Mipso, Courtney Hartman, Shane Leonard

media release: The songs of Courtney Hartman’s upcoming album, With You, began in the quiet and isolation of a heavy season for the Wisconsin-based, Colorado-born singer, songwriter, and producer. Hartman and her husband were in the middle of gutting and rebuilding their small 1930s home in Eau Claire when they found out they were pregnant. “In the months that followed, a string of unexpected challenges arose,” she describes. A long series of unfortunate events saw the money she’d put away to record a new album spent on survival and sustenance; a blow to her spirit, but a subtle shift giving way to a different path altogether. 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. At first resistant to the idea of writing about her private experience for public consumption, she listened to that initial urge, shifting focus to these new songs, realizing later that she’d found a new focal point, a different purpose, amidst this chaotic season of life. And then her daughter was born. 

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. Her list spilled over the page, and she began reaching out, inviting these women into the songs she had begun. “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. “It was clear what a wide net of mothers there were, present and past, to lean on and learn from,” said Hartman. “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.”

This was the first stone in the foundation of the community surrounding With You. With her album budget spent on groceries and bills, Hartman knew she would need financial help to record again. For the first time in her career, she turned to her community-at-large through crowdfunding. “Asking for help like this was one of the hardest things I had ever done,” she shares. “But 557 friends, family, and fans came alongside me to help bring With You into being. I’ve never felt more humbled or more supported.”  That support allowed her to record With You with her musical community in Eau Claire. “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,” Hartman says.

The resulting album, full of that community, self-trust, and love—and piloted by motherhood in so many different forms—is due out on November 14th. Today, Hartman shared the music video for With You’s leadoff single, “Bright Eye.” “Bright Eye was an early nickname for my daughter,” says Hartman. “Her eyes shined, and as she began to see the world and our home and me, it changed how I saw those things too.” The video, filmed by Kyle Lehman and edited by Erik Elstran, was shot over multiple days in the recording studio and in Hartman’s family home. “These shots were a culmination of what those days felt like: a bright winding blur of friends and songs.”

Fans can stream or purchase “Bright Eye” today, watch the beautiful music video right here, and pre-order With You ahead of its November release right here.