You go to Nashville to write songs, but you go to Austin to play'em. -Tim Van Huss
At the beginning of 2009 on Austin City Limits I got my first taste of Ryan Bingham. I liked him immediately for one of the tunes he played called Hard Times from his debut album mescalito, released in 2008 . He plays a combination of country-influenced blues, roots rock, folk rock, country & western and all the various manifestations of the Great Americana Movement so dominant in Texas and especially Austin. A former professional rodeo "star" he abandoned it to pursue a career in music. In his late 20's when mescalito was released he sounded like he had been at this craft for 50 years. With a voice like sand paper filtered through whiskey and hand-rolled cigarettes, this up-and-comer can phrase as well as Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson. The debut album stayed pretty much in that Texas roadhouse Americana Vein.
Enter 2009 with a band and a new album on Lost Highway records. Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses' Roadhouse Sun bursts on the scene this year with a rock & roll album, very similar to how label mate Lucinda Williams did it with her masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Both had been knocking around with blues, country and western, and folk for their early careers and both turn out to take the best of what always makes rock and roll great, by blurring the lines of all and just plain rawking out, with a fine, fine gumbo. There's even a nice paean to The Byrds and The Beatles on the track called Dylan's Hard Rain. He writes the beautiful heartbreak ballad Snake Eyes and follows it with a nice fuzzy guitar feedback tune called Endless Ways that could easily fit on Uncle Tupelo's Still Feel Gone or Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
The album is nicely produced, the tracks are all strong and although not yet at the masterpiece level, I will expect that due to his young age, he has plenty of time to write an album of those I am comparing him to. With this crack band that already sounds like its hitting its stride we should see some great things for Texas and the rest of us in the years to come.
At the beginning of 2009 on Austin City Limits I got my first taste of Ryan Bingham. I liked him immediately for one of the tunes he played called Hard Times from his debut album mescalito, released in 2008 . He plays a combination of country-influenced blues, roots rock, folk rock, country & western and all the various manifestations of the Great Americana Movement so dominant in Texas and especially Austin. A former professional rodeo "star" he abandoned it to pursue a career in music. In his late 20's when mescalito was released he sounded like he had been at this craft for 50 years. With a voice like sand paper filtered through whiskey and hand-rolled cigarettes, this up-and-comer can phrase as well as Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson. The debut album stayed pretty much in that Texas roadhouse Americana Vein.
Enter 2009 with a band and a new album on Lost Highway records. Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses' Roadhouse Sun bursts on the scene this year with a rock & roll album, very similar to how label mate Lucinda Williams did it with her masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Both had been knocking around with blues, country and western, and folk for their early careers and both turn out to take the best of what always makes rock and roll great, by blurring the lines of all and just plain rawking out, with a fine, fine gumbo. There's even a nice paean to The Byrds and The Beatles on the track called Dylan's Hard Rain. He writes the beautiful heartbreak ballad Snake Eyes and follows it with a nice fuzzy guitar feedback tune called Endless Ways that could easily fit on Uncle Tupelo's Still Feel Gone or Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
The album is nicely produced, the tracks are all strong and although not yet at the masterpiece level, I will expect that due to his young age, he has plenty of time to write an album of those I am comparing him to. With this crack band that already sounds like its hitting its stride we should see some great things for Texas and the rest of us in the years to come.
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