It’sgoodtobeback onmyown.Istarted outthatway..there’s somethingveryraw andhonestaboutit
RICKY ROSS LOOKS BACK.. AND FORWARD Deacon Blue legend’s new album and tour will feature fresh material and a personal take on band’s old favourites
it felt long at our years into doing these was n’t think ng that’s s of songwriter nces you material more fun but gs. t wider. No an album dcheck, and listening bout pedals ampton. wn is about something I never see now. I had just left Dundee and moved to the south side of Glasgow. I was working in Maryhill as a teacher.
“It was just p ***** g down all the time. Dundee never had that much rain. I was never dressed for it properly. I was always wet by the time I got to work.
“I was only starting out but other people had been there for 10 or 15 years. They were doing their pools coupon on a Monday morning, thinking about escape.
“Work was an oppressive thing for them, they didn’t enjoy it.
“So I was writing songs about wanting to get out, about the town, about the weather, about work that was bringing them down instead of making them feel good.” Now he can no longer look to the staffroom for inspiration, Ricky has to look elsewhere.
One of the new songs on Short Stories, A Gordon For Me, was written for MND campaigner Gordon Aikman’s husband, Joe. Despite being on opposing sides of the independence debate, Gordon and Ricky became friends. He performed the song at Gordon and Joe’s wedding – but was terrified.
Ricky said: “My nerves floored me. My mouth was like sandpaper. I don’t think anyone noticed eventually but I knew. By the third song, I’d settled down but I had to work at it.”
Ricky is part of a generation of Scots musicians who have had lives beyond the recording studio.
Deacon Blue broke up in 1993 because the drummer, Dougie Vipond, wanted to pursue his career as a sports reporter.
Lorraine McIntosh is a successful stage and TV actress.
Pat Kane, of Hue and Cry, is as well-known as well as a political and cultural commentator as the guy who sang Looking For Linda.
Ricky presents two shows on Radio Scotland: Another Country and Sunday Morning.
He also has a less visible career as a songwriter, co-writing with Emma Bunton, KT Tunstall, Will Young, James Blunt and others.
He had no idea, when he gave up the classroom for the tour bus, that it would turn out this way.
He said: “I was in my late 20s and a Japanese film crew wanted to interview us after our first record. I said, ‘I think we’ll make three records and then we’ll split up.’ I could see the other guys shrinking.
“But I was almost right – what we did was four and then split up. My kids are now the age I was then. I know they can’t think beyond a year’s time. At that stage you just don’t have a plan and that’s OK.”
For a while after the band split up, Ricky would get “job envy”.
He said: “People would say ‘I’m really busy, I’ve got so things to do, so many emails’ and I would have nothing in my diary. I wouldn’t know what I was going to do. You have to ride the waves of that.
“You don’t know what life’s going to be – but that’s quite exciting.” ● Short Stories Vol 1 is on Earmusic Records next month. Ricky’s tour starts November 9.
Now we don’t think anything of doing a song that’s 30 years old
RICKY ROSS