RINGO STARR ON COLLABORATING WITH T BONE BURNETT ON COUNTRY ALBUM

Ringo Starr & T Bone Burnett

Ringo Starr’s lifelong love of country music has been apparent and celebrated throughout his illustrious career. He performed and wrote numerous country and country-tinged songs throughout his years with The Beatles (i.e. “Act Naturally,” “What Goes On,” “Don’t Pass Me By”) as well as with the earlier Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, and recorded a country album, Beaucoups of Blues, in 1970 as his second solo album. His love of Country and the Blues led him to try and emigrate from London to Texas while still a teen, after reading that Lightnin’ Hopkins lived in Houston.

The artist’s new album comes after a chance meeting with T Bone Burnett at an event in Los Angeles in 2022 (the two had first 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 a country vein, which happily put Starr on a path to record Look Up.

“Well, we bonded as friends actually in the 70s because I was resident in LA for a while and I had a lot of parties, and any party I had, he was there and I did not invite him once. But he would be there, and he’d come with one of the bands, you know, leave on one of them and so we got to know each other a little bit. But only like hi, hi, hi. We didn’t have any real conversation. And that’s how this record came about because Olivia was reading poems for George at the Marquis, the Sunset Marquis Hotel. And I was there and he was there, so a lot of other people were there. How are you doing? What’s going on? Well, I’m doing this. And if you’ve got a song that you think would be good for me, send it down. And that’s how it started.”