Ringo always wanted to be a cowboy. He grew up in the toughest corner of Liverpool, dreaming of escaping to the Wild West, hoping to emigrate to Texas. He was the biggest country fan in the Beatles, the one who sang the Buck Owens classic “Act Naturally” as well as original twangers like “What Goes On” and “Don’t Pass Me By.” Now in his eighties, still a hell of a dancer, living on broccoli and blueberries, Sir Ringo Starr makes his first country album in 50 years. Look Up, with producer T Bone Burnett, is a homespun gem, with Ringo singing and drumming with his own inimitable gusto.
When the Beatles fell apart in 1970, Ringo took refuge in his boyhood country dreams, for the underrated solo album Beaucoups of Blues. He flew out to Nashville to bang out a three-day quickie with pedal-steel master Pete Drake and a crew of Music Row session cats. He let his producer Drake pick the songs, because that’s how real country singers did it, but he turned a studio full of strangers into a pub full of friends, because that’s what Ringo does. From “Loser’s Lounge” to “The Fastest Growing Heartache in the West,” Beaucoups let Ringo express his vulnerable side in a disarmingly heartfelt way, making it a true prize in the solo Fabs catalog.
Look Up has that same plainspoken quality, with Ringo’s down-home vocals and rootsy flair. The man has been on a studio roll lately — during the pandemic, when he had to hit pause on his nonstop touring with the All-Starr Band, he threw himself into a series of EPs that captured his Ringo essence, like Zoom In. But Look Up is his first full album in six years. “Time on My Hands” is a wonderfully creaky ballad of lost love, with Ringo playing up the stoic underdog resignation the way he did on “Photograph.”
Ringo and T Bone go back to the Seventies, but they began this country project in 2022. Burnett writes 9 of the 11 songs, keeping it rootsy without making it any kind of O Ringo Where Art Thou? throwback. “Breathless” is a frisky hoedown with bluegrass picker Billy Strings, who cuts loose on guitar, as he also does on “Never Let Me Go” and “Rosetta,” also featuring Larkin Poe. Guitar whiz Molly Tuttle plays on “Look Up” (sounding uncannily Revolver-like) and “String Theory,” singing along for the duet “Can You Hear Me Call.” “Thankful” is a duet with Alison Krauss, the only song here that Ringo co-wrote himself; Billy Swan penned the honky-tonk romp “You Want Some.” Ringo drums on everything, buzzing with energy and charm, thriving on the camaraderie.
Look Up could have been a flipbook of celebrity Nashville duets — that would have been an easy and obvious move, but not an authentically Ringo one, and Burnett appreciates the fine points of Ringoism the way he appreciates the folkways of the country tradition. He also doesn’t sweat it if the vocals occasionally venture an inch or three out of tune. As a result, Look Up is the sound of Ringo being himself, the least jaded rock star in the universe, which is exactly what we want from this wise old sage. And like all his fellow Beatles always did, he looks cool in a cowboy hat. Let it be.
