Ringo Starr: here is the long-awaited country album. Arrives in January 2025
Ringo Starr will release a brand new country music album on January 10, 2025, “Look Up”, produced and written in collaboration with T Bone Burnettwhich features 11 original songs recorded this year in Nashville and Los Angeles. The song “Time On My Hands” is available for streaming. The song that opens the album, “Time On My Hands“, written by Paul Kennerly and Daniel Tashian (who also co-produced the album with Sugar) and Burnett, is out today.
Nine of the 11 songs on the new album were written in collaboration with Burnett, one by Billy Swan (former guitarist of Kris Kristofferson) and the other by Starr and Bruce Sugar (sound engineer, producer and author, former collaborator of the former Beatles).
Ringo sang and played drums on all the songs and composed the album’s closing track, “Thankful”, together with Alison Krauss. Burnett has recruited some of Nashville’s greatest talent for this project including Billy Strings, Larkin Poe, Lucius, Molly Tuttle and Alison Krauss.
Starr’s passion for country music has always been evident throughout his career. He played and wrote numerous country – or country-influenced – songs both during his years with the Beatles (e.g. “Act Naturally”, “What Goes On”, “Don’t Pass Me By”) and with previous group Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. Plus his second solo album “Beaucoups of Blues” of 1970 was country. His love of country music and the blues took him from London to Texas when he was still a teenager, after reading that Lightnin’ Hopkins lived in Houston.
Ringo Starr’s new album comes after a chance meeting with Burnett at an event in Los Angeles in 2022 (the two had met in the 1970s), where Starr asked Burnett to write a song for an EP he was recording. Taking the task to heart, Burnett returned with nine songs, all in the country style, that happily put Starr on the path to recording “Look Up”—his first country album in 50 years and his first full-length album since 2019.
Remember Ringo
I’ve always liked country music. And when I asked T Bone to write me a song, I didn’t even think it would be a country song, and when it came it was incredibly beautiful. At the time I was making EPs so I thought we were going to make a country EP, but when he brought me nine songs I knew we should put out a whole album! And I’m so glad I did. I want to thank and send Peace & Love to T Bone and all the great musicians who helped make this record. It was a pleasure to make and I hope it is equally pleasant to listen to it.
Burnett for his part states:
I have appreciated Ringo Starr and his playing, singing and style for as long as I can (or care) to remember. Ringo, with his creative approach, managed to change the way of playing of every drummer, and always sang a killer rockabilly, as well as being an incredible ballad interpreter. Composing this music with him was like realizing a dream that I have lived for 60 years. None of the work I have produced in my long life in music could have existed if it weren’t for him and his band. Among other things, this album is a way to thank him for everything he has given to me and to us.”
Ringo Starr will present the new album in the homeland of country, in Nashville at the historic Ryman Auditorium on January 14 and 15, 2025.
Track List (with guests and authors)
Breathless (featuring Billy Strings) (T Bone Burnett)
Look Up (featuring Molly Tuttle) (Daniel Tashian, T Bone Burnett)
Time On My Hands (Paul Kennerly, Daniel Tashian, T Bone Burnett)
Never Let Me Go (featuring Billy Strings) (T Bone Burnett)
I Live For Your Love (featuring Molly Tuttle) (Billy Swan, T Bone Burnett
Come Back (featuring Lucius) (T Bone Burnett)
Can You Hear Me Call (featuring Molly Tuttle) (T Bone Burnett)
Rosetta (featuring Billy Strings and Larkin Poe) (T Bone Burnett)
You Want Some (Billy Swan)
String Theory (featuring Molly Tuttle) (Daniel Tashian, T Bone Burnett)
Thankful (featuring Alison Krauss) (Richard Starkey, Bruce Sugar)*
Produced by T Bone Burnett
* “Thankful” produced by Ringo Starr and Bruce Sugar with T Bone Burnett
Who is T-Bone Burnett
Over the course of over 50 years of music and entertainment, T Bone Burnett has been an innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, film and concert producer, record label owner, always alongside artists.
He has worked and collaborated with multiple musicians: Bob Dylan, Elton John, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Ringo Starr, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, kd lang, Elvis Costello, Taylor Swift, Ryan Bingham, Steve Earle And Leon Russell. In 2016 he produced “Black Cat”, the album by Fornaciari sugar.
Burnett’s highly successful and critically and commercially acclaimed work in film over the past 30 years includes his collaborations with the brothers Cohen in “The Big Lebowski”, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “Return to Cold Mountain”, “The Hunger Games”, “Inside Llewyn Davis” (The film is inspired by the life of folk singer Dave Van Ronk, active in New York in the sixties) and “Crazy Heart” (with the directorial debut of Scott Cooper) for which, as producer , won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA. He has 13 Grammy Awards in his career.
