By Chris Wilman, Variety | On his just-released new single, “Time on My Hands,” Ringo Starr sings, “The lesson’s been learned / I’m over her now / That bridge has been burned.” But one bridge that Starr definitely never burned is the one connecting him to country music. It’s a link he established as the Beatle who sang most if not all of that group’s true country songs, not to mention the member who recorded one of his first solo albums in Nashville. He crosses that overpass again with a forthcoming album, “Look Up,” produced and largely written for Starr by one of the great figures of roots music, T Bone Burnett.
“Well, I was the country guy” in the Beatles, Starr acknowledges, sitting down in a West Hollywood hotel suite to discuss the new album, which comes out Jan. 10. “When we did a ‘Matchbox’ or whatever, where our version was sort of a country-ish thing,” that cover song would be his assignation. And when he wrote his first song for the group, “Don’t Pass Me By,” that was the most flat-out country the Beatles ever got. So there’s some symmetry in him coming back around to do an album that is unabashedly rooted in the sounds of Nashville, although it will surely be noted, in the modern parlance, that “Look Up” fits in nicely within the Americana movement as much as pure country.
“I think it’s a great mixed bag,” Starr says, “and the people we have on it – Molly Tuttle, mainly, and Billy Strings – are young old-style country, in a way, you know what I mean?”
The featured guests are Strings, Tuttle, the sister duo Larkin Pie, another female duo, Lucius, and, on the closing track, Allison Krauss – all making substantial contributions, even though only one of the tunes, with Tuttle, is a full-on duet. Says Burnett, “I didn’t want to do one of those records like Post Malone just did, where there’s a face card added onto every song, because I felt it was beneath Ringo. Really, why throw celebrity at Ringo Starr? But I did want to bring some young energy in. So I went to who I thought were some of the best young country musicians. Molly plays and sings on four songs and Billy plays and sings on three. Billy Strings plays some incredible heavy metal guitar in there.”
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Read more of the analysis of this album here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/ringo-starr-on-returning-to-country-with-a-new-t-bone-burnett-produced-album-i-was-the-country-guy-in-the-beatles-and-he-still-is/