Matthew Alexander

The Matter of the Heart drops 5/15/26.

“Alexander's music reflects a lifetime of lived experience, filtered through an Americana lens both timeless and fresh"

Cashbox Canada, 4/24/26                                                        

BIOGRAPHY

A songwriting prodigy, distinctive guitar stylist, and younger product of the Cambridge-Boston folk scene of the 1960s, Matthew Alexander has performed and recorded for decades. As a solo artist and as founding member of the folk-trio Moonshine, he opened in the early seventies for Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, and Billy Joel.

Raised in Manhattan by his classical composer father and poet mother, Alexander took lessons in acoustic guitar from the late Artie Traum and Jack Baker while developing a finger picking style modeled after Dave Van Ronk and Mississippi John Hurt. Tin Pan Alley tunesmith Lou Stallman discovered Alexander as a 16-year-old songwriter and published his first dozen compositions with Bornwin Music, pitching them to The Turtles and others. Warner Brothers Music, Beechwood-Capital, and Four Star Music, among others, have published his songs in the half century since. His work placed highly in the Music City Songwriting Competition and New York’s Intercollegiate Folk Festival.

He has appeared at The Ark (Ann Arbor), The Troubadour and Songwriters’ Showcase (Los Angeles), Sander's Theater (Cambridge), New Music Showcase (Atlanta), Kenny's Castaways (NYC). and the Double Door, the Evening Muse, Visulite Theater, Latta Plantation Folk Festival, Tosco Music Party, and Dale Halton Theater (Charlotte).

Alexander has released 8 CDs to date on Charlotte based Caravan Records. Alexander’s 7th CD, 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. In a May 17th, 2023 review of  Alexander’s 8th album Midnight Dream Station, John Apice, Associate Editor of Americana Highways wrote: “Alexander possesses that same genuine tonality found in the voices of John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Jon Dee Graham,  Buddy Miller and John Martyn…the words and the music matter first.

His artistic credits also include a stint as the rehearsal pianist for the SNL feeder group, ​the Groundlings, a guest appearance on the hit show ​One Day at a Time ​and composer of songs that have received airplay throughout the world as well as on NPR and the Discovery Channel. He appeared alongside Alannis Morrissette and Jewel in an internationally streamed conference on Resilience and Health on September 9th 2025 (www.resiliencyandhappiness.com). Caravan Records will release Alexander's ninth CD, The Matter of the Heart, in May, 2026. 

Matthew Alexander Discography 

The Matter of the Heart (2025)

Midnight Dream Station ( 2023) 

Soul River ( 2020) 

Three Minute Movie (2015) 

Daredevil Angel (2008)

Early Recordings (2005)

American Boy (1999)

April Heart (1992)

Wishing I Had Wings (1987, 2011) 

THE MATTER OF THE HEART 

LINER NOTES

"They say a poet is someone who manages in a lifetime out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning five or six times. So it is with most songwriters. When we get hit by lightning and a song comes we grab it – maybe once or twice a year, if we are lucky.

I never intended to put out nine albums. The new songs always drove the next record. In this regard I guess I have been twice blessed by -what I like to call - the “songwriting gods.” On each occasion, the “gods” parted the clouds, inspired dozens of songs and allowed me to hear the sound of my own heart. The first such occasion was when I returned from the original Woodstock, painted the floor of my off-campus bedroom sea-blue, scrawled lyrics and sketched drawings on the living room walls and wrote 30 songs in 8 months. I like to say that it was good living on the sea that year

The second occasion that the “songwriting gods” visited me was when Covid 19 forced the world to be still. The silence allowed me to once again hear the sound of my own heart. I was like a dog in heat – writing about everything I could get my hands on – my brother’s suicide, the social anxieties in the country, impossible love, endings and beginnings, a parent’s wisdom and a mysterious death on the Suwannee. The songs coalesced and formed a record. The Matter of the Heart begins and ends with a musical prelude and postlude. As it turns out, the quieter I became the more I could hear. I hope my album allows listeners to hear the sound of their own hearts and lead them toward what is most meaningful."

Matthew Alexander September 15, 2025