As a follow-up to his 2008 album Resurrection Letters Vol. II, poetic songwriter/singer and Centricity Music recording artist Andrew Peterson is gearing up for the release of two new records, Resurrection Letters: Prologue this Friday and Resurrection Letters Vol. 1 on March 30th. 

In a recent blog posted on rabbitroom.com, Andrew told the thoughtful story behind the new projects, the decade-long gap between the albums and why volume two came first: "Once we started really digging into the songs, though, I had the feeling that they were more about the way Jesus's resurrection plays itself out in our lives rather than the resurrection itself. What if, I thought, this was part two of a larger work, and part one was specifically about Jesus rising again? Since we were already entrenched in that album and I couldn't exactly stop everything and write a bunch of songs about the greatest moment in the history of the universe, I hatched the dubious plan to stay the course but title it Resurrection Letters, Vol. 2," he says of how the first album got it's name.

"I found myself for the next few years explaining again and again why there was no volume one. There was the daunting prospect of writing a body of songs about the Christ's resurrection--daunting mainly because I didn't have a clear sense of how to go about it. Should it be narrative, like Behold the Lamb of God? Should it be avant garde, like an artsy Bon Iver record? Or should it be a bunch of corporate worship songs about Easter? All that to say, I found a lot of good reasons to put it off, and released a few books and four albums between the release of volume two and now. Listeners asked me again and again about volume one, and I would wince every time. Honestly, as the centrality of the resurrection became clearer and clearer to me, from a theological standpoint, the less I felt up to the task."

While Andrew admits he struggled to write this album, last year he finally felt that it was time. With producer and friend Ben Shive at the helm, Andrew stepped into the studio last October to begin recording volume one: "I'm glad it took ten years to write this album, because I understand the resurrection better now, and long for it more than ever. My dream for Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1 is that it would be the kind of record people turned up to eleven on Easter Sunday, when the world gets its first blush of spring after the long winter, when the cherry trees are in blossom and daffodils are bursting from the ground and Christians all over the world celebrate something that happened--it really happened--two millennia ago." The record will make its debut March 30th. 

Andrew is also releasing a five-track EP, "a prequel to the prequel," Resurrection Letters: Prologue this Friday, just in time for Lent. "But it felt odd writing about Christ's victory over death without spending at least some time on his death itself. That led to the idea of Resurrection Letters: Prologue. In the spirit of Lent, the season of fasting that precedes Easter, we put together Prologue, a collection of five songs that take us from the last words of Jesus on the cross to his interment in the tomb. And then comes the long wait for spring. My hope is that the listener would use those five songs during Lent and Holy Week to dwell on the terrible road Jesus had to walk in order to conquer not just sin, but the grave. My hope is that they would defer listening to volume one until the breaking of the dawn on Easter Sunday--and then that they would sing them out at the top of their lungs, loudly enough that the world would wonder what all the fuss is about."

Read more of Andrew's blog at resurrection-letters-one-album-three-parts-ten-years and follow him on Facebook here for continued updates as new music approaches.