Short Stories Vol.2

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Doing those shows, I realised what worked best for the audience was knowing I was going to do a cross-section of my solo things, but also lots of Deacon Blue songs. Because that’s been my life, really – it’s more central to me than anything else. Lorraine was upstairs, self-isolating with Covid – I’d recently got over my bout – and it just started to take shape in this little studio here. It wasn’t really intentional, I just got this creative spur, and ended up writing and recording it at the same time, which is quite unusual for me.”

For all these years I’ve told stories. Sometimes these days I also tell them on the radio. I’ve met some amazing people and their stories need told too.

The important things

There’s lots of stuff about the band, but also lots that’s very personal – material that would really be of no consequence to anyone else, but meant a lot to me. There are two big things that I’ve left out,” he adds. “I don’t talk much about my children [he has four, three of them with Lorraine], and I don’t really talk about my first marriage. Because that’s someone else’s story, and I didn’t think it was fair.”

There are sepia-toned recollections of the roles his grandparents played in his young life, and insights into the stifling nature of an upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren. Passages about the dawning realisation of his father’s mental health struggles and, much later, well-intentioned events going wrong in the days preceding his mother’s death in 2020, are especially moving. His recollections of his days as a youth worker in Dundee, and as a young teacher in Glasgow, suggest that had the nascent songwriting flame not taken hold, working with young people would have delivered their own, harder-won, joys. But I do reflect in the book on some of the more difficult moments, and some things I might have done differently. I went through a time in the late 90s, early 2000s where I was kind of directionless. I think that’s the search for most people – to realise when you are happy, to realise when life is good. I don’t want to use the cliche of Calvinism, but there is a sense in which sometimes that can dominate our lives, that somehow you deny yourself.

A story of a life

Physically, emotionally and spiritually, you’re moving. There’s a little place on Mull where I used to take kids when I was a youth worker, and we used to do a wee sing-song. In his memoir, Ross revisits his formative years growing up in Dundee, his early forays into music and the beginning, extraordinary success, fall-out, and re-emergence of Deacon Blue. Ross writes movingly and with great wit about the people and places that have meant the most to him, as well as his relationship with faith, politics, and the ever-changing challenges of being a musician.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re meeting the Pope or the Dalai Lama or the bloke three doors down,” says Ross. “What the reader really wants to know about is you and your emotions.”But I think there’s been a change in the way music is viewed. That thing that we grew up with, in the 70s and 80s, when you were either in or out, cool or not cool, you loved this band, so you hated that band…. That’s where I wrote all the songs that people know me for,” says the man behind such perfectly crafted pop gems as Dignity, Chocolate Girl and Real Gone Kid. When it comes down to it too it doesn’t matter who you are, everyone’s genuine experiences are interesting in the way that all accents are. It’s just how those experiences are interpreted.” Origins in Dundee

They go there because it’s a gathering place, and Glasgow is very similar. Bands think, ‘it happened here for them, it could happen for us’. So it’s kind of self-generating in some ways.”Unauthorised copying, reproduction, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited. Edel Germany GmbH, Neumühlen 17, 22763 Hamburg. These are the formative times. The things that shape an approach to life. Experiences at college then working in a more regular job for the first time. And I was I suppose just meeting a different set of people.” Bringing people together