Following three-year period in which he was committed to releasing EPs only (five in total since 2021), Ringo Starr has made a surprise full-length country album, produced by T Bone Burnett.
“Oh, it was an absolute surprise to me,” The Beatles drummer marvels, talking to MOJO via Zoom from his Roccabella West home studio in Los Angeles. Starr and Burnett have been pals since the ’70s, after they shared a stage with Dylan in 1976 at a Rolling Thunder Revue performance at the Houston Astrodome. Starr subsequently played on two tracks on Spark In The Dark, the 1977 album by Burnett’s The Alpha Band.
In November 2022, the pair met again at West Hollywood’s Sunset Marquis hotel, where Olivia Harrison was launching her book, Came The Lightening: Twenty Poems For George. Starr asked Burnett if he’d write for him for a future EP. “I don’t know how to do rock music,” Burnett chuckles. “So, I wrote him a Gene Autry song.”
With You Want Some (written by Billy Swan) and Thankful – co-written by Starr with regular collaborator Bruce Sugar – taking the tally to 11, Look Up was quickly recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville. Set for release in January 2025, it’s effectively the follow-up to Starr’s second solo album, Beaucoups Of Blues (recorded in the Tennessean capital in 1970), and features vocal contributions from Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Lucius, Larkin Poe and on recent single Thankful, Alison Krauss.
Burnett, who’s produced top-quality “third act” records by Roy Orbison, Ralph Stanley and Elton John/Leon Russell, felt that Starr still had a solid album in him. “He was always doing light-hearted things,” he notes. “He never did, like, serious music, really.” The producer was further inspired by hearing Starr’s crooning rendition of Harry Nilsson’s Easy For Me (from 1974’s Goodnight Vienna LP). “I thought, Man, this cat… nobody has talked about what a beautiful singer he is.”
Launched earlier this week at an intimate event at Third Man's London store, at which Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page were in attendance, Look Up ranges stylistically from the early Beatles rockabilly snap of Never Let Me Go to cosmic country ballad String Theory, and does indeed boast some of Starr’s best vocal performances.
“I love my voice on this,” Starr declares, lauding Burnett finding the right keys for his vocals, as he’s often sent songs beyond his natural range.
“They’re in F demented,” he laughs. “Y’know, I’d have to lose my legs to reach that high. But these are all, like, the right key. They’re really great.”
Look Up is released on January 10 on Lost Highway. Ringo and band play the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, on January 14 and 15.
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