As expected, Steve Perry‘s first album in over two decades, Traces, is making a major mark on the Billboard charts. The album, which is the former-Journey frontman’s first Top 10 solo debut, entered the Billboard 200 Albums Chart at Number Six “with over 73,000 total copies in sales and consumption.” The album entered the Billboard Album Chart at Number Four, and entered at Number Two on the magazine’s Current Rock Album Chart.

Traces is Perry’s third solo set, following 1984’s Street Talk, which peaked at Number 12, and 1994’s For The Love Of Strange Medicine, which debuted and peaked at Number 15. Journey’s last album with Steve Perry was 1996’s Trial By Fire, which topped out at Number Three on the Billboard 200 charts — with its single, “When You Love A Woman” hitting Number One on the magazine’s Adult Contemporary Chart.

Steve Perry issued a statement thanking fans for the album’s immediate success, saying: “All I was hoping for was someone to listen to the emotional expression of these new songs after my years of absence. This has been beyond my wildest dreams, and I thank you all so very much.”

Steve Perry told Pulse that it was a long road– both personally and creatively — to get from the end of Journey to where he is today:

“When I left the group, 31 years ago — in about February of ’87, I think — when I first said, ‘I’m walkin’ away,’ I lost my passion for it and that was frightening to me because I discovered a passion for music and singing when I was, like, six, seven years old; and it had never left me, and it had gone away and that scared the hell outta me. So, I knew the only thing I could do was stop. After an incredible, amazing ride — being in a band like Journey, it was like being in a satellite circling the Earth for a while. It was time to come down and land in my hometown again and reconnect.”

Much of Traces touches on Steve Perry’s year-and-a-half whirlwind romance with late psychologist Kellie Nash as she was battling stage four breast cancer, which led to her death in 2012 at age 40: “I found Kellie and lost Kellie. (My) passion for music returned. It was amazing. Y’know, everybody thinks they have a pretty good heart, but when your heart really gets broken. . . I mean a heart really isn’t broken until it’s completely broken. And in my case, that was the completion of a broken heart — and I’m telling you, that’s the good news — that’s not the bad news. Because from that comes a whole ‘nother perspective on life and a whole ‘nother perspective on music.”