright you are

Anywhere you go You're not alone Wish that I could keep you from Sorrow and harm None of us is here for long But you're not alone In the cradle of the circle Are the ones who came before you

Their strength is yours now You're not alone Sparrows in the morning Crows at dusk Singing with your mommies, both of them We have love We have love We have love

We have love You're not alone You're not alone Thank you for doing that. Did you write that with Brandi Carlile, who duets with you on the recording? No, I wrote it on my own, and I actually wrote it during the Songs of Our Native Daughters sessions,

and I originally recorded it with our native daughters, Riannon Giddens, Amethyst, Kea, Layla, and Makala, back in 2019. Oh, okay. You know, when I first heard you sing, I thought of Riannon Giddens because I felt like there was a similarity in your voices. And then I learned that you'd actually performed together and recorded together. Yeah, she's my chosen sister. I love her deeply. We've been friends, very, very close friends and chosen sisters since 2006.

Good, good, good. So you're the mother of a daughter named Ida, who is how old? She's nine years old now. Did you always want to be a mother or growing up with the parents that you did, did you not want to have a nuclear family? I never, ever, ever thought I would become a mother. In fact, I emphatically believed I would not. And Ida was a joyful accident. She was a birth control pill fail. I'm here to tell all of you that birth control pills are not 100%. They are 99.999%. And Ida is

that.000. After seven years of being together, we found ourselves shockingly and surprisingly pregnant. And she is the greatest gift that has ever come into my life. And I, because I treasure being her mother so much, because it is such a sacred role, I feel even more strongly about choice, how important it is. No one should ever, ever be forced into that sacred role against their will. What were your fears about becoming a mother? That I would have a psychotic break, that I would, you know, somehow repeat the abuses of my childhood, that I wouldn't be able to break the cycles of abuse, that I wouldn't be a worthy mother, that I wouldn't be able to protect my child, that my child might be born with the same kind of very, very severe and painful schizophrenia that my mom suffers with

and that runs in my family, you know, all kinds of, and I didn't know, you know, when I, before I met my biological father, I didn't know any of my black diaspora heritage. I didn't know what was on that side of my family. So I was also afraid of paying forward mysterious things that I didn't even know what they were, you know. And none of that happened? No, no. It was the most joyful pregnancy. I am very, very, I was very, it was a joyful birth, you know.

It was, and she's just a miraculous being, and I'm so grateful to be her mother. You met your biological father, who is black and from Grenada, when you were 30. What was it like to meet him? It was really surreal and in the end, very, very joyful. I look very much like him. I sound very much like him. We have similar personalities. It was a real lesson in nurture, sure, but nature, oh my goodness, it's a big part of it. And is he like a really big contrast to the father who raised you? Complete contrast. He is the furthest thing from abusive.

He is loving. He has a wonderful wife. I now have a wonderful stepmother, Ida's Nana Tessa, who they've been together since I was two years old. I have two siblings on that side, my sister Nikki and my brother Kino. And it's a very, very loving, non-abusive family. So it's been really, really healing to meet my black family. And of course, to learn about my lineage and the journey of the black diaspora that I am a part of. My understanding is, from what I've read, that your mother, when she became pregnant, never told your biological father.

Not right away, no. Not until it was too late, I guess. And she told him that she'd given me up for adoption, which was not true. When I went into foster care, she told him that she had given me up in a closed adoption. He must have been very surprised to hear from you. I think that, you know, it's an interesting thing. My siblings, my paternal siblings grew up knowing that I existed. He talked about me to his whole family. You know, they grew up knowing they had a big sister out there somewhere.

I didn't know anything about them, of course. And so it's been a really interesting, I wasn't a shameful secret to him and to their family. It was a sorrow that there was this child that was lost. Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Alison Russell. Her new album is called The Returner. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Alison Russell. Her new album is called The Returner. You probably don't know the answer to this, but what do you think your adoptive father's reaction is to your songs about how he abused you?

I don't know if he's listened to them or not, and I have never inquired from my mother. I'm not that interested, to be honest. And I'm struggling right now with what true forgiveness means. You know, he has no power over me anymore. Do I go see this man on his deathbed? Do I speak to him at some point? Do I tell him I forgive him? I'm still struggling with those things.

Right. I guess you can forgive him without contacting him. Forgive him in your heart, but not have to talk with him. forward in the worst way. You know, he became what he hated. And that's a tragic, tragic thing. And what we do know, and something that I think we need to talk about, is we know that men are more vulnerable to becoming abusive when they have been abused. And we need to talk about the fact that 90% of violence in the world is perpetrated by people who are male. And that is not to demonize men at all. It is to say clearly there is a fragility that we're not addressing and that we're not protecting. I want to close with a song that's the final track,

and that seems fitting, from your new album, The Returner. And this is called Requiem, and would you tell us about writing it? Yeah, JT and I wrote this one. We were very much feeling rocked by the violence in schools, the gun violence in schools. We were thinking about the parents that have to survive their children, which is a parent's worst nightmare, and have their children taken from them by gun violence. The fact that we have not been able to pass any legislation to mitigate or prevent it

yet and we wrote a kind of a a lullaby of hope but also of of sorrow and the backup singers on this track include wendy and lisa famous from princess band and brandy carlisle um brandy clark and hosier as well yeah yeah And of course all the women in the Rainbow Coalition. Right, right, your band. Well, before we hear it, I just want to say thank you. Thank you, too. Thank you so much. It was so great to talk with you and to hear you sing in our studio.

And your music's just wonderful, and I'm grateful for it. Thank you so much. Such an honor speaking with you. Thank you. So here's Alison Russell from the final track of her new album, The Returner, and the track is called Requiem. Requiem.

Oh, I know your way Is hard to see today Well, yes, they fly faster Than mother's lullabies And the sparrows cannot sing For it is theirs to bring

The souls of those lost babies back to the sky So it is yours to sing My child my wild

brightling With love born in the cradle of time And fight and fight and fight

In the dying light For lost and gone forever Clementine Requiem Requiem

The question is not if It was always well Gone, gone, my child Hope is a prairie fire Set your embers on the summer wind That's Requiem from Alison Russell's new album, The Returner. Currently nominated for four Grammys, the awards ceremony is February 4th. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we continue our holiday week series featuring some of our favorite interviews of the year. We'll hear Tanya's interview with Brooke Shields.

She reflected on how she was sexually objectified as a child and teenager in films like Pretty Baby, in which she played a child prostitute, Blue Lagoon, and in ads for Calvin Klein Jeans. The 58-year-old actress is the subject of this year's documentary, Pretty Baby. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salet, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shurock, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Yakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Teresa Madden directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Terry Gross. Les enfants dans les ombres, peur et froid perdus.