Next release will be called ‘Look Up’ and will be a collaboration with T Bone Burnett, modern maestro of classic country and Americana
Country comes naturally to . It’s been a low-key part of his career since the beginning of the , so it wasn’t a huge detour for him to make an entire album of country, the upcoming “Look Up,” a collaboration with the modern maestro of classic country and the Americana genre, . “I’ve made 20 albums and there’s always a track that’s kind of country on each one,” the 84-year-old artist told the Associated Press recently. Your love for the genre – Hank Williams e Kitty Wells are favorites – it started in childhood, along with his affection for blues, swing and whatever else came to his hometown.
“Liverpool is the country music capital of England,” said Starr, “I think that comes from the fact that it’s a port city, and we got access to rock ‘n’ roll physically because the guys on the boats went to America, to Egypt, everywhere. But they brought music. “Starr – even his stage name has a cowboy vibe – had his breakout moment with the Beatles in 1965, when he sang the honky-tonk classic [subgênero do country] by Buck Owens, Act Naturally. Many of the original Beatles tracks on which the drummer sang, including What Goes On and Don’t Pass Me By, had soft country notes.
This would culminate in his second solo album, 1971’s Beaucoups of Blues, going full country. He kept experimenting – he recorded a duet of Act Naturally with Owens in 1989 – but didn’t make another all-country album for decades. Enter Burnett, the leading curator of classic country culture for the past 25 years, the man behind the soundtracks for the films What’s Up, My Brother, Where Are You? (2000) and Inside Llewyn Davis – Ballad of an Ordinary Man (2013), and the unlikely combination of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
Starr had known Burnett for decades, but had never collaborated on an entire project with him. “In the 1970s I used to throw a lot of parties and he was always there, and I never invited him,” Starr said. “We always laugh about it.” The two were at the Sunset Marquis hotel last year for a poetry reading by Olivia Harrison, widow of Starr’s former bandmate George Harrison. Starr had been making a series of EPs with different songwriters and producers, including a recent release with Linda Perry, and suggested that Burnett give him a song for the next one.
Burnett quickly returned with a country track. “It was beautiful. The most beautiful music I’ve heard in a long time,” Starr said. He started thinking: “I’m going to do a country piece.” An inspired Burnett would write nine songs that, along with two more, one written by Starr with his friend Bruce Sugar, would turn the EP into an LP.
Starr played drums and sang in Los Angeles, while Burnett recorded parts of the album in Nashville, bringing in young neo-classical country artists Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle for several tracks each. Alison Krauss sings with Starr on the song he co-wrote, Thankful, released Friday the 15th as the album’s second single, in which he managed to smuggle his catchphrase, “peace and love,” into a genre that’s usually about any anything but that.
“Yeah, I put that in the song,” he said with a smile. Look Up, to be released in January, arrives at a huge moment in country music, with everyone from Beyoncé to Post Malone donning cowboy boots and adopting twang (a type of singing often used in the genre).
“My [álbum] it just appeared. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it,” Starr said. “I just thought, I’ll do it.” Beyoncé was mentioned at one point in Burnett and Starr’s work. “He asked, ‘What are you going to call the album?’” Starr said. “I thought, ‘BE-ON-SAY.’ But no one laughed.” In January, the musician will play a pair of concerts and a TV special at one of his favorite venues, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly American music concert.
“I’m excited because we’re going to play some of the other songs and some of the country songs,” he said. “We’re going to do With a Little Help From My Friends in a country, country style way. So, let’s see.”
*With information from Estadão Conteúdo and Associated Press
Published by Fernando Dias
