Ryan Bingham

Ryan Bingham catapulted out of relative anonymity during 2009 by claiming an Oscar for his joint composition of “The Weary Kind” alongside T-Bone Burnett. Serving as the emotional core of Crazy Heart, the drama that earned Jeff Bridges the Academy Award for Best Actor, the song cemented Bingham’s status as a wandering minstrel whose work straddled the divide between country and Americana. Once Crazy Heart had propelled him onto country charts, Bingham eventually parted ways with Lost Highway to create his own imprint, Axster/Bingham; by that point his songwriting had grown more singular, a quality sharply defined on the brooding 2015 collection Fear and Saturday Night and its vigorous 2019 successor, American Love Song. After taking a recurring guest part in the popular series Yellowstone, he delivered the intensely autobiographical, self-produced album Watch Out for the Wolf in 2023.

Bingham spent his formative years amid the sparse landscapes of rural Texas, where the rigors of ranch labor and rodeo contests later supplied an unmistakable ring of truth to his recordings. Having lived independently from his mid-teens onward, he moved between towns along the Southwestern border and the homes of relatives, frequently bedding down in his truck following rodeo events. During those journeys he first entertained companions on guitar, an instrument he had taken up at seventeen after lessons from a neighbor who performed with mariachi groups. Influences drawn from Bob Dylan, Marshall Tucker, and Bob Wills—artists featured on the jukebox at The Halfway Bar, the roadhouse run by an uncle whose tastes shaped his nephew’s—helped shape the road-worn style that caught the ear of a club owner in Stephenville, Texas. Offered a standing weekly slot at the venue, Bingham soon issued independent recordings such as Lost Bound Rails and Wishbone Saloon. Those tracks reached the attention of Nashville’s Lost Highway Records, which signed him and released his major-label debut Mescalito, produced by former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford, in October 2007.

Critics responded favorably to Mescalito; Rolling Stone likened Bingham’s gritty, raspy delivery to “Steve Earle’s dad.” After extensive touring in support, the songwriter once again collaborated with Marc Ford, who helmed 2009’s Roadhouse Sun. Later that year Bingham teamed with another industry veteran, producer and songwriter T-Bone Burnett, to contribute material to Crazy Heart. Centered on the attempted resurgence of a struggling country performer, the film garnered widespread acclaim, securing both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for “The Weary Kind,” one of Bingham’s original pieces co-written with Burnett, who served as the soundtrack’s musical director and producer. Bingham and his band the Dead Horses followed with the Burnett-produced Junky Star in September 2010.

Departing Lost Highway after three albums, Bingham issued 2012’s Tomorrowland on his newly established Axster Bingham Records label; the set was tracked in Malibu, California, and co-produced by Bingham and Justin Stanley. Composed in the isolation of an Airstream trailer nestled in California woodlands, the Jim Scott-produced Fear and Saturday Night surfaced in January 2015 and examined his unsettled childhood in depth. He followed it a year later with the live document Ryan Bingham Live.

In 2018 Bingham assumed the role of a roaming ranch hand on the acclaimed neo-Western drama Yellowstone, making sporadic appearances across the subsequent two seasons. At the same time he resurfaced in February 2019 with his seventh studio effort, the double album American Love Song. Co-produced by Charlie Sexton, the record drew praise for its boisterous backwoods atmosphere and candid accounts of hardship and victory. For his ensuing project Bingham again withdrew into solitude, this time amid the Montana backcountry, where he composed, performed, recorded, and mixed the material entirely by himself. The outcome, the spare and personal Watch Out for the Wolf, arrived in 2023 as a self-released title distributed through Thirty Tigers.