Swide Magazine by Dolce&Gabbana

Getting the front row tapping their toes at the D&G menswear SS10 show today was Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses' remix of iconic track, Country Roads.

With cowboys on our mind - we get to know him a bit better.

Singer Ryan Bingham has lived on his own since his mid-teens, when circumstances and substance abuse tore apart his nuclear family. Rather than get sucked into the system that's destroyed others, he took a road far less traveled - riding bulls on the highly-competitive rodeo circuit around the Midwest and southwest.

It was on these long hauls that Ryan was able to get in touch with his musical muse, taking things public one night at a bar in Stephenville, Texas.

"A bunch of friends asked me to play a couple songs for them. I went out and got my guitar and the owner said 'you oughta come on in and play now and then,'" he recalls. "So I did -- I started playing every Wednesday night and people started showing up to hear me play -- it was pretty much an accident, I guess."

The Texas-bred troubadour has just released his second album - Roadhouse Sun, a personal and unapologetically political album that features the moving "Dylan's Hard Rain", a stark look into the darker corners of America in which the storm, "Dylan's Hard Rain" blew through.

Ryan Bingham performs (above) "Dylan's Hard Rain" at the studios of KVET-FM in Austin, Texas, on June 4 2009.

"In some ways, I'd gotten burned out on the straight-ahead country scene," he says. "Because I wear a cowboy hat, people assume we're just this honky-tonk band, and we're not. I want to be seen as a versatile artist who draws on a lot of different things and tells a lot of different stories."

Bingham has been the subject of an extensive Los Angeles Times "Arts & Music, Calendar" section cover story, which lead to his network television debut on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a performance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien shortly after.
 

"I think when I was younger, I had more of a grudge against society," Ryan has said.

"I grew up poor and I grew up angry about it. But at some point, you realize you can't just be pissed off - you have to try to do something positive, and this record is my way of doing that."

Discover more about this talented artist here www.binghammusic.com 

The track as heard on the SS10 D&G catwalk is entitled "Country Roads" and features on Ryan Bingham's new album RoadHouse Sun. Listen to more tracks from the album here www.myspace.com/ryanbingham.

 

Kerry Olsen

Source & Photo Credit: Ryan Bingham

 

TAGS: ryan bingham & the dead horses country roads usic d&g dolce&gabbana texas cowboys music jay leno roadhouse sun country rock music online magazine fashion magazine style fashion