"Annabella" Single Coming in March!

The announcement that I announced was coming is here!
I'm thrilled to tell you that there's new Chris Strei music coming in March!

My new single "Annabella" will have a release party and attendees will receive a special exclusive gift to take home and hopefully a new single in their digital music libraries. That's all I can promise right now though.

In February 2020 I started writing a small collection of reflective songs about my experiences as we welcomed and said our farewells to Annabella. We left the hospital the day the world seemingly shut down and after spending two sleepless nights in the hospital, paired with thankful grief, the timing couldn't have perfect for us. I can't express enough how that statement is purely from a introspective point of view. I just had a room finished to be my studio and I spent lots of time sitting there, thinking, noodling on guitar, and writing reflective songs the way I do with any heavy situation in my life. It's how I cope. While I was just writing songs about what I was feeling and experiencing, one of the artists that has influenced my songwriting the most released a concept meant to tell a continuous story. Without even hearing it, it sparked the idea of arranging these songs into a journal style concept. I thought it would be a great idea to make this EP something of a musical short story. The rollercoaster of anticipation for Annabella's arrival mixed with dread that she'd be departing shortly after, a bittersweet tribute to life we barely got to know. The emotional fallout of going home and a glimpse of what we lived after leaving the hospital while the world shut down, and some nostalgic reflection on one aspect of who I was and who I'm going to be.

I wouldn't necessarily call this a follow up EP to "The Moonshine", or even a commercial release type thing. This is something very personal that I wrote to reflect on 18 months of breaking down and rebuilding as a person, and also a feat I wanted to take on as a producer and musician. I played everything myself with what I had. The production style is meant to coincide with the lockdown and isolation we've been going through the last 2 years.