Hi. Matt Halvorson here.

I have some music out this week. The album is short — 7 songs, less than 30 minutes — and it's called "Winter." Last year, I wrote and recorded a song a week as part of the Rise Up Music Project, which put out a song a day. On this album you'll find selected songs from the first two and a half months of 2019, remixed and mastered.

The next three installments (you guessed it: Spring, Summer and Fall) may or may not be released someday. If you like this one, you'll love the rest. And if you think this one's terrible, I'm sure the others are better.

Meanwhile, I've been at home with my partner and kids seemingly forever and ever -- trying to get a sixth-grader through full-day online school while homeschooling a kindergartner and chasing around two toddlers and trying to nurse a severely injured chicken back from a raccoon attack while my partner works full-time-plus and everybody is hungry and getting their clothes dirty and dumping out that bucket of toys for some reason and climbing in the dishwasher and emptying things out of cupboards in the kitchen and leaving Legos everywhere and frankly it's been a lot to keep up with, if you know what I mean. Quarantine!

But this is a time of extremes, and this music of mine is extremely available. Click on the album art below (featuring an illustration by Amanda Gunderson) and you'll find links to listen on your platform of choice.

One of these songs I recorded during a vacation in my parents' basement. Another was written to process a trip I took with my family to the National Memorial for Peace & Justice and the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The first song is about fully coming to grips with the fact that inherent in my public education as a kid was capitalist-colonial brainwashing. One is about a snake, so to speak. One is about the guy from "Into the Wild." One is about Wapato Creek, which you drive across on your way down to Portland from Seattle. One is about answering the call to something greater. Which is which is which? You should probably listen a hundred times and try to figure it out.

Okay, that's it! Thank you for doing what you do. I appreciate you.

Love,

Matt