Ringo Starr has assembled a characteristically stacked list of collaborators — including Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings, and St. Vincent — for his next album, Long Long Road, out April 24.
The former Beatles drummer announced the record Tuesday, March 3, and also shared first single, “It’s Been Too Long,” featuring backing vocals from Molly Tuttle and Sarah Jarosz. The track nods to some of Starr’s recent country influences — the low, resonant guitar riffs, Tuttle and Jarosz’s high-and-lonesome harmonies — while also incorporating some atmospheric elements of psychedelia and early rock & roll.
Long Long Road will arrive just over a year after Starr’s last album, Look Up, which also featured contributions from Strings, Tuttle, Lucius, and Larkin Poe. Both Look Up and Long Long Road were produced by T Bone Burnett.
“I’m blessed to have T Bone in my life right now and working with me on these records,” Starr said in a statement. “After we did the last record, which I love listening to, this one just sort of happened. I like to say sometimes I make the right moves, like you can go left or right at any point, and one of the right moves was hooking up with T Bone for Look Up, and now for this one, which I’m calling Long Long Road, because I’ve been on a long long road.”
Starr recorded Long Long Road in Nashville, working with many of the same musicians who helped him on Look Up. These include Paul Franklin, David Mansfield, Dennis Crouch, Daniel Tashian, Rory Hoffman, Patrick Warren, and Colin Linden. (Burnett has dubbed the group the Texans, fitting for the music, but also a reference to an actual band Starr played with in Liverpool in the late Fifties, before he joined the Beatles.)
Look Up was a big album from Starr: Not only was it his first new release since 2019’s What’s My Name, it also cracked the Top 40 of the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and reached Number 12 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart.
After releasing Long Long Road, Starr will kick off a short North American tour. The trek starts May 28 in Temecula, California and wraps June 14 in Los Angeles.
