Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett were sitting around the other day at the Sunset Marquis when the former Beatle suddenly turned a dining table into a drum kit and belted out a bit of “Rock Island Line.”

“It was Lonnie Donegan who gave us all a great break,” Starr, 85, said of the late British singer whose so-called skiffle music — a scrappy blend of folk, blues and country from the moment just before rock ’n’ roll — captivated kids in England (including the future Fab Four) in the mid- to late 1950s.

“Everything followed him,” Starr added as he tapped out Donegan’s signature rhythm and Burnett looked on with a smile.

“Did you see just then, when Ringo hit the table, how a whole vibe came alive?” asked the veteran record producer. “There was a feel there — that’s Ringo’s magic. How does it happen? Nobody knows.”

Whatever the secret, the two capture that indelible feel on Starr’s charming new album, “Long Long Road,” which Burnett produced and which comes just 15 months after the duo’s first collaboration, 2025’s “Look Up.”

Like the earlier record, “Long Long Road” blends country-leaning originals by Starr and by Burnett — the latter known for his work with Los Lobos and Counting Crows and on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” — and features guest appearances by Nashvillians like Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings and Paul Franklin.

Yet the new LP, which also has Sheryl Crow and St. Vincent and a cover of an oldie once recorded by Carl Perkins, is an improvement on “Look Up,” with catchier songs, deeper grooves and more emotional singing by Starr, as in the very tender “You and I (Wave of Love).”

“Ringo’s spirit is so open and loving — he lives inside my mind and heart,” says Tuttle, who joined Starr and a bevy of other players last year for a pair of concerts at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. With a laugh, Tuttle recalls her mom’s reaction to the gigs.

“She grew up obsessed with the Beatles, and Paul was always her favorite,” she says. “Now she’s a total Ringo-head.”

This summer, Starr — who’s lived in Los Angeles for decades with his wife, Barbara Bach Starkey — will lead his All-Starr Band on a tour scheduled to wrap June 14 at the Greek Theatre; he also shares a vocal duet with Paul McCartney — the pair’s first — on a new album his old bandmate is set to release next month.

Before all that, though, Starr was eager to talk about “Long Long Road,” whose cover photo shows pop music’s most famous drummer in a ruffled purple shirt.

“If you’ve done your homework, you know that shirt is from the ’60s,” he said.

This album is the rare example of a sequel that’s better than the original. Ringo Starr: You know what I was thinking today? I was thinking that it’s different and a step up — not different and we’re stepping down. We had some discussions because T Bone was using the word “psychedelic,” and I kept asking him, “Have you ever taken acid?”

And? T Bone Burnett: Well, yes, I have. In fact, I had some this morning.

Starr: There’s the headline.

I think we’re done here. Starr: But it worked great.

Burnett: Ringo said he wanted it to be more rock ’n’ roll, so I think it’s got more of his natural energy in it.

Starr: We also got to know each other. I mean, we’d met but never been out for dinner or anything.

How did the two of you meet? Starr: My story is that in the ’70s and ’80s, I had a lot of parties, and he would be at some of them. I never invited him once, but he’d come with one of the Band members — you know, the Band band. Actually, I don’t know who brought you.

Burnett: Van Dyke [Parks] or Harry Nilsson or Levon [Helm]. We’d be hanging out at the Troubadour, and suddenly there would be a party. I don’t even think you planned them, really.

Starr: Not a lot of them, no. I could hear all the traffic in L.A. coming to my house at two o’clock when the pubs and the discos closed.

Burnett: They were great parties. The one I remember best, you walked in and at the far end of the room, Mae West was sitting in a chair with perfect lighting in a white gown. She was glowing.

Starr: She invited us to dinner once, and she got there an hour early to set the lights. Mae was great. I did a movie with her, and I put my arm around her — it was like a metal corset.

Were these new songs recorded at the same time as the first batch? Burnett: They were done well after we did the first record. Then we did that show at the Ryman, which was fantastic.

Starr: I still laugh every time I think of Molly doing “Octopus’s Garden” — it just makes me smile. So after that, T Bone would send me a track, and I’d play drums on it and sing it and then I’d send it back and he’d put the final touches on the mix.

Burnett: Daniel Tashian arranged the vocals, and he’s a killer collaborator — produces Kacey Musgraves and writes with her. He did kind of a Beach Boys thing in “Long Long Road.”

Starr: That was a surprise — wasn’t on the track when I sang to it.

Burnett: It was a surprise to me too. I left it to him, and he did that.

Starr: It’s an homage to Brian [Wilson], God bless him.

You play drums throughout the record, Ringo. Is there an album of yours where you didn’t play drums? Starr: No. There’s not even a track, I don’t believe.

If you’re making a record, you’re playing drums. Starr: I’m the drummer — that’s how it works. I sing the songs too, but I love to play.

T Bone, you’ve spoken about the musicality of Ringo’s drumming. Do you build a song around his playing in a way that’s different from that of other drummers? Starr: No.

Burnett: Yes.

Starr: Yes?

Burnett: Nobody has Ringo’s feel — that’s just the reality. It’s the most recognizable feel of any drummer. Today, drummers have to play to click tracks. Ringo doesn’t come anywhere near one.

Starr: I can’t play to a click track — I get too tense.

Burnett: Ringo is the click track.

Starr: I’ll speed it up or slow it down but only by a millisecond. The only other drummer I know that does that is Jim Keltner.

One of the greats. Starr: I taught him everything he knows.

Drummers love to say that you’re their favorite drummer. Who’s your favorite drummer? Starr: Jim Keltner. We’ve played together [in the All-Starr Band] — if I do a fill, the next one’s up to him. I’ve played with drummers where you do a fill and then they do all this fast stuff, which I don’t do. With Jim, it was great from the beginning.

Is there a fill on this album, T Bone, that lit you up when Ringo played it? Burnett: My favorite part of the drumming on the record is the choruses of “Baby Don’t Go,” where Ringo played something I never heard him play before. He was just relating to the song, and it turned into this kind of second line feel.

A New Orleans vibe. Starr: Played it with brushes. I just sit behind the drums and play, and whatever comes, comes. If we do Take 2, I may not do it the same way — I may be in a totally different place because it’s an emotion, and the emotion came earlier. I can’t explain the way I play. I play because I love to play, and things happen as I’m going along.

Did your love of country music make you an oddball as a schoolkid growing up in England? Starr: School I didn’t do a lot of, so I don’t know. But Liverpool was into it — the neighbors and my pals. I’m grateful I was born there because it was a port, and in this area I lived, at least one of the sons of every family was in the Merchant Navy, and they’d bring back records from America. I worked on the day boats trying to get my ticket for the Merchant Navy, but they fired me.

Burnett: Fortunately for the world.

As a young musician in Texas, T Bone, did you hear Ringo’s “Don’t Pass Me By,” from the White Album, as a country song? Burnett: Definitely, yeah — it had a fiddle on it. It sounded like an orchestra fiddle player trying to play country music.

Starr: It was English country music.

Would the band that made this record ever go on tour? Starr: It could go on tour, yeah. It’s another All-Starr Band — the country All-Starr Band.

Burnett: It would be interesting — Billy and Molly and Sarah Jarosz and Dennis Crouch. We could do that.

Starr: Not this year, OK? I’ve got enough this year.

Do you envision this partnership continuing in the studio? Think there’ll be another record? Burnett: I don’t want to tempt fate. It’s been such a beautiful collaboration.

Starr: Might happen.

Burnett: I’m open to it.

Starr: Now I know we’ve both thought about it.

Last one for you, Ringo: I heard Paul’s new album the other day, with the duet between the two of you. That’s something I’d never heard before. Starr: Well, nobody has. I went to Andrew Watt’s house maybe two years ago — we were just jamming, he wasn’t producing me or anything. He got a guitar, and somebody had left some drums there and I played those. Then I said, “Oh, four o’clock — I gotta go.” So I left. Then I started doing a record. I kept calling Andrew: “Send that track up, maybe we can do something with it.” He never sent it.

Just keeping it safe. Starr: He became not my best friend immediately [laughs]. But then what happened to it was Paul was working with Andrew, and Andrew played him the thing with him on guitar and me on drums. Paul wrote a song around that, and so he sort of had to ask me to sing on it, didn’t he?

At the event where I heard the album, it was clear how moved people were to hear the two of you together. Starr: Same is true for us. That’s where we come from.

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