Po’ Girl’s Allison Russell is a busy person. She just completed her theatre debut in Chicago and planned to record her first official CD with longtime touring partner J.T. Nero, is about to begin a tour of the United Kingdom, but first she will be coming to Lethbridge on a quick Canadian tour and stopping in Lethbridge, Nov. 17 at the Geomatic Attic with fellow Po’ Girl Awna Teixeira.
“ I hadn’t heard about Greensence until Mike (Spencer of the Geomatic Attic) told me about it. We’re happy to be involved,” Russell said.
“Sustainable living is something we’ve always been interested in,” she said.
She and Awna average about 300 days on the road, so she is excited to be stopping back in Alberta for a day or two of it.
“I love coming to Alberta because my beloved cousin Ellen in Edmonton just had her first baby, so we‘re going to enjoy going up there to visit her,” she said.
She also has a special fondness for Lethbridge thanks to Shawna Hudson, who booked them here for the first time.
She has a couple new Po’ Girl songs she may try out in Lethbridge and may even include a couple numbers from the vaudeville show, she just completed in Chicago — Keep a Song In Your Soul: The Black Roots of Vaudeville at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.
“It was an amazing process,” Russell said, adding The Carolina Chocolate Drops , a roots/ bluegrass band based out of North Carolina put together a show exploring the role of black music in old minstrel shows, which were the precursor to a lot of blues and jazz music, and asked Russell to help.
“They really brought to life the role black music played because it really predates blues and jazz music,” she said.
She is looking forward to the new record with J.T. Nero
“It will be our first official record, though I was on his CD Mountain Forest and some of the very first Po’ Girl shows in 2003 were with him. But this will be our first solo record,” Russell said.
“It has been a busy year with both J.T. Nero and the Clouds and Po’ Girl,” she observed.
So recording the new CD, hopefully over the weekend makes sense.
“We did Mountain Forests in three days,” she said adding she prefers to work fast on a recording.
“ We don’t have time to obsess over every little thing on it ,” she said adding she is looking forward to recording her first CD with J.T. Nero. They have been working together in various capacities since 2003 when Po’ Girl played some of their first shows with JT Nero and the Clouds.
He still frequently tours with Po’ Girl.
“ We are musical best friends,” she said.
“ We recorded Mountains Forests in three days in a cabin in Northern Wisconsin by a lake in August. It was hot, so when we got too hot, we’d just go swimming in the lake. It was a idyllic, surreal experience and we recorded 16 of his songs,” she described.
She is just as excited about her band mates’ new projects as she is about her own.
“Ms. Awna has become an author. She wrote a book about her instrument — the washtub bass,” she enthused.
She is also looking forward to returning to Europe after their quick western Canadian tour.
They will be touring the United Kingdom. Last time they concentrated on Belgium and the Netherlands.
“Some of the shows over there are already sold out,” she observed.
The show begins at 8 p.m. There will be a quick presentation from Greensense then Allison Russell and Awna Teixeira will perform. Tickets are $20.
