Ryan Bingham at Bush Hall

Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses
Liam Gerner
Bush Hall, 15 November 2010
I've been waiting to see Ryan Bingham for a few years now having bought his first album, Mescalito days after his first London gig at The Borderline, unfortunately for me he hasn't been back since. Not that he's been idle, Bingham has recorded two more albums since then, toured the States and won an Oscar for the song The Weary Kind, written for the movie Crazy Heart. After all that, at last he's back in the grand yet intimate setting of Bush Hall, and obviously I'm pretty excited to be finally seeing him live.
Listening to people around me it's clear the Oscar has attracted a lot of people here to this show. I overhear one girl who says she's a country fan, loves Garth Brooks and Keith Urban and seems only familiar with The Weary Kind. I wonder how she'll react to Bingham's much rawer music, which is far more Southern rock than the polished acts she's mentioned. Bingham may have touched the mainstream by featuring in a movie but the size of the venue would suggest there's still too much grit in his voice for the masses.
He begins the show alone on stage with just his acoustic guitar and harmonica, looking cowboy chic in a woolen hat, check shirt and pressed jeans that look a little too big for his slim frame. He's also exceptionally pretty, I never realised just how much so, and, you know me, I rarely am swayed by looks enough to mention them, but Bingham's movie star looks seem in complete contrast to his gruff, world-weary voice or gritty country rock music. It's kind of startling to see that voice come out of this young, slim, good looking guy (and hard to imagine he was once a bull rider).
After coming off the lonesome troubadour or The Poet, the rest of the band, known as The Dead Horses, join him on stage, looking like an authentic country band, if less pin-up than their leader. Still it's a fairly stripped down affair with just a drummer, bass player and stylin' guitarist, but they are a loud and rocking as any big band, turning up the volume in the chorus to The Day Is Done to brilliant effect. You can tell Bingham is happier with his band backing him up, taking off his hat and letting loose, grinning when the groove hits. It's fun to watch as the four work their way through working man tales such as Hard Times and Dollar A Day. Lyrically he's coming from the same place as Steve Earle and, despite being half his age, on the slower numbers sounds very much like him. One example of this was Strange Feeling In The Air, which he tells us was about bigotry he saw growing up in a small town.

Halfway through there's a change of pace when Bingham plays the first song he ever learned on guitar, a mariachi song, showing off what a good guitarist he is, segueing into his song Broncho Station, which allows the Dead Horses' guitarist to let rip on a building, rocking finale. I have to admit the songs from his first album do sound the most exciting (aside from one of my favourites, dedicated to "all the mamas", Tell My Mother I Miss Her So), with the slide-heavy Sunshine and stomping Southside Of Heaven ending the show, with the band getting into their Lynyrd Skynrd stride, it's fantastic stuff.
The encore not surprisingly sees Bingham giving much of the crowd what they came to see: an acoustic telling of his most famous song, The Weary Kind, and although it sounds great and gets the loudest cheer it's certainly not the best moment of the night because when Bingham has the Dead Horses behind him that's really when he's a force to be reckoned with and he deserves to be much bigger than he currently is.
A note on the support act, an Australian called Liam Gerner. Looking like the offspring of Art Garfunkel with his blond curly hair, he does a nice line in upbeat, singer-songwriter fare. Backed with the Dead Horses' drummer Matt Smith, helping to drive the songs along, it's enjoyable if fairly generic stuff. The most telling moment comes when he covers Steve Earle's Rich Man's War which, while it sounds fantastic, stands head and shoulders over his own material.