Deacon Blue return with new album and tours

Deacon Blue return with a brand new studio album and two tours to mark 40 years of the band.

2025 marks 40 years since Ricky Ross met Dougie Vipond and they started to form Deacon Blue. The songs on the new album, The Great Western Road, reflect the journey the band has taken and remain honest to the age and experience they all share. Ricky Ross: “It’s just the next part of the adventure and it’s as exciting now as it was back in 1988”.

The album will be preceded by the single Late ’88 on 29 November 2024 which fondly remembers the care-free excitement of those early days. The Great Western Road, recorded at Rockfield Studios, sees Ricky Ross and (Deacon Blue guitarist and long term collaborator) Gregor Philp return to production duties, having last produced the band’s Top 5 charting and their last full length album, 2020’s City Of Love. This album was recorded by Matt Butler, who last worked with the band on their debut, Raintown.

The Circus Comes To Town…

There will be a limited run of five theatre shows in late March and April to herald the arrival of the album, followed by 15 arena shows across the UK and Eire , which kick off in Liverpool on 19 September, they play Wembley Arena for the first time since 1990, and finish with two hometown shows at the Glasgow Hydro on 10 and 11 October.

Ricky Ross says 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.”

 2025 DEACON BLUE TOUR DATES

Deacon Blue – Theatre Shows

Sun 30 March – Edinburgh Usher Hall
Mon 31 March – Bradford St George’s Hall
Wed 2 April – Bristol Beacon Theatre
Thurs 3 April – Cambridge Corn Exchange
Fri 4 April – London Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Deacon Blue – Arena Shows

Fri 19 September – Liverpool M+S Bank Arena
Sat 20 September – Brighton Centre
Mon 22 September – Birmingham Utilita Arena
Tues 23 September – Leeds FirstDirect Arena
Thurs 25 September – Bournemouth International Centre
Fri 26 September – Cardiff Utilita Arena
Sun 28 September – Nottingham Motorpoint Arena
Mon 29 September – Sheffield Utilita Arena
Wed 1 October – Manchester AO Arena
Fri 3 October – London Wembley OVO Arena
Sun 5 October – Hull Connexin Live
Mon 6 October – Newcastle Utilita Arena
Wed 8 October – Dublin 3Arena
Fri 10 October – Glasgow Hydro
Sat 11 October – Glasgow Hydro

The Great Western Road, is released on 21 March 2025 by Cooking Vinyl and can be pre-ordered here.

Tickets go on sale on at 10am on 29 November 2024, click here.

Read More: Archive Deacon Blue Interview