Matthew Alexander - A Mourning Song

“My grandmother Ida was the kindest of souls,” says Matthew Alexander in tracing the roots of “A Mourning Song,” the second of three advance singles from his eighth album, Midnight Dream Station, slated for a May 2023 release. “She emigrated to this country from Russia at the turn of the 20th century with my grandfather Harry. If attention is love, Ida really loved her grandchildren. She would come live with us for three months every year at our summer house in East Quogue, Long Island. Ida would spend countless hours with her grandchildren, playing cards on the screened back porch, listening to us practice the piano on my Dad’s Steinway and making her potato latkes, whenever my mother would allow her in the kitchen.
“I was 17 when Ida died. I wrote this song shortly thereafter and it sat in the proverbial vault for more than 50 years. When the pandemic hit, I took the song out of its crypt, dusted off the cobwebs and added a new line and bridge to reflect the shock of the skyrocketing world-wide mortality levels brought on by COVID 19.
“What lives on after death, however, is the memory of the person we lose – and if we are lucky, the love that they showed us. I feel my mother’s love every time I interact with my own children, trying to show them the same love that I remember receiving from her, my father and his mother, my grandmother.
“As for the title, my most profound insights occur to me in the morning. And thus a song about grieving, i.e. mourning, contains many references to the earliest part of the day.”
Alexander has been a singer-songwriter since he was 16. New York based Bornwin Music published twelve of his earliest compositions, pitching them to groups such as the Turtles. He opened for Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel “back in the day,” jammed with Carly Simon and Bonnie Raitt, studied with Paul Simon, and became known for his warm vocals, intricate finger picking, and captivating songwriting and engaging storytelling during his live shows. His eighth solo album, Soul River, peaked at #11 on the Folk Alliance International Album Chart for November 2020 with “Steel Rail Blues” reaching #3 on its Song Chart the month before, but by then the pandemic had forced him to slow down and sharpen his focus on his craft.