Stevie McCrorie is feeling “anxious” when The Courier calls.
It doesn’t help that he’s driving around Stirling in the pouring rain, shopping for a new car for his wife Amy.
But unlike the other punters haggling around the showrooms for a good deal, this customer is also wondering how his debut album Big World is going to fare when it hits the official UK music charts.
Welcome to the changed world of the firefighter-turned-pop-star, who won the hearts of the viewing public in last year’s run of television talent show The Voice and whose new release sees him pitted against music industry titans such as Adele and Justin Bieber.
“It’s been an anxious week,” he says. “I’m really proud of the album. I believe it should get the reaction it deserves.
“A lot of it is about time and luck. It’s not going to be easy.
“The Voice was always a stepping stone to becoming the artist I want to be. Now I’m ready, I want to give everything I’ve got to the album.”
Any fears of a flop proved unfounded when Big World came out last Friday on the eve of the opening night in this year’s series of The Voice on BBC One.
Stevie of Alva, Clackmannanshire, reached number eight in the iTunes chart and by the middle of this week he was at number 22 in the official UK top 40 albums impressive feats for a 30-year-old who first picked up a guitar at 15 and was entered into the singing competition by his colleagues at Kirkcaldy fire station.
Fans have been posting rave reviews on social media and last weekend, Stevie was given a heroes’ welcome by hundreds who turned up for live acoustic sets at HMV stores in Stirling, Edinburgh, Livingston and Glasgow Braehead.
Despite the notoriously fickle nature of the music industry, he hopes this is just the start and is determined to use The Voice to catapult him to greater things.
It’s just over a year since Stevie became a household name across the UK, not to mention Scotland’s most famous firefighter. He first appeared on the January 10 2015 episode of The Voice with his striking rendition of Kodaline’s All I Want. All four judges turned on hearing him sing and he immediately became the bookies’ favourite to win the contest.
Under the mentorship of Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson, he did just that and thundered to victory last April, backed by The Courier’s Vote Stevie campaign.
He immediately became the show’s biggest success story when his debut single a cover of Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine’s Oscar-nominated track Lost Stars hit number six in the official UK charts and number one in Scotland.
Looking back, Stevie remembers his most difficult challenge had been keeping shtum about how far he had progressed in the competition before he caught the public eye. The initial episodes were filmed months in advance and, ahead of the live shows, he was sworn to secrecy to all but his closest family.
“It was May 2014 when my colleagues at Kirkcaldy entered me into the competition,” he recalls.
“The process didn’t begin until the August; the blind auditions were in the October; and the knockouts were in the December. So before the first episode came on last January, I knew I’d had four chairs turn and knew I had reached the quarter finals. But I had to keep my mouth shut. It was difficult.”
Despite knowing how well he had done, Stevie said he was characteristically nervous ahead of the January screening, as he waited to find out what the wider audience would think.
He needn’t have worried. His natural self-deprecating nature combined with genuine talent and possibly the fact that he was a good-looking Scots firefighter soon installed him as favourite to win.
There was a frenzy of support from fans in the runup to his victory, most notably when he went walkabout in his home town of Alva last March and also when he turned up in a fire engine at Kirkcaldy’s Beveridge Park for a photoshoot.
“It was mental!” he laughs, thinking back. “I still can’t believe it. I thought at the time: ‘No way I can win this. Can I win?’.
“Even now I have to pinch myself.”
The months since have seen his life transformed into a whirlwind of TV, radio and press interviews, as well as live gigs ranging from T in the Park to The Courier Business Awards. The day before this interview, he appeared live on Lorraine Kelly’s Good Morning Britain breakfast show.
He has also spent long hours commuting up and down to London to record the album, armed with a notebook bought for him by Ricky Wilson full of the lyrics and melodies that have buzzed around his head for years.
Now, with the release of the album, Stevie hopes to prove himself more than the possessor of an extraordinary voice by winning recognition as an accomplished songwriter.
“Ultimately, I am now trying to make a new career for myself and I’m giving it my best,” he adds.
“I didn’t want to take the easy route. I wanted to take the harder approach to prove I am a songwriter.”
Much as Stevie is loving every minute of his newfound fame, he is determined not to lose sight of his roots, or the support of family, friends and colleagues.
