Karp-Foley Band release cancer benefit CD ‘Live for Hope’

ATLANTA — It seems fitting that Peter Karp would release separate live albums featuring himself and his former band, as well as current Karp-Foley Band member — and blues singer of significant renown in her own right — Sue Foley, as part of a package to benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

The disease has impacted the bluesman’s life in a profound way. His wife, Mary Lou Karp, died of ovarian cancer in 2009, and after finally picking up the pieces of a shattered existence with the help of Foley and getting back to music, Karp wanted to pay tribute to Mary Lou while helping others in danger of a similar fate.

“Ovarian cancer is a silent kind of disease, but it’s very insidious, very vicious,” Karp said in a phone interview. “In my life I’d never really known anything about cancer. Going through that with Mary Lou was a profound, painful experience. I’ll never see life the same way again.”

In an effort to find a fitting tribute to his late wife, Karp suddenly remembered a live performance Sirius satellite radio had recorded in 2004 at the historic Bottom Line in New York with his band at the time, the Roadshow Band, and Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor. That, he figured, might be something to work with.

“The thing was, after that show, I just kind of moved on and didn’t think much about it,” Karp said. “But I got this idea that maybe that would be something fans could buy and we could use the proceeds to benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. The trouble was, no one knew where the masters of the recording were.”

With a little detective work, Karp found the recorded session in a New York studio. When he told Foley, whom he’d developed an artistic friendship with and later joined to form the Karp-Foley Band, his plan, she said, “Well, I have this album I recorded from about the same time that we could add to the mix.”

So the two albums — Karp’s Bottom Line “The Arson’s Match” session with Taylor and Foley’s award-winning live acoustic blues session “Change” recorded at Hugh’s Room in Toronto — were morphed into “Live for Hope.” Fans of the artists may, for a $20 donation to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, obtain copies of the double album at http://www.ocrf.org/downloads/live-for-hope-peter-karp-sue-foley or http://www.airplaydirect.com/music/LiveforHope/.

The Karp-Foley Band have two performances at Fire & Wood Songwriters in Alpharetta tonight and Saturday.

Karp, whose creative journey has taken him on a long and winding path, signed a record deal at an early age, left music in search of a “more stable” career and to focus on raising a family, and eventually worked in such disparate fields as film and musical production, But eventually he returned to his first love.

“Yeah, it came back to that,” he said. “There was always that creative itch that I needed to scratch. I was raised by an Army Air Force captain who taught me that taking care of others was the most important thing I could do. I did other things for a 10-, 15-year period, but I think I always knew that I’d come back to doing music.”

He met Foley at a festival, and when the two went their separate ways they knew they’d made a musical connection. They stayed in contact through letters, something that Karp credits with helping him survive the horrors of his wife’s ordeal.

“A lot of what happens in music is happenstance, unpredictable, you might even call it preordained,” Karp said. “Sue and I wrote these letters back and forth, and in them I was able to express the turmoil that I was dealing with. After Mary Lou passed away, Sue and I got together. We took those letters and turned them into songs.”

Karp and Foley recorded two albums — “He Said, She Said” and “Beyond the Crossroads” — and have since been playing together.

“In this business, you’re always looking to get inspired,” Karp said. “Sue and I inspire each other. I wake up every day feeling excited. This ‘Live for Hope’ project is the first thing I’ve done in my life musically that supersedes me as an artist.

“I hear people complaining about things like bills and break-ups and job issues, and I kind of smile. I think, ‘Yeah, but you get to have these problems. You’re still here.’”