Music

Ringo Starr's always been a li'l country

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Kimberly Junod, Will Loftus

Published March 7, 2025 at 2:26 PM MST

Ringo Starr has been a fan of country music since he was a kid. He added some country flavor to The Beatles' output, like on "Act Naturally," from Help!, and in 1970, he released his country record, Beaucoups of Blues.

Now, Starr has a brand new album of country songs, produced by T Bone Burnett. The album features guest appearances from artists like Billy Strings, Lucius and Alison Krauss, and it also gave him his first No. 1 in 50 years when it went to the top of the U.K. country charts.

In this session, Starr talks about making Look Up, and he explains why a great country song should always be emotional.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod and Will Loftus. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams and our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

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Will Loftus