Myriam SantosFormer Journey singer Steve Perry has returned with his first solo album in more than 20 years, Traces. The album was part of a promise to the love of his life, Kellie Nash: Before she died of cancer in 2012, she asked him to stop isolating himself from the world. And Perry says he believes that she knows, somehow, that he’s kept his promise.
“The album came out Friday, October 5, and when I was done with all the press that day, I sat in my hotel room, and I was overwhelmed with emotion,” Perry tells ABC Radio.
“I just started to cry..I just felt such a presence of her in my heart that I just was overwhelmed,” he continues. “And I went with it. I just flowed with the feelings, and it was as if we were together again, emotionally. Because if that’s the only place that I can feel her, then I’m gonna go there.”
But anyone who listens to the album can literally feel Kellie’s presence: Perry has included a recording of her laughter on one of the songs, “Call On Me.”
“Soon as I heard it, I knew that it need[ed] to be…placed into the outro of ‘Call On Me,'” he explains. “‘Cause her laughter was a thing I lived for. To get her laughing…it was just food for the soul for me. I could not stop once I got her laughing.”
But Perry wants fans to know that not all the songs on Traces are songs about loss — although they all do have one thing in common: emotion.
“That’s exactly what I wanted [the album] to be: pure, honest emotion,” he tells ABC Radio. “That’s all I wanted, was [for] it to be emotionally believable.”
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