Wednesday To-Do: Ryan Bingham and Dead Horses
RYAN BINGHAM & DEAD HORSES
9 p.m., Sticky Fingerz. $7.
Ryan Bingham has a bio made for PR (or is it the other way around? the cynical ask). Only 26, with rugged good looks and a penchant for tall, flat-brimmed cowboy hats, Bingham spent his boyhood living the ranch life on border towns. He's bilingual and a former bull-rider who spent years on the Southwest rodeo circuit. He got his start in a roadhouse owned by his uncle; the bar's jukebox, filled with the likes of Bob Wills and Marshall Tucker, influenced his sound. On his debut album on Lost Highway, Bingham plies the same kind of country-rock grit that distinguished the outlaw country movement. He sings of world-weariness with a raspy, world-weary voice that belies his age. He sings of working all day for a dollar, of marijuana plants, of trains, of going without bread and water. Sometimes he slips into Spanish. Marc Ford, formerly of the Black Crowes, produced Bingham's debut, “Mescalito,” and occasionally hints of the Crowes surface. More cowpunk! Any chance we could get our own preternaturally aged, wild-voiced country-rocker to open? This gig was made for Chris Denny.
