Cherie Call
Cherie Call is a singer and songwriter, with seven full-length albums of original music. She was born and raised in Mesa, Arizona, but currently lives in Utah. As a teenager, she chose to write a song as part of a Personal Progress project. Personal Progress is a program for teenage girls who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of this faith are sometimes referred to as Mormons. Girls are encouraged to set and accomplish goals in a variety of life-experience categories. Initially she used poems and scriptures as the words, but eventually began to write her own lyrics. She began by writing for piano, but in college chose the guitar to accompany her music.
Call graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.A. in Media Music in 1997. She and songwriting classmate Tyler Castleton then worked on her first album. She paid the recording costs herself, working a full-time job during the night shift as a reservations agent for Southwest Airlines and recording after work whenever she had enough money to pay for a session. Utilizing the flight benefits she received from her job, she traveled extensively, performing wherever she traveled. The completed album was successful enough to secure an investor for the second album. She eventually signed with Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain label and was asked to open for popular LDS group Jericho Road. While touring with them, she began a romance with her future husband, Joe Anderson, who was the sound man for the tour. They had dated a few times in college, but felt too much pressure from others concerning the progress of the relationship.
She has written soundtrack music for a number of independent films and music for LDS Especially for Youth albums. She continues to perform and record and is very popular with both youth and adult listeners.
Today, she and her husband have three children, and Call considers herself a stay-at-home songwriter. The video below was inspired by one of her children, who was wearing butterfly wings but wanted to add a superhero cape. When she realized that was too complicated, she said, “You don’t need a cape if you’re already a butterfly.”
Sources: Stay-at-Home-Songwriter Cherie Call produces Children and Albums, Mariah Proctor, Meridian Magazine.
