Ricky Warwick

The Almighty frontman on his new solo album, digging Northern soul, his good work ethic, quitting drinking...

- Dave Everley

You can take the boy out of Northern Ireland, but you can't take the Northern Ireland out of the boy. After 20 years of living in the US - and before that Scotland, Bradford and London - Ricky Warwick has returned to the country of his birth. "I've still got a house in LA, but we've got this place here in Belfast too," he says, speaking via Zoom from the latter. "There's always been a pull for me. I always knew I'd end up back here." The notion of family and roots are woven into the Black Star Riders and Almighty frontman's new solo album, Blood Ties.

What does the title Blood Ties refer to?

It's about family. It encapsulates the big extended family I have around me, and what that means to me. And as you get older, you gravitate back to the people who love you and made you.

Did you get on with your parents when you were growing up?

I got on okay with my mother, and I loved her, but I had a brilliant relationship with my father. I really looked up to him. I'm an only son from a farming family, so it was mapped out that I'd leave school and work on the farm. Which I did for four years, until the music took off. But my dad said: "If you get a record deal, get your backside out of here, son, and go for it."

On the album's first track, Angels Of Desolation, you sing: 'I'm on the road to rack and ruin, I'm on the path to self-destruct.' Is that autobiographical?