Steve Perry will not let the flame go out on his comeback solo album, Traces. He’s reissuing it this spring with five bonus cuts for a deluxe edition. The record will be available digitally, on CD and on two, 180-gram vinyl slabs; he’s even souping up one of the double-LP versions with a 3-D lenticular cover. The updated versions are available now.
“These bonus tracks — ‘October in New York,’ ‘Angel Eyes,’ ‘Call On Me,’ ‘Could We Be Somethin’ Again,’ and ‘Blue Jays Fly’ — are some of my most favorite songs in this 15-song collection,” Perry said in a statement. “I’m so glad they will now be available everywhere.”
The singer is also teasing the release of a video for “We’re Still Here,” a song on Traces’ original track list, for a future release. The record company is calling it his first official music video since Journey’s “When You Love a Woman” in 1996, despite the full performance clip on YouTube.
Traces marked the first release of new music from Perry since 1998’s Greatest Hits + Five Unreleased and his first real album since Journey’s Trial by Fire in 1996. At the time of Traces’ release, Perry said that he had fallen out of love with music sometime in the Nineties, but that a woman he had a relationship with encouraged him to return to music. When she was dying of cancer in 2012, she encouraged him to put himself back into the world. “She said, ‘If something ever happens to me, I want you to make one promise,’” Perry told Rolling Stone. “ ’Promise me you won’t go back into isolation. If you do, I fear this would all be for naught.’” So he decided to make music again.
Although he’s put out the album and gone on a press tour, Perry has not announced any concerts since releasing the album. His last solo Steve Perry gig was in 1995.