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Ricky Warwick is a veteran of the rock scene. He burst out of Scotland in the early ’90s with his band The Almighty, since then he has released solo records, occupied the vocal spot in various incarnations of Thin Lizzy, and fronted the mighty Black Star Riders. Ricky is about to release his new solo record, titled When Life Was Hard and Fast, in February and recently took some time to talk about it and much more!
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Ricky Warwick:
On the decision to release a solo record now – This year, Black Star Riders, we were supposed to be out the whole year touring Another State of Grace that came out of the tail end of 2019, and obviously with this current situation that that just got decimated. But the plan was always to release the (solo) record February of 2021 spend next year promoting it. That was set in stone before the pandemic was even coming around the corner. So nothing’s really changed in regards to the timeline, and it’s just a question of having the time to get into the studio. Being on the road as much as I am coming home and having a family. Sometimes you gotta prioritize things. You don’t want to come up with a two year, three months and go, “Hey, I’m going to disappear in the studio for the next month.” So just balancing everything, we like to plan things ahead with our management. Everybody in Black Star Riders is involved, has other bands that we do outside of Black Star Riders. So there’s a lot of planning involved, and that’s just the way it worked out. We just decided we record the album 2019. We’d sit on it for a while until the time is right that I can promote it properly, which is next year, this year. It turned out being this year because of the way things happen. 1:08
On hooking up with guitarist Keith Nelson – It’s an interesting story. I didn’t know Keith until about 2.5 years ago. I knew who he was. I was obviously aware of Buckcherry and I heard the name. We just never met. And when Damon Johnson left Black Star Riders, we obviously had a void to fill, the guitar player position, and somebody suggested Keith. I thought that would be great, I thought it’d be a good fit, and I met up with Keith. He sort of met me out of courtesy. He had no intention of joining Black Star Riders because he had decided that he was done with the full-on touring thing, which is one of the reasons he left Buckcherry. So he just said, “I’ll meet you out of respect because I like your band and like what you do, I’m very honored that you’re asking me to join the band, but I’m kinda done with the going on the road for 7 months out of the year”, which I totally respect. We got on great. We had a coffee, we got on great. We talked, he said, “Look, I have a studio I’m writing, I’m producing Let’s get together and write a song”, I said, “Sounds great.” A couple days later, I go over to the studio. We hit it off. He’s got an insane collection of vintage guitars, which drew me in straight away. The chemistry was there. We’re both blue color, working-class boys at the same age, same taste in music. And we wrote the song “Fighting Heart” that day. I brought the idea in and Keith and I worked on and I thought, “Hang on a minute, there’s something here.” I took the demo of the song home. I was listening to it and I thought, “This is cool, there’s a chemistry, there’s a vibe going on here.” I had all these ideas together for the solo record. I phoned Keith up that night, “So that was great today, I’m feeling enough material to make a solo record. Will you produce and work on it with me?” And he was like, “Let’s do it.” And that’s how it started. And then we’ve become sort of firm friends ever since. We’re already working on the next record together. 2:35
“Fighting Heart”
On working with ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor – (He’s a) very busy man under the radar. Andy’s very underrated, he’s phenomenal. Great guitar player, great singer, great writer, and great producer, Just an extremely talented guy. I got to know Andy when Andy produced the second Almighty album Soul Destruction way back in 1991. And we’ve been friends ever since and Andy’s always had an eye on the success of Black Star Riders, and it’s always sort of texting me when singles are coming out and the albums were doing well. I got a phone call one day about three years ago, “Look, I’m working on a new solo record.” He lives in Ibiza, so he flew me out to Ibiza and I co-wrote most of Andy’s next solo record with him, which is coming out next year. It’s amazing, I’m saying, because I’m involved, but it’s just phenomenal. And he’s already gonna track out there called “Love or Liberation”, which if you want to check out, it’s up on Spotify and iTunes and all that, that I co-wrote with him. So, I said, “You gotta return the favor. Will you play guitar on one of the tracks on my record?” He was like, “Absolutely”. And, of course, he delivered a killer solo, but it’s just an honor to have them on there. 4:51
“You Don’t Love Me”
