An emotional high point from Steve Perry’s new expanded edition of The Season finds the former Journey frontman singing a duet with his late dad. He’s now released an inventive video for “Call Me Irresponsible,” seen below.
The song was constructed after Perry stumbled upon a touching gift from long ago.
“My father, Ray Perry, was a singer and when I was a child he would sing to me at bedtime,” Perry reveals in an official statement. “I recently found a karaoke cassette of my dad singing that he sent me back in 1993 for Christmas. The one song that touched me the most was ‘Call Me Irresponsible.’ His voice was lovely.”
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Now dubbed The Season 3, Perry’s latest album features five other newly recorded songs including “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Let It Snow.” Sessions were co-produced with his Traces collaborator Thom Flowers, and mainly recorded at Perry’s home studio with returning drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and multi-instrumentalist Dallas Kruse.
Together, they helped Perry to a reunion with his father that was decades in the making.
“Using technology, we pulled his voice off the cassette and recorded beautiful music around him. Once that was done, an unfulfilled dream of singing with my father was now possible,” Perry said. “You see, mom and dad divorced when I was 7, and dad and I never saw much of each other after that.”
The completed update of “Call Me Irresponsible” became “a very emotional experience for me. His voice was just as I remembered it as a child,” Perry added. “At the end of his cassette, dad says, ‘Merry Christmas, God love ya.’ To hear him speak again brought tears to my eyes.”
Perry first began exploring Yuletide favorites with the Silver Bells EP in 2019. His original full-length version of The Season was issued in 2021, followed by a deluxe edition with 10 more tracks in 2022 – including Perry’s first original holiday song, “Maybe This Year.”
He initially returned to these songs in hopes of reigniting the holiday spirit after a season was lost to the pandemic. “The ones I recorded were the ones that touched me most when I was a child, that emotionally meant the most to me and conjured up the spirit of Christmas — that was my decision-making process,” Perry told UCR.
The new video was designed and animated by Tolga Tarhan.
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