Ricky Ross & Lorraine McIntosh: Deacon Blue's The Great Western Road

Just before we get wired into this episode, a quick reminder I’ll be in conversation with the brilliant writer David Keenan - whose hallucinogenic books include Xstabeth and This Is Memorial Device - about his new collection of music writing, Volcanic Tongue, live from Edinburgh's Portobello Bookshop, on March 27th - there’ll be loads of tunes too - and we’d love you to join us… 

But onto this episode, and it's with a band I've loved madly since I was at primary school...

It's 40 years since the early days of Deacon Blue, and over 35 since since their debut, Raintown, defined the landscape of 80s Glasgow, and its follow-up, When The World Knows Your Name, made the band a household name - and knocked Madonna off the top of the charts...

They toured all the theatres, sold out arenas, broke our hearts - or certainly mine - when they broke up in 1994, and then they made up for it - and with each other - back in 1999...

Their leading lights have changed since then... Bassist Ewen Vernal left for other musical adventures, and we lost beloved guitarist Graeme Kelling in 2004... But Ricky Ross, Dougie Vipond, Lorraine McIntosh and James Prime are still as fired up as ever - now further stoked by Lewis Gordon, and co-writer and producer Gregor Philp...

They're back with a new album, The Great Western Road, which is a gift of a title for Deacon Blue and their driving take on their America: that big old street runs right through Glasgow - and across the band's history - like a stick of rock... And they were always big on going away, and coming home with souvenirs...

When they announced the new LP, and released its lead single, Late 88 - their biggest chart success in decades - I'll tell you right now, I slid straight into Ricky's DMs, and told him how much I loved in an unsolicited ten-paragraph diatribe…

That’s lower than the word count for the liner notes I wrote for the band's You Can Have It All and All The Old 45s releases a couple of years ago, but it was still quite a lot...

Anyway, despite all that, he and Lorraine invited me round to their house for a coffee, and for a chat for A Kick Up The Arts...

We'll be discussing this more, incidentally - along with the rest of the band - at Glasgow's Oran Mor on March 26th for two acoustic sets and album launch gigs, and if you're quick, you can maybe grab the final tickets for the matinee show...

But meanwhile, back at theirs, for this podcast chat, Lorraine was concerned about her first pot of coffee, so she made it twice, then we sat around their kitchen table, in the room next door to their home studio, where most Deacon Blue songs come to life these days...

We chatted about their recent Beyonce cover on Radio 2, and which band member paid for kebabs with Raintown demos in the 1980s - and how they re-joined forces with that debut album's engineer, Matt Butler, when they laid down this new LP at Rockfield Studios in Wales. 

We talked about The Great Western Road...