Live: Ryan Bingham, Houston

Ryan Bingham

Lots of fun Friday at Cactus Music in Houston, as Ryan Bingham dropped by to perform a handful of tunes from his latest studio album, Tomorrowland.  The acoustic set included the rollicking “The Road I’m On,” “Never Ending Show” and “Western Shore.”

There’s Ryan Bingham in Houston, back there with the gimme cap.

Bingham is, of course, the Academy Award-winning writer and singer of “The Weary Kind,” from the movie Crazy Heart, and the latest in a long line of fine singer-songwriters of the Texas tradition. This was a bit of a homecoming for Bingham, because he spent his high school years in Houston before taking off to join the rodeo circuit.

Tomorrowland, Bingham’s fourth studio album, is a bit of a rocker that’s earned good reviews. At the in-store on Friday, Bingham stripped the songs down to their acoustic underpinnings but the boy’s a heck of a guitar player, so they rocked nevertheless. “Never Ending Show” is one of his many road songs, declaring “I don’t need the marquee lights/I don’t need my name in lights” while all he wants is to “hopefully make it home.”

“Too Deep To Fill”  is perhaps the album’s best song, Bingham’s mission statement of why he’s hitting the road again: “I’m going out to the country/I’m going to see if I can find out why,” while reminding the listener he will won’t stray forever with “I hope to be home by supper time.”

People in Houston kill me: this capacity show at the record store (complete with firemen on hand, ostensibly to prevent too many people breaking the fire code) required a purchase and a bit of trouble to enter. Still, there were pockets of people who’d rather stand and gab with their bros and ugly girlfriends, instead of relinquishing 30 minutes of attention to this fine artist. Bingham seemed to sense this, so his set at Cactus was a bit shorter than the one he performed the day before in Austin.

Bingham took some time to meet the fans and sign autographs afterward.

The people who really were there for the music were early and up front, one even offered Bingham a swig from his whiskey flask which the singer happily obliged. The payoff was a rollicking version of early song “Bread and Water” with the lyric “Houston always brings me down” delivered with a big smile from Bingham.

We didn’t get the surprise treat that Bingham offered the Austin audience, a cover of Robert Earl Keen’s “The Road Goes On Forever.” But you can see it on the YouTube video below, at about the 36:30 mark.

If you want to see Bingham with his full band, he plays March 10 in Houston at House of Blues. Or catch him at another tour stop, click here for a list.

YouTube: “The Road I’m On,” live at Cactus Music, Houston, 2/1/2013

YouTube: “Keep It Together”

Videos courtesy of pokabeb

YouTube: Ryan Bingham plays an in-store at Waterloo Records, Austin, 1/31/2013. Thanks to Bob Knauf for the video.

Ryan Bingham official web site

Video Du Jour: Ryan Bingham

The world got to know Ryan Bingham when he won an Academy Award for “The Weary Kind,” from the movie Crazy Heart. The Texan has a new album, Tomorrowland, coming out Sept. 18, and the first single “Heart of Rhythm” promises a rockin’ good time.

Ryan Bingham official web site

Video Du Jour: Jeff Bridges

Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges has a new self-titled album, out today. Über producer T-Bone Burnett twirls the knobs on this one, and it features two songs by the late Texas singer/songwriter Stephen Bruton, who also wrote some of the music for Bridges’ movie Crazy Heart.

In fact, the first single “What A Little Bit Of Love Can Do” is a Bruton composition and in this video Bridges is joined by fellow Oscar winner Ryan Bingham on vocals, T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller on guitar and bass player Dennis Crouch. No word on the identity of that dancing dude at the end.

Jeff Bridges official website

Video of the Week: Ryan Bingham

Ryan Bingham is ridin’ high this year – this spring he won an Academy Award for “The Weary Kind” (from Crazy Heart) and this video, taken during an in-store performance in California, was taken just a day or two after the Oscar celebration.  Ryan performs “Hallelujah” from his new album Junky Star, produced by T-Bone Burnett and which will be released next week.

Ryan Bingham official website

Our Guide to the Essential Texas Party Albums

More than once someone has asked, “If I wanted to throw a party at my house and I wanted that Texas sound, what should I play?”  Well if your house is in Buffalo, New York, then you can play the Goo Goo Dolls and probably half the crowd would say “Yeah, that’s Texas.”  Hopefully the other half would correctly recognize the Goo Goos are a local band from Buffalo.

And unfortunately that’s sort of the situation here in Texas.  This state has many transplants who really couldn’t identify a true Texas artist outside the obvious (Willie Nelson, Dixie Chicks).  So I’m stepping up to your service, a native Texan with a working knowledge of our state’s great artists, with a collection of albums made by our native boys and girls.  And true to Texas, you can ask someone else from around here and they’ll come up with a completely different list – and want to kick the ass of the guy who came up with this one.  So let’s party and forget where you got this list:

1. Texas Tornados Live From Austin TX – Recorded for the venerable TV show “Austin City Limits” in 1990, by the supergroup featuring Doug Sahm, Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jimenez.  A brilliant gumbo pot of blues, country, Tejano and rock and roll with memory-tugging versions of Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “She’s About A Mover” and a rollicking “96 Tears,” this single CD spans the incredible breadth of Texas music.   It’s worth the price of admission just to hear Fender sing “Baby What You Want Me To Do.”  This CD is a party all by itself.

