Ryan Bingham – “The Weary Kind”
Posted on | November 25, 2009 | 5 Comments
1. Funny that Ryan Bingham would write a song with “weary” in the title, since most of his reviews mention that word in relation to his raspy drawl. In fact, Bingham is creating quite the brand for himself — the whiskey drunk, sweat soaked troubadour with miles of highway behind him. He reinforces this ethic on nearly every song, which might become cumbersome if his music wasn’t growing by leaps and bounds. From his raw debut Mescalito to the more focused, yet still cheerily irreverent Roadhouse Sun, Bingham has grown his sound to include both a healthy dose of the Byrds and an harder rocking sound. With this new song “The Weary Kind”, from the forthcoming movie Crazy Heart, Ryan takes a haunting tone, warning the listener that the life he lives (and he really lives it) is not for the faint of heart. The film, a story about a wayward country singer, which Bingham’s own story weaves closely enough with that the song manages to be both autobiographical and fictional.
2. T Bone Burnett produced “The Weary Kind”, layering it with an appropriate cinematic drama, like gathering storm clouds. The backing track is murkier than anything Bingham has approached before, but he manages to make it work. Layering woozy pump organ and pedal steel over spry fingerpicking, Bingham lays out a few situations typical to the lifestyle of Jeff Bridges’ main character: playing poker, shooting 8 ball at a truck stop. After a quick, somewhat cliched chorus, he goes a bit deeper, as his character is “sweating out the hate” with the “whiskey…a thorn in [his] side.” The song strings together the life of this wanderer to a point that is almost too much — revisiting lines heard often in Bingham’s songs. The third verse is completely unflinching, with Ryan blaming the character (or himself) for lost love, being so direct as to assert that “you are the man who ruined her world.”
3. A key item to remember is that this song was written for a film, in which Bingham and his Dead Horses serve as Bridges’ backing band. I can see how the song happened, with Burnett stumbling across Bingham’s work and asking him to contribute a song. This sounds more hastily written than his album tracks, with a few clumsy rhymes that seem a little too easy. What makes this work is the way Bingham sells it — he doesn’t have to stretch to know the lyrical territory, and he sounds at home in the arrangement. Last time I checked there was nothing wrong with an artist wearing a song too well, and that point is proven here.
Ryan Bingham – “Country Roads”
Posted on | September 16, 2009 | No Comments
1. I remember visiting the Lost Highway site in 2006 and happening upon three videos of Ryan Bingham. It all seemed a bit too perfect – how they had managed to find this troubadour with a hazy backstory that involved drifting through the southwest, spending time at the rodeo, and finally finding success out in Los Angeles. If Ryan had released “Country Roads” as his first single, my suspicions of one big marketing ploy might have felt more valid. This breezy harmonica-aided traveling song lays out Bingham’s manifesto: all the things he will and won’t do, where he has been and where he is going.
2. Producer Marc Ford doesn’t pull anything surprising here, mining more folky territory than the electric edge that has permeated much of Bingham’s uptempo tunes. Corby Schaub continues to prove his mettle on the mandolin, and the track skips along like a truck rattling down Highway 87, with the curious hints of jangly British guitar that also show up on “Dylan’s Hard Rain” and “Bluebird”.
3. Ryan has said in interviews that this is one of his older songs. Lyrics like “I might’ve took a few wrong turns/ Down a few wrong roads” and “I know I’ll never stick around/ I’ll never lose track of time” show a young man coming to terms with the life he has lived and the life he has yet to live. That said, Bingham isn’t trying to convince himself that he has taken the right path – his resolve is what makes the song work. Seeing Ryan live, the most striking thing is that he is exactly who his press biography says he is. This song furthers the idea that authenticity is the best marketing ploy of all.