Award-winning Singer Songwriter Cherie Camp releases Love and Blood
Love and Blood, a sweeping collection of new music from Cherie Camp
co-produced by Gemini Award winning film composer John Welsman available May 30, 2024
For Immediate Release – Toronto, Canada – May 14, 2024 -- Love and Blood, the brand-new release from songwriter and vocalist Cherie Camp features a stunning collection of deeply personal songs that capture the various chapters of the life of an artist, a mother and storyteller. Like complimentary colours on a colour wheel, the songs of Love and Blood assemble to create an immersive mood for the album that attempts to capture what we think about in the quieter moments, in stillness, after the events of the day.
“I suppose it reflects the uncertain, sometimes murky thoughts that come to me, to all of us I imagine, once the noise dies down and the light fades,” Cherie explains. "It’s a recording that the artist refers to as poetic confusion, an inward journey exploring themes of loss, regret, angst, inertia, resilience, courage and the inevitable process of letting go".
The songs of Love and Blood revealed themselves gradually through the arranging and recording process. Produced at their home studio during the pandemic lock down, Cherie and her musical partner and husband, John Welsman, had the luxury of time to follow their creative instincts and bring these songs to life choosing instruments and sounds that would give each one a unique character and a cinematic feel. John’s long career as an award-winning film composer is evident in the enveloping texture and beauty of the songs which can best be described as audio photographs.
In the title track, Love and Blood, is literally a confusion of dreaming and memory, and a wistful allusion to the romance, the depth of feeling of youthful relationships. In Blue Above and Below, we find allegorical themes of familial history, and the ache of missing fathers. While Moving Day deals with how to process change and disengage with the things that hold us to our past. Talking to Myself hints at passivity, at the disappointment of not acting on the things we dream or feel or think. The collection also includes a breathtaking re-imagining of Anna McGarrigle’s Heart Like a Wheel.
“These songs required a measure of reflection and perspective I didn’t have as a younger artist. I tried not to rely on craft but rather to follow an instinct line by line. I love serendipity and surprise in writing, and subtext in the music. We can put words on a page, but it’s the music that tells us how to feel about them.”
“The experience of producing this album was exhaustive but it was really fun too.” John notes “For me, after a career of listening and responding to the requests and directions of producers and directors, it was incredibly freeing to answer only to Cherie. That’s not to say she wasn’t a discriminating force throughout the process.
Throughout the songs gathered here, Cherie’s signature warm, natural voice is the true gift of this record. It was her unique sound that landed the vocalist a recording contract with WEA Canada and lead to her self-titled album Cherie Camp, a collection of original songs, co-writes and covers. Over the years she has written numerous songs in collaboration with Welsman, including a musical special for the Nelvana children’s series Franklin and Friends, and opening themes for Nelvana’s My Friend Rabbit and The Mighty Jungle. The films Ms. Conceptions and Stolen Miracle featured her song ‘Blow Out the Moon’. As a vocalist, she has worked with other recording artists and composers, most notably Shirley Eikhard and Gwen Swick, Jane Siberry, and Mark Korven, and her voice is a feature on many of Welsman’s scores. Cherie Camp was nominated for Most Promising Female Vocalist at the 1984 CASBY Awards (U-Know Awards.) She and Welsman earned a Genie Award for Original Song for Oh Love, written for Nurse.Fighter.Boy, the pUNK Films movie directed by the late Charles Officer and produced by Ingrid Veninger. Camp was also a featured performer in Jeremy Podeswa’s film Standards, and her voice was featured on the score for Patricia Rozema’s film White Room.
John Welsman is a two-time Canadian Screen Award recipient for Best Original Score, a five-time Gemini Award recipient (and thirteen-time nominee), and the winner of the Genie Award for Achievement in Music for Nurse Fighter Boy. His extensive credits include TV series Road to Avonlea, Franklin and Friends, The Mighty Jungle, My Friend Rabbit, The Twilight Zone, and the TV movies Stolen Miracle, Murder Most Likely, and Borrowed Hearts. Documentary films include James Cameron and Simcha Jacobivici’s The Lost Tomb Of Jesus, West Wind - The Vision of Tom Thomson, Tales from the Organ Trade, and David Suzuki’s The Sacred Balance. His recent dramatic feature films include East Bay, Beyond What Remains, Nurse Fighter Boy, and MODRA.
Love and Blood was produced by Cherie Camp and John Welsman and features performances by Amy and Sophie Welsman on background vocals, and son-in-law Mack Longpré on drums. All other instruments are played or programmed by John. The album was mixed and mastered in both stereo and Dolby Atmos by Jeff Wolpert of Desert Fish Studios whose discography includes albums by Loreena McKennitt, Holly Cole, Great Big Sea, Anne Murray, The Canadian Tenors and The Blues Brothers Soundtrack to name a few.
Love and Blood will be previewed at an invite-only listening event at the Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West in Toronto on May 30 and officially released on May 31, 2024
