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Ryan Bingham has spent most of his
life on the road, first on the rough-and-tumble rodeo
circuit, then moving from town to town on the equally
volatile roadhouse musical circuit. Those travels have
given him plenty of material to draw from – and
plenty of reason to stop for a moment to dig in his heels
and take a stand.
That’s exactly what the Texas-bred
troubadour does on his second Lost Highway album, Roadhouse Sun,
a hardscrabble collection that’s at once unblinkingly
personal and unapologetically political – the latter
a new and bracingly vivid addition to Bingham’s palette.
The expanded consciousness bursts to the surface of several
cuts on Roadhouse Sun – nowhere more movingly
than on “Dylan’s Hard Rain,” a stark
look into the darker corners of an America in which the
storm its namesake sang of has blown through.
“With all that’s happened politically and economically in the last
couple of years, I felt like there was a lot to say,” explains the 28-year-old
singer-songwriter. “As a young person, I felt like it was time to get
involved, to write something that wasn’t just about
Saturday nights in bars. And as far as Dylan? Things that
were happening back then are still happening. Things keep
repeating themselves.”
Roadhouse Sun showcases Bingham’s flair for cutting a listener
to the quick with slashing, blues-inflected guitar leads that’d do Lone
Star forebears like Lightnin’ Hopkins proud – his approach on the
steely “Endless Ways” – and then offering a balm of bucolic
melody, like that of the soaring “Bluebird.” He and his road-tested
band stretch out most intriguingly, however, on the epic “Change Is,” seven
minutes of meditative, hypnotic riffing that builds to
a near-psychedelic crescendo as Bingham spins his tale
of empowerment and responsibility.
“In some ways, I’d gotten burned out on the straight-ahead country
scene,” he says. “Because I wear a cowboy hat, people assume we’re
just this honky-tonk band, and we’re not. I want
to be seen as a versatile artist who draws on a lot of
different things and tells a lot of different stories.”
They’re tough stories, to be sure, but Bingham has
come by them honestly. He’s lived on his own since
his mid-teens, when circumstances and substance abuse tore
apart his nuclear family. Rather than get sucked into the
system that’s destroyed so many adolescents, he took
a road far less traveled – riding bulls on the highly-competitive
rodeo circuit around the Midwest and southwest. It was
on these long hauls that Bingham was able to get in touch
with his musical muse, taking things public one night at
a bar in Stephenville, Texas. “A bunch of
friends asked me to play a couple songs for them. I went
out and got my guitar and the owner said ‘you oughta
come on in and play now and then,’” he recalls. “So
I did -- I started playing every Wednesday night and people
started showing up to hear me play -- it was pretty much
an accident, I guess.” That ‘accident’ led
Bingham to offer up a passel of self-released, no-budget
CDs like 2005’s Wishbone Saloon.
The tunes contained on those fueled
many a barroom jukebox and earned the attention of folks
like Texas legend Terry Allen (who dubbed him “the legitimate heir to the
hard traveling deep knowing likes of Woody Guthrie and
Hank Williams.”) and Joe Ely (who marveled that “his
stories plant an uppercut to the gut and give a hint that
truth is on the run.”).
The accolades intensified with the release of his Lost
Highway bow, Mescalito, which earned raves in The
Washington Post, Esquire and Black Book,
which noted “Bingham forces you to hang on his every
word.” Bingham was also the subject of an extensive Los
Angeles Times “Arts & Music, Calendar” section
cover story, which lead to his network television debut
on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a performance
on Late Night With Conan O’Brien shortly
after. In 2009, Ryan appeared on the acclaimed PBS series Austin
City Limits with a 30-minute set that featured the
first television performances of “Snake Eyes” and “Tell
My Mother I Miss Her So” from Roadhouse Sun.
Produced, like its predecessor, by one-time Black Crowes
guitarist Marc Ford, Roadhouse Sun manages to capture
a feel that’s rootsy without being retro. That has
a lot to do with the singer’s preternaturally wizened
voice – which Bingham laughingly attributes to “Too
many nights in the whiskey house” – not to
mention Ford’s approach behind the board,” which
Bingham describes as “really old school. Those guitar
tones and basslines, Marc knew how to get those down. He
wanted to do it the way they used to do it.”
That’s evident in the swampy stomp of the turbulent
opener “Day Is Done,” as well as the Stones-gone-to-Lubbock “Tell
My Mother I Miss Her So,” a song that grew out of
Bingham’s attempts to deal with the death of his
own mother, with whom he says he had a “scattered” relationship.
Even two years ago, the tune might’ve been
tinged with angst, but on Roadhouse Sun, it’s
honest but loving, a decidedly adult assessment of Bingham’s
situation – a phrase that could be used to describe
each of its dozen pieces.
“I think when I was younger, I had more of a grudge against society,” he
offers. “I grew up poor and I grew up angry about it. But at some point,
you realize you can’t just be pissed off – you have to try to do
something positive, and this record is my way of doing that.”
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