MP3: “Who Were You Thinking Of” (live at Austin City Limits) by the Texas Tornados

2. The “Chirping” Crickets – When four Lubbock boys cut this album way back in 1957, they had no idea how much this music would transform the world.  Songs like “Oh Boy!,” “Not Fade Away” and “That’ll Be The Day” made their writer and singer Buddy Holly a star and the latter would become a hit.  This is the birth of rock and roll as we have come to know it – written and performed by members of a rock band.  In fact, the record caught the ears of four young musicians in Liverpool, and in a few more years the world would change yet again.

MP3: “Oh Boy!” by Buddy Holly & the Crickets

3. Texas Flood – Okay, we can’t get too deep into the list without name checking the late, very great Stevie Ray Vaughan.  He was perhaps no more electrifying than on his 1983 debut.  Texas Flood was instantly a success, and one of the most popular blues albums ever recorded, but Vaughan was more than a mere blues artist.  His technique and ability on the guitar instantly put him toe-to-toe with legends like Hendrix and Clapton – and since his death in 1990 virtually nobody has even come close to Stevie Ray.

MP3: “I’m Cryin'” by Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

4. Honeysuckle Rose: Music From The Original Soundtrack – Yeah, it’s a soundtrack.  And yeah, it has the dreaded “On The Road Again.”   But it’s prime Willie Nelson, recorded in 1980 live as the movie was being made.  It has the hell-raising energy of Nelson’s best Texas roadhouse shows, as he and his rockin’ band charge through classics like “Whiskey River,” “Bloody Mary Morning” and the whacked-out anthem “Pick Up The Tempo.”  Guest appearances by Texas legends Hank Cochran and Kenneth Threadgill are a bonus, and I swear you won’t even notice the songs featuring better-seen-and-not-heard actresses Amy Irving and Dyan Cannon.

MP3: “Pick Up The Tempo” by Willie Nelson & Family

Review: Jerry Jeff Walker, Vampire Weekend, etc.

You ever watch football games on TV with the sound off?  I’ve done that for decades, a habit picked up when I was a sportswriter long ago – the announcers really add very little to the game.  And this is a great opportunity for multi-tasking: instead of listening to Al Michaels drone on, I listen to new albums.  So here you go, some new ones for 2010 and a handful left over from late last year.  And they’re all pretty good:

Vampire Weekend is just about the whitest band around, but they sure don’t sound that way.  On Contra, this New York quartet picks up the sprightly rhythms of African music (and on a song like “Diplomat’s Son,” reggae … is this an homage to the Clash?) and swirls them into an intoxicating blend of wordplay and jumpy dance hooks.  If you liked their first record, the boys (led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Ezra Koenig) haven’t strayed far from their roots, and that’s a good thing.

MP3: “White Sky” by Vampire Weekend

Jerry Jeff Walker is one of the legendary songwriters from Texas (although like Vampire Weekend, he’s a New York native) and Moon Child is his latest release.  It’s available only online, at Jerry Jeff’s website and from iTunes and Amazon.com.  Jerry Jeff wrote about six of the 11 tunes here, the rest are by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and others including a version of John Denver’s “Back Home Again.”  Jerry Jeff’s trademark is the bowed-but-not-broken survivor, looking forward with a peppy outlook: “The Poet Is Not In Today” fills that prescription.  Moon Child is a decent dose of sunshine from a Texas treasure.

MP3: “The Poet Is Not In Today” by Jerry Jeff Walker

Bonus Song Of The Week: “The Weary Kind”

Ryan Bingham is a Texas singer/songwriter whose work we’ve been digging for a little over a year.  He might be ready to break it big on a national basis, with “The Weary Kind,” a song from the new movie Crazy Heart.  Already Oscar talk has buzzed around star Jeff Bridges, and Bingham hisself might even show up on a nomination list for “Best Song.”  The movie also stars Robert Duvall and Maggie Gyllenhaal and T-Bone Burnett handles the music direction.  Crazy Heart will get a gradual opening over the next few weeks, and it should be at a theater near you by the beginning of February.

Crazy Heart official website

Diggin’ Up Some New Roots & Blues

         

The most interesting music coming out right now could be classified as roots music – country-rock, Americana, folk-rock, blues, etc.  These artists may appear mainly on indie labels, or are big names trying to figure out a new hook but for the most part they are making some pretty good music.

Ryan Bingham, coming out of the wild west (New Mexico) and using Texas as his base, rocks on Roadhouse Sun, his third album.  Like on Mescalito, his breakthrough album from 2007, Bingham infuses his music with heavy doses of Rolling Stones/Black Crowes sensibility (Crowes guitarist Marc Ford produced this), and on “Change Is,” mixes in a dollop of Led Zeppelin. 

MP3: “Dylan’s Hard Rain” by Ryan Bingham

The Flatlanders may be a legend, but they’re also a band – and Hills and Valleys, their fourth official release, may be their best yet.  Kicking off with the brilliant “Homeland Refugee” and the voice of Joe Ely, this Texas trio kicks the Lone Star dust off their boots and range far afield with selections like “Cry For Freedom” but their words hit home and sound just right for today.  Highly recommended.

MP3: “No Way I’ll Never Need You” by the Flatlanders

Review: Texas Music (Summer Edition)

Don’t know about you, but here in the Lone Star state the weather is telling us summer’s here.  Time to clean the pool, dust off the barbecue grill and pop a few tops (of Lone Star Beer, naturally).  We understand gasoline is 4 bucks a gallon so we won’t be too offended if you don’t visit over the Memorial Day weekend.  So here’s some freshly minted music from Texas, as a little holiday gift to you.