Ringo goes nation, once more, on new album

By ANDREW DALTON, Related Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nation comes naturally to Ringo Starr.

It’s been a low-key a part of his of his profession since his Beatle beginnings, so it was not a severe swerve for him to make a complete nation album, the forthcoming “Look Up,” a collaboration with the trendy maestro of basic nation and Americana, T Bone Burnett.

“I’ve carried out 20 albums and there’s all the time a observe that’s country-ish on every one,” the 84-year-old Starr instructed The Related Press not too long ago.

His love of the music — Hank Williams and Kitty Wells are favorites — started in childhood, alongside his acquisition of affection for blues, swing and no matter else got here to his hometown.

“Liverpool, it’s the capital of nation music in England,” Starr mentioned, “as a result of a variety of I feel it stems from it being a port, and why we obtained rock ‘n’ roll music bodily, was as a result of the lads on the boats can be going to America, they’d be going to Egypt, can be going throughout. However they had been bringing music in.”

Starr — even his stage title has cowboy vibes — had a star flip with the Beatles in 1965 when he sang the Buck Owens’ honky-tonk basic, “Act Naturally.” Lots of the Beatle originals the drummer sang, together with “What Goes On” and “Don’t Move Me By,” had nation undertones.

It could culminate along with his second solo album, 1971’s “Beaucoups of Blues,” going full nation.

He saved dabbling — he recorded an “Act Naturally” duet with Owens in 1989 — however he didn’t make a full nation album once more for many years.

Enter Burnett, the tradition’s chief curator of basic nation for the final 25 years, the person behind the soundtracks to “O Brother The place Artwork Thou” and “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and the unlikely pairing of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Starr had identified Burnett for many years, however had by no means collaborated on a whole venture with him.

“Within the ’70s I used to throw a variety of events and, and he was all the time there and I by no means invited him as soon as,” Starr mentioned. “We regularly chortle about that.”

The 2 had been each on the Sundown Marquis final 12 months for a poetry studying from Olivia Harrison, widow of Starr’s former bandmate George Harrison.

Starr had been doing a sequence of EPs with completely different writers and producers, together with a latest launch with Linda Perry, and urged Burnett give him a track for the following one.

Burnett rapidly got here again with a rustic tune.

“It was lovely. Essentially the most lovely track I’ve heard in a very long time,” Starr mentioned. He started to suppose, “I’m going to do a rustic piece.”

An impressed Burnett would write 9 songs that together with two extra, one in every of them written by Starr along with his pal Bruce Sugar, turning the EP into an LP.

Starr performed the drums and sang in Los Angeles, whereas Burnett recorded elements of the report in Nashville, bringing on younger neo-classical nation artists Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle for a number of tracks apiece.

And Krauss sings with Starr on the track he co-wrote, “Grateful,” launched Friday because the album’s second single, through which he managed to smuggle his catchphrase, “peace and love,” right into a style that’s normally about something however.

“Yeah, I put it within the track,” he mentioned with a smile.