A Bonus Q&A With Ricky Ross Of Deacon Blue
Music Minded 4th March 2021

 A Bonus Q&A with Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue
This past January, I did an interview with Ricky Ross, the singer/songwriter of veteran Glasgow pop/rock hitmakers Deacon Blue, for American Songwriter magazine. Ross also hosts Another Country, a weekly Americana music-based program on BBC Radio Scotland.Our chat included additional tidbits about the stellar new 'Riding on the Tide of Love' album, Ross' career and more that longtime Deacon Blue fans should be interested in checking out...

Question: On the title track "Riding on the Tide of Love" and "Nothing’s Changed," you really give your falsetto vocal range a workout. Did it take long to nail those vocals?
Answer: You know, it’s funny. Someone said to me that in the last 10 years, it’s been interesting that I’ve done more falsetto. I was talking to and doing an interview with Gary Barlow from Take That. He’s a great singer. We did a little thing together and YouTube as well. I was interviewing him about his songwriting career for my radio program and he said he’d worked with John Shanks the producer. He said he used to lock him in the booth and said, ‘You’ve got to get this falsetto. You’ve really got to develop it.' I don’t have a big range. When it goes over a certain note, I can’t reach that, so I have to go into falsetto. It’s pragmatic in some ways.

Q: The closing tune “It’s Still Early" reminded me of your 1989 tune "Sad Loved Girl" or something off 1990's ‘Bacharach & David’ EP. The power is in its simplicity. Would you agree?
A: Yeah. It was a really rough demo. It was the only song that was completely unfinished. In fact, it was barely started. I got the file and all it had was a rough vocal; not even the finished lyric, [it was] me and the piano and a click track. I sent it to Jim and said, 'just take my piano off. You play it properly. Just play it really like you would play.’ It was beautiful. It came back and we built the song back up again. Then Lorraine and I did the vocals. That time I finished the lyric as well.

Q: Looking back to 2020's ‘City of Love’: it made impressive chart debuts in Scotland and the U.K. Many of the sales were physical LPs. Was that a pleasant surprise?
A: Yeah, it was a real surprise - especially in these times when there’s a whole generation that’s grown up now that don’t really buy records. So, for us, it was great. The fact that the vinyl was there as well. It just got such a lovely reaction and was nicely reviewed. That was great - the audience sending Facebook messages, tweeting messages, people were connecting with the album.

Q: Since the 2010s, Deacon Blue has consistently made new albums and isn’t just satisfied with resting on its laurels and coasting on the hits. Do you think that has helped to the band stay relevant?
A: I think it’s vital for the band and the audience [for] people feel the band is alive. They feel they’re watching something that’s an organic thing; not just, ‘I know what they’re gonna do when they play live.’ We did it for about 10 years. We were out there playing gigs. And you could just go back to your greatest hits. You put your life and soul into these shows. There was never a show that we did where we didn’t want to do our best.

But it came to a point where Lorraine and I came home one night and we said, ‘We’re either going to do this properly or we’re not going to do it.’ That decision eventually became ‘The Hipsters’ and so on. A number of things – Gregor joining us was a big, big factor - and us getting amazing new management…It’s been like a real renaissance for us. But making music has been like a lifeblood. That’s definitely the thing that has kept the band fresh.

Q: Back in December, the band launched a concert archive series with downloads available from throughout your career. How have fans responded so far?
A: The feedback has been great…there is a mainstream audience out there who are really happy you make albums; that you do gigs. They’ll be happy you do either of these things. Then there’s other people who want every B-side, every obscure track and want you to do them live. We had all these tapes sitting around [and wondered,] 'What are we gonna do with them? Is it gonna sit in a garage somewhere and at some point, they’ll get pulled out and not mean anything to anyone?' We’d rather get these things out.

There’s been a really great reaction. We tidied up the tapes, EQ’d and mastered them. They’re not [done with] the detail that go into doing a live album. Neither are they very expensive. They’re for fans. I think people are glad to be able to pick and choose a [particular] night.

