Rodeo cowboy, actor, songwriter, bourbon brand owner, and occasional surfer. We don’t know if these are enough credentials to introduce Ryan Bingham, but they certainly add substance to an enviable musical biography.
Bingham is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Americana and roots music. Since his debut with Mescalito (2007), he has developed a solid career and a powerful repertoire that has positioned him as one of country’s great male figures, perhaps vying for the podium with Sturgill Simpson. A breakthrough that had a significant turning point with the Oscar for Best Original Song for «The Weary Kind», included in the film Crazy Heart (2009).
This album, with a new backing band, The Texas Gentlemen, appears seven years after his last full-length, the extraordinary American Love Song (2019). This delay in completing an LP is largely due to his participation in the series Yellowstone, which, as he himself commented, involved significant physical and mental strain, although it also helped him reach a wider audience. It was common for his character in the series to sing his performer’s songs, guitar in hand.
Now freed from television pressure, Bingham’s whiskey-soaked voice is sublime, capable of moving us from the album’s start with an ode to the live musician’s life and its tribulations.
A compact and complete album; sensitive at times, making us think that no one can overshadow its author when it comes to conveying emotion and tackling difficult subjects («Twist the Knife» or the golden finale that is «I’m a Goin’ Nowhere»); playful in many others («I Got a Feelin’» or «Let the Big Dog Eat», for example); and traversed by river-like songs that contain lives, characters grappling with miseries and promises («Cocaine Charlie»). An album that, moreover, perhaps answers the eternal question of what that catch-all genre (a way of life too?) called Americana consists of: «’Cause we are Americana / We do whatever we wanna».
Listening to a Ryan Bingham album feels like a frontier sermon, under a canopy of stars and by the light of a fire of needs and hopes: «What’s the relevance if you can’t get no love».
Truly, we are the lucky ones that he continues to tell us stories that, in some way, we know, but that we need the sad-eyed cowboy to remind us of.