The Art of Longevity

The Art of Longevity Season 11, Episode 5: Deacon Blue, with Ricky Ross

The Art of Longevity

Show Notes

With the album’s reduced commercial clout and declining role in music consumption, a dilemma crops up for all long-established bands involved in the endeavour of making a new LP record. Put simply, why bother? Why toil for four years on a body of work that distils 100 song ideas into ten tracks, spending a fortune in the process, only to see it flash across the charts and then evaporate into the mesh of 100 million songs? It’s an existential question for Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue, who told me...

More from The Art of Longevity

Jul 3, 2026

Jesca Hoop describes her new record as "a vote of confidence...an investment in myself as an artist and authority over my vocation and life's path." Asked to unpack that, she goes straight to the unsettling fear beneath creating anew each time in the album cycle: starting a new chapter with "no songs, perhaps no solution for a release," just a blank slate with a big question mark in the middle. In the end, "It was just the decision that the candle was worth the wick." Hoop is now seven ...

Jun 13, 2026

I caught up with Kurt for the Art of Longevity at his home in the leafy, trail-threaded neighbourhood of Mount Airy ("there's like one coffee shop, one grocery store kind of thing"), where, if you're a local dad with a creative streak and a guilty conscience, you too might one day hand him something strange and wonderful. Philadelphia's Been Good To Me is Kurt’s tenth album, and it arrives draped in the city's 250th anniversary of independence, although Kurt would like you to know that ...

May 29, 2026

There’s a point in every long music career where survival becomes more interesting than success. Not survival in the purely commercial sense. Not chart positions, algorithmic reach or streaming milestones. But survival of identity. Survival of friendship. Survival of purpose. The good stuff that can easily get buried away in the cut & thrust of a fickle business like music. That’s where Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene finds himself now, nearly 25 years after the collective first e...

May 16, 2026

After seven years between records, The Twilight Sad have returned with It’s the Long Goodbye, an album forged through grief, survival and renewal. Was it all worth it? Well, listen for yourselves. And do keep in mind that the album ranks 4th so far on the Album of the Year 2026 best-of league. Not that we advocate music as a competition. Just saying, some albums are clearly worth the work. Speaking to David Freer on this episode of The Art of Longevity Podcast, vocalist James Graham and...

Apr 18, 2026

From his early days with proto-punk pop band Slik, through his tenure with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock’s Rich Kids, the creation of Visage, and touring with Thin Lizzy, to his major league success with Ultravox, and then his pivotal musical role in Band Aid and Live Aid, Midge Ure was a constant and significant force in the evolving music scene of the late seventies and eighties. 2026 sees his first release of new material in twelve years, a double album entitled A Man Of Two Worlds. In ...

See all episodes →