He still lives around the corner from his parents and celebrated the launch of the album on Friday in his brother Paul’s “man cave” with the people who know him best.
Stevie’s proud mum Sandra says: “I’ve known since he was a small boy he had something special about him. He loved opera as a baby! He was a very funny little boy. One liners were his speciality!”
Raised in Denny, Stirlingshire, his was a traditional, working-class childhood, growing up on a council estate.
Music was never a focus in the McCrorie household. Mum Sandra and dad Michael don’t sing or play instruments and sister Nadia and brothers Paul and Michael never showed any aspirations to be musicians. Yet, somewhere along the way, Stevie felt a pull to write and sing his own songs.
“I never took music at school but liked being in a pop-punk band, jumping about,” he recalls.
He taught himself to play guitar and gigged through his twenties while working in an office job that was “mundane with no creativity”.
Marriage to nail technician Amy, his partner of 10 years, brought security, and the birth of their daughter Bibi three years ago turned his world “upside down”.
It was then that he resolved to knuckle down.
“When I became a dad, I realised I was getting life wrong,” he reflects.
“When you’ve got a kid, you have to keep pushing to give yourself purpose. Bibi gave me that.”
He trained to be a firefighter, determined to give his family stability and financial security, and music was pushed to the side. As time went on, it started to feel like a faraway dream of a career.
Yet, even as he got to grips with being a dad, Stevie continued to form ideas for songs, which, thanks to The Voice, are now seeing the light of day.
One in particular would later become the title track to the new album.
“The track Big World talks about fear,” explains Stevie. “I say: ‘When you came into my life, you broke the walls down’, which is what happened. I had that ‘woe is me’ thing before Bibi. I’d let things get on top of me.”
Another track Don’t Go is an album highlight and is inspired by his wife.
“The feelings came from me but I wanted the song to come from Amy’s perspective of me leaving to make the album,” he explains.
The track is a collaboration with David Sneddon, the first winner of BBC One’s Fame Academy, someone who knows exactly what it feels like to be in Stevie’s shoes right now.
“We really hit it off and have great chemistry,” he says.
If We Wait is another collaboration between the pair.
Stevie adds: “It talks about growing up on streets you love they make you who you are.”
As the heady business of promoting the album takes over, Stevie says his family have been “taking it all in their stride”.
He adds: “They want it as much as I want it. My brothers have been going out again with posters, this time to promote the album!”
And a year on from his Voice success, he is still regularly spotted in the streets and still relishing the fame.
“Most places I go, especially in Scotland, I get recognised a lot.
“I’ll often hear people whispering: ‘There’s Stevie’. I later get messages from people saying: ‘I was too shy to say hello’. I’d actually prefer it if people came up to me and said hi! It’s good people going out and being recognised. I’m happy to chat.”
One of the greatest accolades has come from one of his smallest fans, though.
He adds: “My daughter Bibi said: ‘You are a great singer’. She’s three years-old. That’s the biggest compliment I can get!”
At the time of the interview, Stevie was in two minds about whether to watch the new series of The Voice.
“It’s hard to accept it’s all over,” he admits.
“I’ll be performing on the show in March, which will be really exciting!”
And March will be a crucial month for Stevie’s long-term plans.
While he pursues his musical dreams, he is still officially on a career break from the fire service and he has until the end of that month to decide whether or not he’s going to get back into uniform.
Some newspapers have reported that he is returning to his old career but he insists no decisions have been made.
He is still in touch with his old pals and has been getting good-natured “stick” from his former Kirkcaldy firefighter colleagues about where his album would chart.
That made him the butt of plenty of the jokes when he attended the fire station Christmas dinner in December.
“They were taking the mickey out of my likely chart position,” he recalls.
“They were not saying it would do particularly well, put it that way!”
And while he might not be running into burning buildings anymore, emotions are still running high.
“It’s definitely scarier releasing an album but I get a similar adrenaline rush,” he laughs.
“The fire service made me who I am and allowed people to connect with me. I’m going to stay closely linked to them whatever happens.
“The music business is a tough industry. If it doesn’t work out, I could go back.
“It would be heartbreaking if I had to but I could be going back to worse. I have to be positive. And so far it’s going really well.”