[Cover photo credit to Michelle Bennett]
Singer/songwriter Courtney Hartman has released new album, With You, arising from unexpected circumstances and a period of growth. The Wisconsin-based, Colorado-born singer, songwriter, and Producer and her husband were in the middle of rebuilding their small 1930s home in Eau Claire when they found out they were pregnant.
The money she’d put away to record a new album had to be spent on survival, but during a songwriting retreat, Hartman “felt a nudge to set aside the songs she was finishing to record and instead write through the journey of becoming a mother.”
Though she was at first resistant to the idea of writing about her private experience for public consumption, she listened to that initial urge.
As Hartman navigated the newness of motherhood and bouts of postpartum depression, she began making a list of mothers who had continued a life of creative work amidst caregiving. She began reaching out, “inviting these women into the songs she had begun.”
She says:
I can see now that I was looking for women a few steps ahead of me in the journey, to take my hand and show me that I would make it through.
Sarah Siskind, Dawn Landes, Ana Egge, Tift Merritt, Kristin Andreassen, and Emily Frantz Marlin of Watchhouse became Hartman’s co-writers alongside musical guests Rachel Sermanni, Ruth Ungar, Michaela Anne, Sarah Elstran, Liz Eldridge, and Sarah Krueger.
She continues:
It was clear what a wide net of mothers there were, present and past, to lean on and learn from. There were many others I watched from a distance—Allison Russell, Sara Watkins, Aoife O’Donovan, Abigail Washburn, Leslie Feist, and Anaïs Mitchell—knowing that I could make it through because they had.
I wanted to create this music with friends who had walked alongside my family, seen us on our lowest days, cooked us meals, pounded nails into our floorboards, and brought light into our lives.
A very special album release show for the album is set to take place in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on November 22nd. For more information, please visit courtneyhartman.com/tour.
