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Ryan Bingham

Ryan Bingham was born in Hobbs, NM, hard up against the Texas Panhandle. He grew up in the West Texas oil fields, then spent time as a teenage rodeo cowboy in towns all across the state. Along the way, he absorbed the Cajun culture of western Louisiana, the hardcore hip-hop favored by his Houston friends, and the border songs of the Mexican immigrants. Until he moved to California in 2007, he never lived in any one place for more than two years. It’s this spirit of having done plenty of living early on, that has informed the singer-songwriters world-weary and jagged, weather-beaten vocals.

From the beginning of his recording career, with “Mescalito,” Bingham has defied easy classification. As a rising country star, he ranged from Woody Guthrie-style folk songs and Spanish-language balladry to gritty hard rock. It’s all American music. He’s enjoyed thrilling highs and suffered debilitating lows, sometimes all at once. While his career was taking off – he won both an Oscar and a Grammy for “The Weary Kind,” the theme song he wrote for the film “Crazy Heart” – he was coping with the tragic deaths of his parents.

The losses put Bingham in a dark tunnel, and it took a while to crawl his way out. With his sixth studio album, “American Love Song” (Axster Bingham Records), Bingham has come back into the light, on it Bingham takes all of his influences – both musical and experiential – and unites them in his best, most fully realized record to date.