Ricky Ross

Ricky Ross rose to prominence chiefly as the frontman of Deacon Blue, one of Scotland’s most commercially dominant acts across the late 1980s and early 1990s. Born in Dundee in 1957, he first played keyboards in assorted local groups before issuing the album So Long Ago on the independent Sticky Records label in 1984. Following advice from his publishers, he assembled the six-piece Deacon Blue the next year; the band subsequently delivered two number-one albums, When the World Knows Your Name and Our Town: The Greatest Hits, together with 17 Top 40 singles before splitting in 1994. After signing a solo contract with Epic, he finally released his second album, What You Are, and scored a modest hit with its lead single “Radio On,” yet disappointing sales led to his departure from the roster, so that his 1997 follow-up, New Recording, appeared on his own imprint. Two further solo sets, This Is the Life (2002) and Pale Rider (2005), followed, but a 1999 publishing agreement with Warner Chappell steered most of his energies toward writing for other performers. He supplied the hit “High” for James Blunt and “I’m All Over It” for Jamie Cullum, while also contributing tracks to albums by Will Young, KT Tunstall, and Emma Bunton, even as he made occasional guest appearances with the reformed Deacon Blue. In 2007 he began hosting the Americana-focused Another Country show on BBC Radio Scotland and, with his wife Lorraine, formed the duo Ross McIntosh, which released the alt-country album The Great Lakes through Cooking Vinyl in 2009. He returned to solo work with Trouble Came Looking in 2013 and toured the record in acoustic form; for his seventh album he captured Short Stories, Vol. 1 during a two-day session in Hamburg that combined newly recorded Deacon Blue songs with original solo material.