LOS ANGELES — 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 critical swerve for him to make a complete nation album, the forthcoming “Look Up,” a collaboration with the fashionable maestro of traditional nation and Americana, T Bone Burnett.
“I’ve done 20 albums and there’s always a track that’s country-ish on each one,” the 84-year-old Starr advised The Related Press just lately.
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 country music in England,” Starr stated, “because a lot of I think it stems from it being a port, and why we got rock ‘n’ roll music physically, was because the lads on the boats would be going to America, they’d be going to Egypt, would be going all over. But they were 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 traditional, “Act Naturally.” Lots of the Beatle originals the drummer sang, together with “What Goes On” and “Don’t Pass Me By,” had nation undertones.
It could culminate together 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 traditional nation for the final 25 years, the person behind the soundtracks to “O Brother Where Art 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 complete venture with him.
“In the ’70s I used to throw a lot of parties and, and he was always there and I never invited him once,” Starr stated. “We often laugh 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 steered Burnett give him a music for the subsequent one.
Burnett rapidly got here again with a rustic tune.
“It was beautiful. The most beautiful song I’ve heard in a long time,” Starr stated. He started to assume, “I’m going to do a country piece.”
An impressed Burnett would write 9 songs that together with two extra, one among them written by Starr together with his buddy 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 music he co-wrote, “Thankful,” launched final week because the album’s second single, by which he managed to smuggle his catchphrase, “peace and love,” right into a style that’s often about something however.
“Yeah, I put it in the song,” he stated with a smile.
“Look Up,” to be launched in January, comes at a significant nation second throughout music, with everybody from Beyoncé to Put up Malone pulling on cowboy boots and breaking out the twang.
“Mine just came together. I mean, I didn’t think of any of that,” Starr stated. “I just thought, I’m going to do it.”
Beyoncé did come up at one level in Burnett and Starr’s work.
“He asked, ‘What are you going to call the album?’” Starr stated. “I thought, ‘BE-ON-SAY.’ But nobody laughed.”
In January, he’ll get to play one among his favourite locations, Nashville’s Ryman auditorium, former longtime house of the Grand Ole Opry, for a pair of concert events and a tv particular.
“I’m excited because we’re going to be doing like some of the other songs and some of the country songs,” he stated. “We’ll be doing ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ in a country fashion, country style. So let’s see.”