Q: Since the pandemic hit, you've done various social media performances and events such as the #TimsTwitterListeningParty for 1987 debut album ‘Raintown.' Have you enjoyed doing them?
A: We really enjoyed it. Lorraine doesn’t do Twitter. We sat down one night and I had to explain Twitter to her. It was funny. We put ‘Raintown’ on vinyl on my stereo. It was so lovely: You see all these people tweeting from all over the world. We hadn’t listened to the album like that in a long time. That was a really special thing. I suppose it felt that night like you connected to an audience. That was the most live thing that we’ve done [in awhile].

We wanted to do a streaming show. We had it all planned [last] November, then the lockdown really hit hard. We were going to record where they had all these facilities in Liverpool. It was completely locked down. We thought, ‘We can’t go down there and put people at risk - our crew and in Liverpool by travelling.’ We had to cancel that. We still might do it. Who knows, we might do it if lockdown continues longer than we think. We’re hopeful that we’ll get back out and we won’t need to do it. The Twitter Party was actually so enjoyable because you felt you really were [in a shared experience].

Q: Were all of you surprised when listeners of Radio Clyde in Glasgow named “Dignity,” your first UK top 40 single off 'Raintown,' the best song of all time from Scotland?
A: Yeah, we were actually...It’s a lovely tribute to a song that seems to have found a place in people’s hearts.

Q: Your band is one of the few acts from Scotland that came to prominence in the 1980s, made it big and continued to tour and record - excluding the five year break. Do you take pride in that longevity?
A: You know, bands go through different phases and relationships. People always say to you, ‘Are you all friends? Do you all meet up when you’re off the road?’ You spend so much time together. That never happens. Ask any band. You’ve had to wait in airports for hours on end having to make up endless games. Sitting on buses. You’ve had every conversation you can ever have with each other.

The odd thing about this [past] year is despite the fact we’ve all been separate, we’ve all been more in touch and really valued each other’s support. Jim and Dougie, especially. [Original members] Graham and Ewen, these guys are like brothers to me. I never had any brothers, only a sister. They’re the brothers I never had. We went through amazing, sometimes great times. You also went through hard things. So, these people are really very close. I think the fact that we’ve survived all these different things makes us even closer. Now, with Gregor and Lewis – Gregor has been playing with us the last 13 years, way longer than the first time of the band. Lewis has for the last 10, 11 years. It’s amazing. We’re kind of a very close bunch.

Q: When it comes to the band’s catalog, do you think there are certain albums that stand the test of time more than others you’ve done?
A: Albums are what they are. Records sound the way they are because they were made in a certain time. That was the technology available. If it’s got good songs on it, I think it will always last longer. I was always keener to use organic instruments because I felt that they dated less. But it doesn’t really matter what you use or what you do, it still has the imprint of the reverbs and the recording process of the time.

There’s gonna be a reissue on vinyl of ‘Fellow Hoodlums.’ Last weekend, I had to listen to the files. The master of it. I hadn’t done that for a long, long time. I listened to it on my stereo system and I was like, ‘Wow, it sounds amazing!’ I sent it to the other guys, and we all had the same reaction. There were things I hadn’t heard since the mix. I think always with Deacon Blue, we made the best record we felt we could make at the time. B-sides, session tracks, all that kind of stuff - yeah, some of them were good; some of them not so good. They were extras. The albums themselves I felt all of them, I could say, hand on heart, we did the best we could.

Q: When you first started the BBC Scotland radio show in 2008, did it take some time getting used to being the interviewer instead of the subject?
A: It kinda did. It also felt liberating. I spent so much of my life talking about me. I’m so bored with me [laughs]. No one can talk about themselves. I defy anyone to do it. It gets so much, ‘How can I talk about me again?’ It was lovely to talk to people where you weren’t part of that conversation…[On commercial radio here], very few people get to go in and play the music they want to play. No one ever says to us, ‘Don’t play this or play that’…my producer and I have worked together for 13 years and are very close. I really enjoy it. I love it. It takes me out of my own space and makes me really enjoy other great songwriters. Country music for me is just a really great tradition of songwriting. It’s just fantastic.