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XPN Welcomes Ryan Bingham

Presented by North Star Bar at North Star Bar

October 16, 2010

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For some artists, winning an Oscarâ would represent reaching a pinnacle. For Ryan Bingham (who took home the Academy Awardâ for “The Weary Kind,” his hauntingly beautiful theme song for the acclaimed film Crazy Heart), it instead represented a crossroads and a decision about which path to take.

"When there are a lot of people around saying ‘look, you have to capitalize on this and do something really commercial,’ you might think about it for a second,” admits the LA-based singer-songwriter. “But at the end of the day, there’s not a chance in hell I could do that. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I couldn’t get up in front of people and play a bunch of stuff that didn’t mean anything to me.”

Bingham puts that philosophy to the test in a big way on Junky Star, which was recorded in a matter of days with producer T Bone Burnett, his collaborator on the Crazy Heart soundtrack. The disc delivers a bracing fusion of pensive, gravelly ballads like “Hallelujah” (which is not a Leonard Cohen cover, but his own take on mortality, delivered from the other side of the veil), and raw rock‘n’roll cuts that showcase Bingham’s incisive, darkly compelling lyrical bent.