There’s “ Never Far Behind,” written in the wake of his parents’ deaths: “How many times can I forgive you? / If you are always on my mind / I’ve tried so hard to outrun you / You are never far behind.” “There’s “Wolves,” written for school shooting survivors who bore the brunt of adult bullies: “There was no one comin’ around / To save me from the fray / I had to stand my ground / And keep the wolves at bay.” Indeed, some of Bingham’s best songs are also his saddest. People want to hear the songs, and I got to relive some of that trauma too.” A lot of it, I try to leave on the page, but then I got to go sing it over and over. Then I record it, and there ain’t really no looking back. I’ll just pick up the guitar and it just pours out. “But when I’m having those hard times, it’s almost like I can’t keep it from coming out. “I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to write lighter songs,” he says. When he was growing up, therapy was taboo: “Only crazy people went to therapy,” he says. He gets through it the same way he gets through everything: by losing himself in music. More recently, he split from his wife of 12 years, the filmmaker Anna Axster. Right around the time he was collecting an Oscar for co-writing “ The Weary Kind,” the signature song for the 2009 Jeff Bridges movie “Crazy Heart,” he lost both of his parents. And it didn’t get easier just because he got famous. In short, Bingham has done a lot of living. “He taught me to play some mariachi music, and from there, I was hooked. “He could play some really cool mariachi music and some of the Tejano and conjunto stuff,” Bingham says. When his parents split and his father moved to Laredo, one of his dad’s friends there took him aside. His mom bought him his first guitar for his 16th birthday, but he didn’t play it for a while. His life itinerary sounds like the Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere”: Bakersfield, Oildale, Midland, Odessa, Kermit, Houston, Laredo, Stephenville, Austin, Los Angeles. And you get the feeling he’s just getting warmed up.īorn in Hobbs, N.M., he grew up ranching and working in the oil fields with his family. And his music has been known to make grown men weep. He can ride a bull and play the kind of stomping rave-ups that fill his last album, 2019’s “American Love Song.” But he’s also seen his share of tragedy, including the death of both parents, his mother from alcoholism, his father from suicide. It’s a good metaphor for Bingham himself. But then when you see the show, it can be pretty dark.” People are chasing around horses and things like that. “It’s interesting how light and fun it is when we’re on set and we’re playing around. “We’re always joking backstage and things like that,” Bingham says via Zoom from his home in Topanga Canyon. For all of the show’s heaviness, for all of the murders and near-murders (one of them involving Walker), the camaraderie is a constant, starting with star and executive producer Kevin Costner, who makes sure to shake every cast and crew member’s hand every day. “I had a lot of compassion for everyone on the set that day.”Īs Bingham tells it, even when “Yellowstone” gets a little dangerous, it’s still fun. “Their natural instincts when they smell the grizzly bear is to turn and run the other direction,” says Ryan Bingham, the Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter who plays Walker, the lanky, sad-eyed singing cowboy on the hugely popular series “Yellowstone.” “To see all the cast, trying to hang on to these horses that are trying to run the other way. The cast was more or less chill about the whole thing. The scene called for a live grizzly bear wreaking havoc on the outskirts of Yellowstone Ranch.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |