Karen Peris

Half of the core couple behind dreamy alternative folk-pop project the Innocence Mission, Karen Peris made her debut on the Billboard 200 alongside her husband, Don, with their first full-length release, 1989′s The Innocence Mission. Her tender, earnestly bittersweet vocal delivery worked just as well on sentimental covers of songs like “Moon River” and ” Over the Rainbow” for their lullaby-themed seventh album, Now the Day Is Over, from 2004. The group later landed on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart with 2010′s My Room in the Trees. Karen Peris made her solo debut in 2012 with the like-minded Violet. Following the release of the Innocence Mission’s LP See You Tomorrow in 2020, Peris returned with the family-friendly solo album A Song Is Way Above the Lawn in 2021.
Emerging from Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the mid-’80s, the Innocence Mission’s wistful sound is led by the husband-and-wife duo of Don and Karen Peris. The limited EP Tending the Rose Garden appeared on Llist Records in 1986. Contemporary Christian star Amy Grant covered one of its songs, “Shadows,” on her Christian chart-topping 1988 album, Lead Me On. A&M soon signed the Innocence Mission and issued their eponymous full-length debut in 1989. It featured the lineup of Don and Karen Peris, bassist Mike Bitts, and drummer Steve Brown, and was produced by Larry Klein, then-husband of early Innocence Mission fan Joni Mitchell. The album spent ten weeks on the Billboard 200, peaking at number 167, and helped establish the group on the modern rock scene occupied by similarly minded folk-pop acts like 10,000 Maniacs and the Sundays. This lineup released two more albums for A&M, the Klein-produced Umbrella (1991) and the increasingly acoustic Glow (1995), which was produced by Dennis Henning (Camper van Beethoven, Throwing Muses). The latter album yielded the folky sleeper hit “Bright as Yellow,” which was included on the Empire Records soundtrack and led to multiple tours in support of Natalie Merchant.
After slimming down to an acoustic trio with the departure of Brown, the Innocence Mission began a new phase that would establish their direction over the next two decades. With Brown only making a single appearance on 1999′s Birds of My Neighborhood, they effectively became a chamber folk band, with Bitts moving largely to upright bass and the focus resting on Karen Peris’ acoustic songs. Just prior to the record’s release, they contributed a cover of John Denver’s “Follow Me” to a 1998 tribute album curated by Mark Kozelek. It was also included on Birds of My Neighborhood. The Innocence Mission began the millennium with Christ Is My Hope, a self-released collection of traditional hymns and folk songs (with all of the profits donated to hunger relief charities). Small Planes, a set of songs captured in the late ’90s between the release of Glow and Birds of My Neighborhood, arrived in 2001, with Don Peris issuing his own solo debut, Ten Silver Slide Trombones, that same year. Released in 2003, Befriended marked the group’s debut for Badman Recording Co. A collection of lullabies and traditional songs called Now the Day Is Over appeared in 2004 and was followed in 2006 by another solo outing from Don. Arriving in 2007, We Walked in Song became one of the Innocence Mission’s more widely praised albums of this period, receiving a widespread global release and even cracking Billboard’s Independent Albums chart in the U.S.
Following 2008′s Street Maps EP, the trio delivered the self-produced 2010 full-length My Room in the Trees. It proved to be their last release before a five-year gap, during which Karen Peris made her own solo debut with 2012′s Violet. Maintaining a signature style that focused on the Perises’ thoughtful songwriting and arrangements that ebbed and flowed between lush, orchestral vignettes and spare, fingerpicked folk songs, the Innocence Mission eventually released Hello I Feel the Same in 2015 on co-op label Korda. After Karen made a vocal appearance on former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde’s Lost Horizons album in 2017, Raymonde signed the Innocence Mission to his Bella Union label. They returned in mid-2018 with the lushly textured Sun on the Square, their debut for the label. For their next release, the band recorded at home with Karen multi-tracking most of the instruments herself, and Don and Mike Bitts adding parts here and there. The result was 2020′s sweetly nostalgic See You Tomorrow. Karen Peris then rejoined Raymonde for a track on Lost Horizons’ early 2021 release, In Quiet Moments. Her second solo album, A Song Is Way Above the Lawn, followed on Bella Union in October 2021. A kid-friendly release, it included contributions from Don as well as their children, Drew and Anna. ~ Timothy Monger & Marcy Donelson