Ryan Bingham (90:12)
It was all very much a kind of a natural progression, you know, since I was a kid at the junior rodeos, there was always a dance afterward and a band playing, you know. And it was a very much a family, community deal, you know, like, you go to these towns and the rodeo was going on and then the dance, street dance and food and music and, you know, growing up listening to bands play, especially in Texas, you know, you got all the guys, like Gary P. Nunn. I remember he always played the dance halls and you get Robert Earl Keane and some of the, you know, hearing those bands. And I moved to Laredo, Texas, when I was like 16 or 17, when my dad and my mother had bought me a guitar and. And didn't know how to play it much, and walked into this place my dad was living at and he was playing dominoes with these guys. And this guy saw my guitar and he's like, yeah, you know how to play that thing? I said, no. And he said, well, let me see it. And he picked it up and he played this killer, like, mariachi song called La Malagania. And I was just fascinated with it. I was just like, wow, I can't believe he made that guitar sound like that. I've been dragging that thing around for a couple years. I didn't know how to tune it up. And he's like, you want to learn how to play this guitar? I said, yeah. He said, let me show you this song. And he taught me the Malagania. It had a couple little parts, you know, a finger picking part, a strumming part. And it really kind of gave me that foundation, you know, just kind of those few little tools. And then I went up to Stephenville to ride bulls at Tarleton after that, and a couple other friends that I'd met there that rodeoed could play the guitar a little bit. And they had bands that played every week in the town. There's a little bar there called City Limits where all these bands would come play, like Jason Boland and the Cross Canadian Rag Week guys and Pat Green and Robert Earl Keane, like, all the Texas guys would come play, you know. So I was like, I went from being on the border to kind of just mostly like the Carrillos and Tejano bands that I would See, which was really cool. But when I got up there, I was like, oh, man, there's all these, like, cool kind of song, you know, guys writing original music and songs and playing in bands and. And we'd go watch them all the time. And as I was still rodeoing, the only song I knew was that Malaga tune. So I was like, I gotta come up with some new stuff. This is all I know how to play. I went and got a book of chords to teach myself some new chords on the guitar and just learn one or two at a time. And I'd start making up songs about our adventures on the weekends. A lot of it was just sitting in the back of the truck and being in places where you didn't have radio signal or, you know, nothing to really listen to. You're tired of listening to the same old stuff. And I'd make up songs, and then whatever town we would get to, my buddies, be like, man, play that song you were singing in the back seat, you know. And so that's how the whole songwriting thing started. And then I ended up getting a job working for a guy named Mac Altizer. He had a rodeo company called Bag Co. Rodeo and Del Rio. And I'd ridden bulls at some of his rodeos and knew him. My uncle had knew him, you know, know, over the years. And so I was kind of familiar with. With that whole thing and started working for him on the ranch and helping with some of the rodeo stuff and still riding bulls. And he found out that I could play the guitar and. And sing a few songs. And he always had a party at the rodeo. He was kind of notorious and famous for having, like, just awesome parties. And he's like, man, all right, Bingham, get your guitar. You're going to play, like the after party, you know, and pull the flatbed trailer up there for the hospitality tent for all the contestants after the rodeo. And those are, like, the first. He really encouraged me to, like, start playing for people and doing that, and then it would just spill over into the bars afterwards after the rodeo. And everybody would end up going to the bar, and they're always like, bingham, bring your guitar with you. And I started getting gigs in the bars. The bars would ask me if I wanted to come back and play. And just after, like, I feel like a few years of that, it was just like, you know, I was kind of a weekend warrior riding bulls. I was definitely not going to making a living doing it. Always had had to have a day job during the week, you know, either working on the ranch or doing something. And I started getting to where I could go to these bars and make like 100 bucks in tips, you know, within a couple of hours and get free beer and free food. And I was like, man, this is almost as much as I made all day digging holes with the shovel, you know, it didn't take me long to figure out that that was pretty cool. And I was just like, I'm going to stick to with it, you know,
