Country Music Gets a New Starr: Ringer Starr Partners with T Bone Burnett for a Ride Into a New Musical Frontier

Editor's Note: Legendary drummer, tireless touring musician, and former Beatle Ringo Starr recently announced a follow up to last year’s country music album, Look Up. Starr once again teamed up with cowriter and producer T Bone Burnett on Long Long Road, as well as another stacked roster of roots music collaborators. No Depression Managing Editor Hilary Saunders caught up with Starr and Burnett for the Spring 2025 edition of the journal and we're sharing it in full now in honor of the forthcoming record, due out April 24. Nab one of the final physical copies of the journal here and become a member of No Depression to access all print issues dating back to 1995 digitally here.

Ringo Starr looks good in a cowboy hat. His white, wide-brim cattleman takes up prime real estate on the album artwork for his new LP, Look Up. Behind his dark sunglasses, Starr stares off into the middle distance, seemingly down the long and winding road of country music’s storied legacy.

In person, or at least on Zoom, Starr is all smiles. Calling from his home in Los Angeles, the 84-year-old musical legend sits in front of a giant, colorful star backdrop. There’s a Hofner violin bass hanging on the wall behind him, as well as a black-and-white circular portrait of “that other band,” as he says when referring to The Beatles. What looks like a cardboard cutout of Starr in a police uniform from a 1980 photo shoot is propped up to his left. Past that, he points to the room that holds his drumkit and other memorabilia and paraphernalia.

Starr wastes no time discussing Look Up, his 21st solo record, which came out in January. It’s a complete country, roots, and rockabilly treat, featuring writing and production by musical extraordinaire T Bone Burnett. Starr and Burnett, now 77, originally met in the 1970s on an airplane from Los Angeles to Houston for a benefit concert for the wrongfully convicted boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. The two reunited in Los Angeles in 2022 at a poetry reading by Olivia Harrison, who was married to The Beatles’ George Harrison. Starr invited Burnett to send him a track, and, as he recalls, “we put [Burnett’s track] on and it's the best country record I've heard in 50 years.” Starr had been releasing experimental pop-rock EPs with different collaborators through the pandemic, and assumed this collection would be another in that vein. Burnett came back to him with nine completed songs in total, and the two began work on what would become Look Up.

Written and recorded throughout 2023, the 11 tracks on Look Up feature nine written or co-written by Burnett, who has won 13 Grammy awards for his work with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ debut duo album, Taylor Swift’s contribution to The Hunger Games soundtrack, and more. The last two come from Billy Swan and Starr himself, who had already written “Thankful,” featuring dulcet high harmonies from Krauss. Additionally, Burnett brought in some of the most virtuosic and exciting young talent in roots and country music today — Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Larkin Poe, and Lucius — to lend their talents to eight songs on Look Up.