Ryan Bingham’s back-story is one that record executives pray, to whomever their God is, falls into their company’s lap.
Mom gave him his first guitar at 16; left a broken family behind on the ranch and oil fields shortly thereafter; tried his luck on the rodeo circuit; got face-stomped by a beast named Spanky.
Heeded a rodeo-steeped uncle’s advice and – with more fake teeth than Bobby Clarke – tried his hand at music one night in a Texas bar; parlayed that into a weekly gig.
Rode that to an Austin City Limits appearance. Not to mention landing a Black Crowe as producer for his second album, Roadhouse Sun. And getting written up in the likes of Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Esquire, which posited Bingham’s “convergence of charisma, energy and songwriting suggests what Springsteen might have been like had he come up in Billy Bob’s instead of the Stone Pony.”
Well, I’m Jersey born-and-bred, so between that statement and hearing a friend from Atlanta rue the fact that he hasn’t seen Bingham in those parts yet, I had to see him perform just a couple blocks from my old Fairmount apartment.
Didn’t know what to expect though, because while he told Texas Monthly that he’s not a country music fan (“I like a lot of the older stuff,” Bingham says) he can’t pinpoint their fan-base demographics since “we actually do really good in punk rock clubs.”
The first time I’d heard him was the song “Bread and Water” a couple months back. Bingham’s voice struck me as that of a honky-tonker who gargled with Jagermeister. Turns out I wasn’t that far off: He cites too much time in whiskey world for a voice better described as aged (like bourbon, not people) than raspy.
They went on around 10 p.m. but I don’t know when they departed the stage; theirs is the kind of gee-tar rompin’ for which a bottle of beer must be in hand throughout. The note I typed into the BlackBerry was this: “Reminds me of the first DMB (Dave Matthews Band) show.” That’s not to say poppy. It’s to say I’d never seen a band of these specifications before. They’re country, but not country; upbeat but not grinny. The feel is so distinct you get lost in it, not distracted by it.
I’d expected a big crowd but you were able to move around and, in the back room, see directly to the stage without interference. Perhaps way-suburban folks who’d have heard of the upstart before weren’t willing to come to the big city; I felt like we were in someone’s basement watching a hard-drinking, witty friend. The sound was tight; not much variance from the records.
Yeah, Bingham wore a cowboy hat, but he’s considerably closer to genre-defying Willie Nelson than NASCAR nation’s Brooks and Dunn.
Best songs? “Tell My Mother I Miss Her So” has a definite western feel but I can’t wrap my head around how they pull it off so upbeat. “Dylan’s Hard Rain” takes a look at whether Bob’s land has recovered and finds it doesn’t, but without any lick of melodrama (Plus, he rhymes “Tijuana” and “marijuana” therein.) He hits a late-days Johnny Cash on the medicatingly slow, acoustic “Snake Eyes.” And “Bread and Water,” of course, which is the standout track off his ’07 debut Mescalito.
Dude’s definitely a storyteller with his boys and their guitars. But what’s all the more compelling is that some of the stories he draws from are apparently non-fiction. That’s good when it makes me what skeleton’s forced him to pen the line from Wishing Well that, “I been gone for so long I think the devil lost my name.” But it’s bad that I figure I won’t be able to see him in a cozy venue much longer.
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