She Gets Me Inside

This was originally written as an idea for my first songwriting session with James Blunt. It was so simple to put together, that it went from idea to finished song incredibly quickly. The title came during a quiet walk. It's a straightforward love song, one of four love songs on the album for Lorraine (Lorraine McIntosh, Ricky's wife and Deacon Blue singer).

Boys Break The Things They Love The Most

As with most of the songs on the album, the title came first. Lorraine said it one day in sheer despair that our son Seamus had broken his favourite toy. But when a song is written about a single incident, it never really works. I had to let it step out of its context and look at the broader picture of simply being male.

If You've Got The Time It's Gonna Take

This too, was originally written for someone else. A straightforward grown-up love song. It's saying "if you're going to do this thing, give this a place in your life, you have to give it the time". But it's also about what it's like to be in love when you're 47. Songs talk about love at 25, but things are expressed differently when you're older.

The Streets Are Covered In Snow

This dates hack to a really cold night in Dundee, around 1981. It seemed that for weeks on end, the streets were covered in snow. Snow transforms the landscape. Wake up in the morning and you know something's different outside. This is really about people trying to find each other. It also links well into the next song....

Soundtrack To The Summer

These weren't written together. just work well side by side. It was inspired by summer holidays and making up CDs for the car. Of course with young children. you need to include things they will like. Two years ago, when Seamus was two, his favourite was The Scientist by Coldplay. He would say "play going back to the stars...". He thought it was about spacemen. He does like Busted and all that stuff too. Ronan Keating cut this but it just didn't work for him.

In This World

This is another song that follows the loose theme. This was very purposely written for Lorraine. The first time I played it was at her birthday party last year. She absolutely loved it. to the point where she wanted to sing on it. There's a beautiful cello line that almost follows her vocal path.

Pale Rider

Is it a bit of a Clint tribute? Well. I had seen the film. but forgotten that I'd seen it. It's actually more inspired by Cormac McCarthy. A kind guy called John gave me one of his books "All The Pretty Horses" I think, outside a Deacon Blue gig in Wales. It knocked me out. It's a personal song. with someone looking at their mortality. I've had more response to that song played live than any other.

Calvary

One that came from a group of songs I had written with the idea of doing a Christmas album. Not the atmosphere hut the religious Christmas. One hymn I always remember had the line "the road leads from Bethlehem to Calvary" which almost offended me. This is much more do with saying there's time, we're not getting to Calvary just yet.

I Know It's Only Sunday

It's that thing as you get older. Maturity allows you to stop and smell the Flowers a little more. It's set in Queensferry on a day when we took the children to Deep Sea World. Very mundane in many ways but when you meet people struggling to get through the normal things. the mundane is very attractive. It was in danger of becoming smug, however, so I invented the argument in the middle!

Kichijoji

Kichijoji is a suburb of' Tokyo. This came from an event that happened when I was touring Japan with Gary Clark and Boo Hewerdine. I wasn't sleeping well and one night the bed began to shake because of a small earthquake. I ended up walking around the park, feeling a long way from home. It's really about enjoying being away, but knowing where you should be...

History

I wrote this to look at the breakdown in relationships with people. I like that idea of  "you and me have a history" and the fact that people can rewrite history to suit themselves. Part of it was written with Graeme in mind. (Graeme Kelling,  friend and Deacon Blue bandmate. who died in June 2004. after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer). Over the course we were close, drifted apart, close again drifted apart. When he became ill, we almost got back to how we were. It's placed here specifically to link with In The End.

In The End

When something big has happened in your life. you can't write a song about it. It has to filter through. In the shower one day, the phrase "they always get the fat guy in the end" came to mind as something Graeme would have said. I took that phrase and wrote a simple song about the last night I saw him, which was the night he died. When I had written it. I played it to his wife Julie first. If she didn't like it. no-one else would ever hear it. but she loved it and felt it truly represented that night. It's there to mark a special person in our lives.