Deacon Blue have announced a brand new album and tour for 2025.
The Scottish pop favourites will release new studio album ‘The Great Western Road’ on March 21.
The album was recorded at legendary Welsh recording studios Rockfield Studios, and sees Ricky Ross and Deacon Blue guitarist and long term collaborator Gregor Philp return to production duties, having last produced the band’s last full length album, 2020’s ‘City Of Love’.
2025 marks 40 years since Ricky Ross met Dougie Vipond and they started to form Deacon Blue, with the songs on ‘The Great Western Road’ reflecting the journey the band has taken since then.
The album will be preceded by the single ‘Late ’88’ on November 29, which "fondly remembers the care-free excitement of those early days".
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Ricky Ross said: “It’s just the next part of the adventure and it’s as exciting now as it was back in 1988”.
Deacon Blue will perform a limited run of theatre shows late March / April ‘25 to herald the release of ‘The Great Western Road’, including a show at Edinburgh's Usher Hall on Sunday, March 30, followed by a mammoth 15-date arena tour across the UK and Ireland, which kick off in Liverpool on September 19.
The arena shows will see the band play Wembley Arena for the first time since 1990 and finish with two hometown shows at the Glasgow OVO Hydro on Friday, October 10 and Saturday, October 11.
Ricky Ross said of the two differing sets of dates: “I love the idea that a circus coming to town is a temporary existence, a little bit of magic suddenly appears in the middle of a town or a village and then it goes away. It’s very similar to what you do live. The live experience is so ephemeral, at the end of a show people lose all their inhibitions, and then it’s over. You have to be there. That’s what’s magical about it.”
“There will be two different shows, we’re curating a show that changes and evolves, pulling out little surprises every now and again. The theatres are more intimate and give us a chance to bring out one or two things that we wouldn’t do in the arenas. They give us a chance to play songs from the new album and songs from other albums that we have never played before. And we have some amazing nights at the big shows in the arenas, we suit the show to the place we’re playing and our mantra is ‘we want people to have the best night of their lives’. Every night has got to be brilliant.”
Tickets for Deacon Blue's 2025 shows will go on sale on at 10am on November 29.
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