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This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Allison Russell, sings original songs in a powerful voice that rings out.

Some of her songs are about a subject that many people feel that have to keep secret.

She was physically and sexually abused by her adoptive father throughout 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 her father.

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 her father by sleeping in the park in a cemetery or sheltering in a cathedral.

She also has songs about learning that she's capable of being loved and re-entering 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, was nominated for three Grammys when the Americana Award for Album of the Year and won a Juno Award,

the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year.

Russell grew up in Montreal.

I expect her new album, which is called The Returner, will get multiple nominations and awards too.

It's really good. She's going to sing some of her songs for us, but let's start with the opening track of The Returner.

The lyric is about saying goodbye to her traumatic past. The song is called Springtime.

To that tunnel I went through. To that tunnel I went through.

In my reward, my record pan. My reward, my record pan.

...