On his songwriting process – I’m always writing. I’m blessed in a way that I always have a wealth of material. And what I tend to do when I know that I’m gonna work with somebody (is) I’ll take a song so far because I want their input. And so with me, with Black Star Riders and even with Keith, I would come in with a finished verse and finish chorus and probably finished lyric, and then Keith and I would sit down and work. He’d help work out all the guitar parts of the arrangements, he’d go, “You need a better bridge”, he’d maybe come up with the chord structure for a better bridge. But I’m coming in with the main ideas. It’s not like we’re both going into a room and look at each other, going “What you got, what you got.” For me, I’ve been in that situation. I’ve done the Nashville thing where you walk in with a stranger and you stare at each other for an hour and nothing comes out of it. So I kind of learned my lesson. Bringing something, even if it’s finished, you think it’s finished, bring it in and play it, and then you get that person vibed up in the whole thing. That’s why I try to work, with Black Star Riders too., but with Keith the same thing, I’ll bring in a half-finished idea. This is what I got. And Keith would just start sprinkling his magic on it and saying, “I think you need to change the chords here”, and we start discussing. And then together we molded into the finished song. 8:44
The Almighty “Bandaged Knees”
On his musical comfort zone – It’s changed over the years. I love them all. I love all the various guises that I have. If you’d asked me in 1999 would I be comfortable getting on stage playing an acoustic guitar? I would have told you that’s never gonna happen in a million years, with the solo thing. But, having been in Dublin and being in a situation where I’m hitting 30 and I’m going through a rough patch in my life. And suddenly there’s no record deal, no management, no publishing deal, no nothing, no band, and suddenly you’re faced with what do I do, where do I go? Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) has a part to play in that. He pushed me and he said, “You can really do this, you tell great stories. You can do this singer-songwriter thing because you have an edge”, and he talked me into doing it, and that was sort of way back in 2002. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I write everything on acoustic guitar, I don’t go near electric and it made me a better guitar player. It made me a better songwriter, and it made me a better singer because you have to be when you’re that naked, when you don’t have the support of the other guys around you or the wall of Marshalls to sort of hide behind. Suddenly you’re out there on your own so your shit better be together. That was a real revelation for me and really changed my life for the better. And I think since then it’s made me comfortable in every aspect of what I do. Because if you’re comfortable playing guitar and singing a song in its basic form when you go and do anything else that’s only going to enhance it and make you feel more confident in the other areas of what you’re trying to do. 10:31
Black Star Riders “Candidate For Heartbreak”
On playing online shows during the pandemic – It absolutely helps. I don’t think it fully cures the itch. But it certainly stops it for a little while. The platform that I used to do my own streams, my online shows, is a platform called Stage It, and it’s very much set up like a live gig. You sell tickets, you buy tickets. You sell merchandise, all that kind of stuff. So it feels like you’re promoting a real show, so I would rehearse and prepare for it like I’m gonna go on tour. I’ve done a different subject every time. I’ve been doing one a month and one month it’ll be Black Star Riders, one month will be Almighty, solo stuff, cover versions. So I’m always changing it up. So I’m always having to go and relearn songs and learn songs for it and rehearse for it. And I think that gives me a focus like it would be if I was practicing to go on on the road. So it’s definitely good for my sanity and people seem to enjoy it, which is the main thing. 12:30
Black Star Riders “Another State of Grace”
On future plans for Black Star Riders – I think Another State of Grace, sadly, is, touring wise, is done. We were able to be able to get a seven-week run in Europe at the end of last year before covid kicked in. Obviously, all this year was supposed to be some US shows, South America, the rest of the world blah, blah, blah. The next Black Star Riders record is written. It’s demoed. It’s done. So we’re ready to go. We were hoping to get in this fall here in LA to record, but obviously, with everybody living where we live and Scott (Gorham) being in the UK, it just wasn’t safe. And it just didn’t make sense to do it. We couldn’t do it anyway, so we’re sitting waiting on it. I had always planned to promote the solo record (in 2021), and that’s what I’m gonna do. Christian Martucci’s (guitar) obviously busy with Corey Taylor’s solo stuff right now being in Corey’s band. So the album is there. We’re on a bit of a hiatus. We’ll get in and record it next year, and I’d like to think that early, 2022, it seems an awfully long way away. But after this year nothing seems that far away. I think that’s when we’ll hit the ground again with Black Star Riders. 14:52
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