This page will be updated regularly.
The album is now completed. It will be released on September 28th and is called The Great Lakes.
If you register at The Great Lakes website before Wednesday 5th August, you can download a track, 'Bluebell Wood', from the album.
The album was recorded in the Red Star Studio in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. It was produced by Mark Howard (who has worked with Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, and produced Lucinda Williams's Top 20 album, World Without Tears.) The band includes Steven Nistor on drums, Daryl Johnson on bass, Doug Pettibone on pedal steel and banjo, and David Scott on guitar and backing vocals. It has recently been mastered by Tim Young at Metropolis.
The songs on the album are described as "beautiful, meaningful and simple no unnecessary chords or complicated changes." Ricky says. It was more to do with the kind of songs we wanted to sing. These became more folky as the writing went on, while the more mainstream pop songs got disregarded. The main thing was that if it didn't seem like a genuinely significant song to both of us then it didn't get on the record.
The tracklisting is:
Order The Great Lakes 
Below is the press release from May 27th.
Cooking Vinyl has announced that it has signed Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, of Scottish rock/pop band Deacon Blue. The pair are finishing off their as yet untitled new album which has been recorded in Los Angeles, and is scheduled for release in September 2009.
Joe Cokell, Director of Business Development at Cooking Vinyl comments, "Ricky and Lorraine have created a wonderfully crafted album of songs and the Cooking Vinyl Group are confident that we have a body of work that will not only excite the dedicated fanbase, but will also broaden the artists appeal outside of their domestic market."
James Taylor of P3 Music, which manages Ricky Ross & Lorraine McIntosh added, "We're looking forward to working with Cooking Vinyl as we have a great deal of respect for what Martin Goldschmidt and his team have done with acts like The Prodigy and Nitin Sawhney. Ricky and Lorraine have been in LA putting the finishing touches to their new project are a very pleased with how the album is developing."
In recent years, Ross has spent his time writing for James Blunt, Gareth Gates and Ronan Keating, among others. His co-writes include 'Tell Me The Worst' with Eg White for Will Young's album 'Let It Go', the current Eg White single 'Broken' (from Eg's forthcoming album 'Adventure Man') and a co-write with Nanci Griffith called 'Still Life' that will feature on her new album out June 9th. Ross also presents 'Another Country' for BBC Radio Scotland which plays Americana, roots and contemporary alt country music.
McIntosh has recently been acting in a number of films, including Ken Loach's 'My Name Is Joe', Lone Scherfig's 'Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself', as well as 3 episodes of the popular TV drama series, Taggart. She has also just finished filming the new BBC1 drama 'Hope Springs' alongside ER's Alex Kingston, Ronni Ancona and Paul Higgins (The Thick Of It) which will air in June.
As of June 3rd, recording of the album has now been completed.
