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Riding The Range With Ryan Bingham

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 7, 2008

When Ryan Bingham, all of 25, sings, "I've been a desperado in West Texas for so long," the temptation might be to snicker. Or assume he's writing in character.

But Bingham's got the history to back up that line.

He may not have roamed the prairies robbing small-town banks, but he spent a lot of time on the roads of West Texas and New Mexico, riding in rodeos between the ages of 11 and 22.

He spent many a night sleeping in his truck or crashing with friends and relatives.

"Yeah, I was on the couch tour for a while," Bingham says in a West Texas accent untempered by spells living in Paris and, now, California.

It's the same voice, rangy and weathered as his native soil, that made the above lyric so believable. It's from "Southside of Heaven," the lead-off track from his major-label debut, last year's "Mescalito."

Bingham's sound captures the lonely, big-sky feel in the best tradition of Texas singer-songwriters such as Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark and James McMurtry. Ex-Black Crowe Marc Ford produced "Mescalito."

"I was always a big fan of The Black Crowes," Bingham says. "It was quite a treat to meet Marc and start playing music with him. That was the style of music I wanted to go toward."

Bingham learned the rudiments of guitar from a mariachi musician he met while living in Laredo, Texas. His uncle's record collection furthered his musical education.

"My uncle had a lot of old records, country and rock 'n' roll," Bingham says by telephone from his current home in central California.

Among the performers he learned from were "Bob Wills, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Commander Cody ... The Marshall Tucker Band was my favorite," Bingham says.

He started writing his own songs soon after picking up a guitar, playing them for friends and fellow rodeo riders.

"Everybody seemed to like the songs," Bingham says. A friend of his uncle's had a recording studio in Hobbs, N.M., and Bingham made a demo tape that he sold or gave to friends.

One of those demos made its way overseas, followed, unknowingly, by Bingham.

A few years back, Bingham flew to Paris for a promised role in Euro Disney's Wild West show, only to find out when he arrived that the job had fallen through.

A Navajo Indian who was part of the show let Bingham crash at his place. Exhausted, Bingham accepted, only to awake from a long rest to the sound of his own music.

"Turned out the host's cousin was a bronc rider I used to rodeo with," Bingham says. Bingham's friend shared the recordings with his cousin in Paris. "It was kind of funny, he had been listening to my tunes."

It was the best reception Bingham got in Paris.

He began busking on the subway to pick up some money and maybe pick up some French fans. Unfortunately, he was an American wearing a cowboy hat at the height of anti-U.S. sentiment around the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

"People were more interested in who I voted for than my music," Bingham says. "By the end of it, I was telling them I was from Canada."

ON TOUR

Ryan Bingham

WITH: Ronny Elliott

WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday

WHERE: The Orpheum, 1902 Avenida Republica de Cuba (14th Street), Tampa; (813) 248-9500

COST: $8

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