From the Artist

“None of us need a hit single or be famous rock stars,” he concludes. “Just to be able to make a living playing music and not having to work an eight to five job digging holes makes me feel fortunate enough. I see so many kids living on the street or going off to Afghanistan, so I don’t feel comfortable saying I’d been down any tougher road. I’m just another person out here trying to make it.”

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For some artists, winning an Oscar would represent reaching a pinnacle. For Ryan Bingham, who took home the Academy Award 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, his third album on Lost Highway, 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.

Bingham channels a number of unique spirits over the course of the album, leading with his sensitive side on “The Poet” and kicking out the jams on the Waylon-meets-Keith Richards “All Choked Up Again.” Elsewhere, as in songs like “Depression” – a vivid evocation of our current social climate that’d have Woody Guthrie nodding in approval – and the album’s poignant title track, Bingham applies his wizened rasp with precise strokes, wringing emotion from every note.