Album Review – Ryan Bingham’s “They Call Us The Lucky Ones”

Americana (#570) on the Country DDS.

Ryan Bingham has always had a busted voice. He’s a B-level actor at best, only really adept at playing a version of himself on the screen. If we’re being honest, the best part of Bingham has not always been Bingham himself, but the talent he surrounds himself with, starting with his original backing band The Dead Horses, and his first producer Marc Ford … who by the way, was the best guitarist The Black Crowes ever fielded.

But there’s something about the songs, the voice, and the visage of Ryan Bingham when he’s at his best that evokes the grandeur and imagination of the rugged American experience in a uniquely compelling manner. It’s part nostalgia, part Western relief, part American mythology that he brings to the surface to make you hang on his every word, and believe it. It’s a dark and distressed version of cowboy poetry that drips with genuineness, and feeds the soul.

Ryan Bingham’s new album They Call Us The Lucky Ones is exactly what you want from a Ryan Bingham album, because it is a Ryan Bingham album, not a close approximation of one, nor one where he’s trying to broaden his palette, bored with his own persona and sound. Lucky Ones is dirty, gritty, loose, sweaty, a little risque, perhaps country only by association, but an excellent specimen of Americana at its best, meaning side-stepping all the pretentiousness, and allowing slide guitar and dirty signals to give the music a coarse finish.

Aiding and abetting Bingham on this effort are The Texas Gentlemen who’ve been touring with Bingham as his backing band for a few years now, and contribute significantly enough to this album to share billing on the front cover. If you believe that Bingham is at his best when he leans on the talents of others, that’s what you get on this record. And frankly, this is probably the best record The Texas Gentlemen have ever released too.

Guitarists Ryan Ake and Cody Huggins, keys player Daniel Creamer, bass player Scott Lee, drummer Paul Grass, and the oldtimer Richard Bowen on fiddle and mandolin made Ryan Bingham’s first real full-length album in seven years worth the wait. They understand Bingham’s sound and vision since they’ve been plying it on all his old songs for the last few years. When they hit the studio, it was second nature.

The songwriting on Lucky Ones isn’t always remarkable. Some of the songs handle lyricism like Clear Channel classic rock—repetitive lines primarily assembled to rhyme, though admittedly pretty damn fun to sing along to like “Let The Big Dog Eat.” “The Ballad of the Texas Gentlemen” is just meant to be a fun road song, and in many respects, this is meant to be a fun road album. “Americana” feels like a silly kiss off of sorts, but one whose lines are deceptively smart in how they develop.

Other songs are simple, like cowboy songs, including the love song “Blue Skies.” Bingham does elevate his game with the nearly 7-minute storytelling of “Cocaine Charlie,” which builds into a Cormac McCarthy-like epic that Taylor Sheridan could adapt into a screenplay. The propulsive “I Got A Feelin'” is a good anthem for down times, which Bingham releases this new album into.

Ryan Bingham feels like his own American institution at this point, perhaps only known by most moving along the periphery as opposed to a centerpiece, but one they see the American experience illustrated through. Ryan Bingham just needs to be himself, because nobody else is like Ryan Bingham. This is what he pulls together in the post-Yellowstone universe in this strong, even if short of exceptional, mid-career effort.

8.1/10

– – – – – – – – – –

Purchase/stream They Call Us The Lucky Ones.