Ringo Starr releases the first track from a new album of country songs written and produced with T Bone Burnett at the age of 84.

My favourite Beatle songs have always been Ringo’s trio of solo hits – It Don’t Come Easy, Back Off Boogaloo and Photograph (while skipping lightly past You’re Sixteen).

So it’s good to find that at the ripe old age of 84 the auld fella is still making decent records. Country records. Which should not come as a surprise as Ringo’s always been a country boy at heart.

In fact he recorded his second solo album, the country-flavoured Beaucoups Of Blues, in Nashville back in 1970. And he’s already booked in to play the Ryman Auditorium, home of the original Grand Ol’ Opry, early in the new year.

Time On Her Hands is a classic country tune with a classic country lyric, co-written and produced by T Bone Burnett and featuring the lonesome pedal steel guitar of Paul Franklin (recently on tour with country superstar Chris Stapleton).

Back in The Beatles, Ringo was the “country guy”, bringing a country twang to covers like the rockabilly tune Matchbox and writing his own efforts like Don’t Pass Me By, influenced by his time in his previous band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

Now he’s recorded an album of songs co-written and produced by T Bone Burnett, singing and playing drums – of course – alongside energised a raft of young guests from the world of American country music.

Molly Tuttle plays guitar and banjo and sings on four songs, Billy Strings plays “heavy metal guitar” and sings on three, and Alison Kraus is on the final track of the album, while other guests include duos Lucius and Larkin Poe.

Burnett says: “If you listen to all the country stuff he did – What Goes On and Act Naturally and Honey Don’t – he did so much great country music in The Beatles. And, you know, he’s called Ringo Starr because… I mean, that’s a cowboy name, right?

“He wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid. As we all did back in those days; we always all wanted to be Gene Autry or something. So when he asked me to write a song for him, I wrote that song Come Back in a Gene Autry style for him, and it kind of kicked off this whole songwriting binge I’ve been on.”