In a genre populated with many crossover country artists, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Alma Russ is the real deal. Growing up with a farming background, she combines her independent music career with seasonal work, either on horseback in the great outdoors as a stable tour guide, or as a rancher in Wyoming. Her parallel career finds her touring for months on end, transporting her music across state borders to bars, honky tonks and clubs. She’s recently released her standout sophomore album FOOL’S GOLD, which not only showcases her quite distinct vocal range but also marks her as a talented tunesmith and writer. She recorded the album in a hundred-year-old church in a ghost town out in the Chihuahuan Desert. There is a charming innocence and simplicity to the album, which was described on the celebrated Saving Country Music website as ‘one of the best albums to be released in 2022 so far.’ That mirrors our opinion of the album that the extremely modest and enthusiastic Alma spoke to us about.
You appear to have the ideal life balance with your parallel occupations alongside music.
I worked on a ranch last year in Wyoming but I’m back in North Carolina now. I’m working at a riding stable where I used to work full time at one point. These days I work here when I’m around. The riding stables are in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and I take people for tour rides in the mountains. I’m really thankful to get to work here when I’m not touring.
How does that break down time-wise for you ?
The work is seasonal for me, I do my music in the off season. This year I will be mostly playing music. When I left the ranch in Wyoming last October I was playing wherever I could get shows and getting by as the gigs kept happening. I realised I probably didn’t need another job, which was probably a miracle. I love my jobs, though the work on the ranch meant that I was holed up on a mountain for up to six months, which meant that I couldn’t play music. So, this year I decided to mostly focus on music. My boss here at the stables is really supportive and kind, so I’ll stay around here and then I’ll be on the road touring for three months.
You are also from a farming background?
I grew up on a farm in Florida. We were actually a nursery, more of plant-based farm. We had forests and also rented out some of our land to other folks. You don’t hear that much about farming in Florida because it’s getting so overpopulated, but I was the seventh generation born on that land. My family got the property after the civil war, the nursery closed down a while ago but my grandparents still live down there and I visit every once in a while.
What are your earliest memories of being stimulated by music?
This is kind of different from what you’d expect. I started playing piano when I was five. An early memory is getting the soundtrack to the movie Shrek when I was a kid. It had Duran Duran’s Hungry Like A Wolf on it, which I loved. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Country Bear Jamboree, but we lived an hour north of Orlando and when I was a kid we’d go to Disneyworld in the off season, when all the crazy summer season crowds weren’t there. There was this thing called The Country Bear Jamboree that, even then, was terribly outdated. It was a show in an auditorium where they had electronic bears playing banjo, bass and other instruments. You should look it up, it’s really bad. But for some reason I really loved it. It wasn’t until later that when I was twelve and picked up the banjo, that I realised that the spectacle really got me interested in playing music. After that, I spent a lot of time in the mountains getting into traditional mountain culture. Music is a major part of that and became a huge interest for me. It all started with The Country Bear Jamboree. As I got older, I loved Alison Krauss and Dolly Parton. I was really influenced by Alison Krauss because she played the fiddle and sang. I had also got into singing Scots and Irish ballads even before I took up the fiddle, singing songs about people getting their heads chopped off when I was only eight years old.
I understand you were a contestant on ABC’s American Idol? I would have thought your vocals are far too distinctive and edgy rather than the stereo-type singers they promote?
They don’t want folk singers; I knew going into it that it wasn’t my thing. It was really a fluke but my dad encouraged me to send them a video and surprisingly they responded. It was a free trip to Hollywood so I couldn’t really complain and I went thinking ‘I wonder how long this will go on for.’ I met some really cool, genuine people and there were a lot of very competitive people there. For me it wasn’t competitive, I was just waiting to get eliminated, I knew it wasn’t my thing.
You released your debut album during the pandemic: when was it recorded?
I recorded NEXT DOWN in Johnson City, Tennessee with Bee Hive Records. We started recording it long before the pandemic, it took us a long time to finish it because I was heading to Wyoming to work for four months. We finished when I came back and we decided to release it during the pandemic. With that album, I really didn’t know exactly what I wanted from it and had a lot of songs that I’d since written that I liked a lot better, which ended up on FOOL’S GOLD.
Your new album FOOL’S GOLD, sounds like a huge step forward. How did you end up in a ghost town nearly two thousand miles from North Carolina to record it?
