Idaho Live presents Oscar winner Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses (with special guest TBA) live in concert at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, at The Egyptian Theatre, 700 W. Main St., Boise.
Ryan Bingham won the Academy Award for best original song for “The Weary Kind,” the hauntingly beautiful song from the film Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges. Bingham is coming back to Boise for a headlining show after opening for Willie Nelson last summer at the Idaho Botanical Garden.
Tickets are $18 advance and $21 day of show for general admission seating. Advance tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 20, at The Record Exchange, The Boise Co-op, The Egyptian Theatre box office and egyptiantheatre.net.
“Bingham, an ex-rodeo bull rider, is electrifying in a somebody-might-take-a-pool-cue-to-the-head kind of way. This 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.” – Esquire Magazine, “9 Live Shows a Man Should See”
In “Strange Feelin’ in the Air,” a crooked guitar riff stalks, offering a feeling of apprehension as sure as the shifty outsider bursting through the swinging doors of the townie saloon. It’s pure Ryan Bingham, a conjurer of atmosphere, a gift that he put to good use for “The Weary Kind,” his Oscar-winning song featured in Crazy Heart. – The L.A. Times, Junky Star album review
At this year’s Americana Music Association’s awards show, Bingham won two well-deserved awards, taking home custom made plaques for Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),” which he co-wrote with T Bone Burnett. Bingham was the only artist to receive multiple awards at this year’s conference, and provided one of the evening highlights with the performance of his new song “Hallelujah” with the house band, which consisted of Buddy Miller, Don Was and Greg Leisz, to name a few.
For some artists, winning an Oscar would represent reaching a pinnacle. For Bingham, it instead represented a crossroads and a decision about which path to take.
“When there are a lot of people around saying ‘look, you have to capitalize on this and do something really commercial,’ you might think about it for a second,” admits the LA-based singer-songwriter. “But at the end of the day, there’s not a chance in hell I could do that. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I couldn’t get up in front of people and play a bunch of stuff that didn’t mean anything to me.”
Bingham puts that philosophy to the test in a big way on Junky Star, his third album on Lost Highway, which was recorded in a matter of days with producer T Bone Burnett, his collaborator on the Crazy Heart soundtrack. The disc delivers a bracing fusion of pensive, gravelly ballads – like “Hallelujah,” which is not a Leonard Cohen cover, but his own take on mortality, delivered from the other side of the veil – and raw, rock‘n’roll cuts that showcase Bingham’s incisive, darkly compelling lyrical bent.
Bingham channels a number of unique spirits over the course of the album, leading with his sensitive side on “The Poet” and kicking out the jams on the Waylon-meets-Keith Richards “All Choked Up Again.” Elsewhere, as in songs like “Depression” – a vivid evocation of our current social climate that’d have Woody Guthrie nodding in approval – and the album’s poignant title track, Bingham applies his wizened rasp with precise strokes, wringing emotion from every note.
“I’ve always been passionate about the situation of homeless people and kids having to survive on the streets, so some of these songs come from that, from looking at what people need to do to survive,” he explains. “So Junky Star doesn’t have anything to do with drugs or anything like that, it’s more about finding the beauty in what might at first appear to be rough around the edges. You can see that beauty in someone on the street, like some guy just raving and be like ‘I wonder what this guy has been through to get to that place?’”
Listen to Ryan Bingham on All Things Considered HERE.
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