Quotes from Ryan Bingham

I always packed around this guitar my mother gave me before I left home, I would write songs and play them for my buddies at the rodeos and local bars we would frequent.

My parents were severe alcoholics. When I was about 17 years old, I finally left home. It wasn't a choice that I made; it was basically like my parents were gone.

I've never been able to sit down with a pen and paper and kind of craft out a song, or really force anything out. It always has to come almost subconsciously.

I've always been a fan of old-time hymns and Scots-Irish dirges, though I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an expert on the type of music that was performed in those days.

Traveling around a lot, you see people from all different walks of life. Especially in the early morning hours, you see and meet a lot of characters that you wouldn't usually meet.

The single biggest inspiration I have was Bob Dylan.

I could hang on a few bulls. And the guys I was rodeoing with, we all took care of each other. They became my family.

All the things that most people hate about traveling -- the recycled air, the artificial lighting, the digital juice dispensers, the cheap sushi -- are warm reminders that I'm home.

I have always been a fan of music but I didn't really get into playing until I was about seventeen or eighteen years old - I never really thought that I had much musical talent.

I always had to have a day job, working on other people's ranches or construction or whatever. I was making a little bit of money rodeoing, but between the both of them it wasn't much of a living.

I moved around a lot as a kid, and was always the new kid in town. I was always having to confront someone wanting to pick on you the first day at school, wherever the new place you're going, and establish that pecking order.

For a band like me I don't really get crazy exposure with the record so sometimes it does take a while to circulate around and get out to fans.

I like a lot of the older country stuff. Shoot. We actually do really good in punk rock clubs. I don't really know where our fan base lies.

I worked for Mack Altizer, who ran Bad Company Rodeo, in Del Rio. Those guys, even though they were cowboys, were all hippies. We were always the black sheep of the rodeo world. From there I went on to Paris, France, where I worked in this Wild West show.

The time I spent working in the wild west show in Paris had a pretty big impact on me. A friend of mine had hooked me up with the gig over there and I literally left Texas with a hundred dollar bill in my pocket and one way plane ticket to Paris.

My family lived in West Texas. We went to Houston and Laredo, ended up around Fort Worth - really just made the rounds. And I took in all of those different styles of music.

When I started playing music it was around Austin and the Hill Country area in Texas and there were always campfires and picking circles and I loved being a part of that.

I think some of my previous stuff... I tend to be a bit lazy in songwriting, where I'll just keep the first thing that comes down, and I won't go back and revisit stuff.

I was approached by the writers of 'The Bridge,' and they were looking for a song that would go along with the theme of the show. They actually gave me a copy of the script, and gave me a little background info on it, and I started to work on the song from there.

When I turned thirteen, I moved up to the junior bull scale. They didn't really classify them by how big they were but how bad they were. The first time I got on one of the big boys I was absolutely terrified but excited at the same time.

I've always been a big fan of how Woody Guthrie wrote political songs like 'This Land is Your Land.'

I didn't start really playing the guitar till I was about seventeen, and I never really had those formative years are where like I was in my room, figuring all that stuff out before I hit the stage. I just did all that on the road all at once, so all those years of playing roadhouses in bars and clubs, I was really figuring it out.

You get lucky and you capture that magic in that one moment. You're not going to get it again no matter how many times you do the song over and over and over.

It is a humbling experience when you travel around and you meet people all over the world and I take all that into consideration when I am writing songs at home.