I live on the road for months at a time. This may sound ridiculous, but I have a Prius which I’ve rigged out to live out of. I used to tour during the off season simply because there were so many places that I wanted to visit and see. To do this, I’d book some gigs to help me pay for gas and music wasn’t really the focus, I was just rambling around. I first went to Terlingua in Brewster County, Texas, last winter, it was during the pandemic and a good place to go because there was hardly anyone there. I have a lot of friends who had worked jobs at the Big Ben National Park there and wanted to see it. I had my instruments with me and there’s this place out there called The Starlight Theatre in Terlingua. It’s really cool, Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker used to play shows there. The stars out there are so bright because there’s no light pollution. Although being in the middle of nowhere, a lot of musicians go out to Terlingua . I ended up meeting some musicians on a porch out there and we just jammed. One of them was Bill Palmer, a dear friend of mine who recorded FOOL’S GOLD, and another was Myles Adams, who is a talented singer songwriter. At the time Bill was recording Myles’ album at the St Inez Church, it was the first album to be recorded there. They asked me if I’d play fiddle and sing some harmonies on the recording. I was already tired of my first album NEXT TOWN, loved the way Bill worked and was hoping he would record my next one, which he did. With the new album I wanted to mix Appalachian music with Texas country. So, I decided to book my future gigs heading across the country towards Terlingua. I booked St Inez Church and we ended up recording the album in two days because, honestly, that was all I could afford.
There’s a delightful organic back porch feel to the album as if the musicians knew exactly when to support your vocals and when to withdraw.
That’s really how it was in the church. Because I was on the road, I didn’t have a lot of time to practice with the musicians. I was playing a really weird gig in Houston, probably the weirdest I’ve ever played. It was in a place called Super Happy Fun Land. On their website, it said that they were open to all genres of music but when I got there, I knew it was really a venue for metal bands. Anyway, I ended up playing in a songwriter round in a metal band venue and one of the ladies that played was Mary Brett Stringer. At that time, she was playing washboard in the Austin band Feeding Leroy and, coincidentally, she was also heading to Terlingua with the band to record their album. So, she ended up doing backing vocals on FOOL’S GOLD. My one requirement for the album was to have pedal steel on it but I had intended to do that digitally, I didn’t think I’d get a pedal steel player out there. So, it just happened that Lee Martin from Feeding Leroy was also there the same day. So, because we had no practice time, Bill Palmer and my drummer Moses were the only ones that had got to hear the tracks beforehand, Lee had to do his playing on the spot.
Why did you select FOOL’S GOLD as the title?
That song is my theme song, the one I open every show with. I love what I do, I don’t make a lot doing it but I get by. Sometimes stupid things happen and I wonder why I’m doing it, but I love it. The title came from me doing what I do for the right reasons and not for the reward.
Two tracks particularly stand out for me on the album, Oklahoma Freight and In Another State. Can you tell me about the background to them?
I was in San Antonio, Texas, when I was on the road for the first time by myself. I was nineteen at the time, playing in these bars for the first time and nervous, which can be intimidating sometimes. I was playing a show and this guy was giving me a lot of trouble. I went to the bartender and told her and she threatened to beat him up for me: it was a bit dramatic, for sure. She was a really cool lady and I ended up sleeping on her couch and hung out. She’s not doing that work anymore but she told me her story about hopping freight trains in Oklahoma - oddly enough I’ve made friends with a lot of hobos and I learned how to write songs from one. She initially inspired the song. It’s a combination of her story and also stories from other women I’ve met, and there’s a little bit of me in that song also.
And the song In Another State?
There was this girl I worked with who was really mean to me. She’s not going to read this, so I may as well tell you. It was really hard for me, but when I heard her story, it made me be able to be kind and understand her. She was the initial catalyst for the song, but I also wove other people’s stories into it from growing up in a small town. I loved living in a small town but also knew people that felt trapped by it and ended up in that song.
You’re heading off on tour shortly. How difficult is it to self-manage and what are your ambitions?
I love what I do and never thought that I’d be able to make a living out of it. The dream is to do it full time, but if I have to get a job next time, so be it. I would love to have a booking agent, but that’s not affordable at the moment. The worst part is the booking, but by doing that myself I get to go wherever I want. At the moment I’m fortunate with the people I’m doing seasonal work with. My boss is great, so it’s as much of who I’m working for as much as the outdoor work I’m doing. There’s a line in a Gillian Welch song, ‘Never minded working hard, it’s who I’m working for.’ I’m lucky to have someone who is supportive of my music and happy to have me work for him when I’m around. I’m also lucky that I can play with a band when I’m at home and when I’m on the road it’s just me, playing shows and sleeping in my car, keeping my overheads really low. It's really weird, but as a travelling musician, you meet a lot of people that want to be a part of your journey. I’m humbled by the number of people who invite me to stay with them, which I do sometimes. Other times, being an introvert, I’m happy to crash in my car in a parking lot. I love meeting new people as it’s part of the job, but I often get to the stage where I prefer sleeping in my car than couch surfing. In the meantime, I’ve made the album that I wanted to make, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Interview by Declan Culliton