Those are the fitting first words Steve Perry sings with tremendous soul and conviction on “No Erasin’” — the life-affirming anthem that opens up Traces, his first solo album in nearly a quarter century due out everywhere October 5th. It is a rousing start to the most personal and emotionally powerful work yet from this legendary singer-songwriter who earned global fame as the voice of Journey before going on to significant solo success as well.
By any standard, Traces is an inspired and expansive work that has indeed been a long time coming. Yet in a very real way, Traces marks an extraordinary and welcome return to form that Steve Perry himself long assumed he would never make. Big and bold, yet intimate and revealing, Traces is not the sound of a veteran rock star dipping his toe back in the pool, but rather an artist who has reconnected with his music in a new way that surprised even Perry himself.
“The truth is, that I thought music had run its course in my heart,” Perry explains now. “I’d had an amazing time in an amazing band, and then the chance to express myself as a solo artist too. But I had to be honest with myself, and in my heart, I knew I just wasn’t feeling it anymore.”
Burned out by the exhaustion and excess all too common in the music business Perry made a fateful and, in his mind, necessary decision to step away from the business of music in the late Nineties. And to a remarkable degree, he never really looked back.
“For a long time, I could barely even listen to music,” Perry recalls now. “My last show with Journey was in February of 1987. Then one day, it hit me that I couldn’t do this anymore. I felt as if I had to jump off this merry-go-round — this big beautiful mothership that we had all worked so hard together to build.”
The Journey mothership proved to be one of the most highflying, influential and successful vehicles in rock history, as reflected by the band’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in April 2017. Perry made a rare public appearance at the ceremony to graciously thank his bandmates and their fans. “I thank you so much for all the music we’ve written and recorded together,” Perry said that night in Brooklyn. “It will be forever in my heart.” The classic hits Perry sang and wrote with Journey — including “Open Arms,” “Separate Ways (World’s Apart),” “Lights,” “Who’s Cryin’ Now,” “Any Way You Want It,” and the famously enduring “Don’t Stop Believin’” to name just a few — remain wildly popular around the world to this day.
Yet, even with that long legacy of success, Traces continues a musical story that goes back even further than Perry’s transformative time with Journey. Since his childhood growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Perry’s love of music had become the driving passion of his life, ultimately taking him to remarkable heights, both artistically and professionally. But instinctively, Perry knew the time had come to try another path in his life’s journey.
Paradoxically and — to many, perhaps inexplicably — Steve Perry, one of the defining voices of our times, had himself stopped believing. And so, he did the only thing he thought he honestly could do. “I stopped singing,” Perry explains, “and I started living life on its own terms.”
- (read more on steveperry.com)