For Your Consideration...Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses

Ryan Bingham is going places in the alt-country/americana music scene. His 2nd release, Dead Horses, immediately grabbed me and I was a believer. Bingham's sound is definitely country-roadhouse-honky tonk but the songwriting is western-mystic in the vein of Ray Wylie Hubbard or Terry Allen. His voice is a rough-gravel growl that is as unique as voices come.

The bio on his myspace gives the background a and tenor for his music lot better than I could so I will just say to read that. I second every word of it.

The live shows are also fantastic. I've been very lucky to see a pair of them so far. Earlier this year at the Continental Club in Austin and this past Sunday evening at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels. Despite the oppressive heat of Gruene Hall, Ryan, dummer Matthew Smith, lap steel/mandolin/electric guitar player Corby Schaub and bass player Jeb Stuart managed to excite the sweaty Texas with some great music.

Bingham and the Dead Horses will be out touring in support of their new release for Lost Highway, Mescalito, which is largely a re-hash (maybe re-recordings?) of the music on Dead Horses. They'll be touring with the Drive-By Truckers for most of October. Truckers fans...enjoy Bingham. Truckers tapers...it'd be great to see some Bingham shows floating out there in the bittorrent-o-sphere.

For Your Consideration...Who The F Are Rattlesnake Deer?

Truth be told, I haven't any idea about these guys. There's not much in the way of a bio on their myspace site so I guess they are truly letting the music speak for them. The music, in this case, they are giving away free to download from mediafire. I've listened to this record, 637 Texas Rattlesnake Rattles, a half dozen times since my initial download and have really enjoyed it each listen.

The first 15 seconds of the first song, "Try Try Try" set the tone of futility, misery and despair for the whole record. "You can't live forever on soup tequila codine but you can try, try try".

The arrangements, though in some spots sparse, are an interesting and nice change from a lot of the overproduced alt-country stuff out there. Somewhere in the neighborhood of the Drive-By Truckers (without all the distortion and more acoustic), Chris Knight and Steve Earle, these guys are really kicking it with a very strong back-beat, some banjo, steel, dobro and a bit of mandolin. For never having heard of these guys or even having seen them playing around Austin, this came completely out of nowhere. I hope they get on their goat and get some gigs around Austin so I can check them out.

It does appear they are hitting the road soon. This is from the lone blog entry on their myspace site. Check 'em out if they comes your way.

NOVEMBER
10th - 11th Austin TX
12th San Antonio TX
13th Lafayette LA
14th Mobile
15th Montgomery
16th Birmingham
17th Memphis
18th Nashville
19th Asheville
21st Raleigh
22nd Richmond
23rd Philadelphia
24th 25th NYC
26th - 28th RI / Boston area
29th Pittsburgh
30th Columbus

DECEMBER
1st Ann Arbor
2nd Chicago
3rd Iowa City
4th Omaha
5th 6th Lincoln
7th Lawrence
8th Oklahoma City
9th Dallas
10th Austin