Top 40 Ryan Bingham Quotes

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 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 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.

For me it’s important to keep changing things up and growing and experiencing new things.

I have kind of a short attention span, so if it doesn’t come really quick then I set it down, and hopefully come back to it another time.

I think it’s really important for everybody out there to speak their minds, and not be complicit and let fear back you into this corner where you just let everything go by. It’s a responsibility.

I used sit in the back of the truck and make up these songs and play at the tailgates at rodeos.

Songwriting can get pretty heavy and personal for me and I like being able to explore different emotions that are not necessarily my own.

I guess I always need some kind of solitude to get to that place where I am open enough and have zero distractions to start on the initial ideas for songs.

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.

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.

I’m originally from Hobbs, New Mexico but moved around a lot growing up. My family had a ranch 40 miles from town where they raised cattle and sheep. Shortly after I was born they sold the ranch and my father went to work in the oilfields.

If we were at a bar in a small town and not many people were there, people would bug me to bring in my guitar and play. I was paying my dues, learning how it all worked.

Bull riding isn’t that much different than the life of a musician. You’re trying to ride an uncontrollable force, there are no rules or limits or regulations, and there’s a freedom in it that’s also a bit terrifying. You can learn a lot about yourself through some of those scarier moments.

When I go onstage and I play or I’m out meeting a lot of people, I’ve got to get my stuff together. It’s not actual stage fright.

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.

I always try to leave songs open for people to interpret in their own ways.

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.

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.

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.

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 guess that’s a chance you have to take when you try to do anything different or creative or artsy. You can’t just keep painting the same picture over and over.

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.

The single biggest inspiration I have was Bob Dylan.

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.

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

You just can’t muscle your way through some things in life. You just have to keep your head on your shoulders and dance with it as you go.

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 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’ve kind of always had this soft spot in my heart for the homeless community, mainly homeless kids who live on the streets.

It’s never fun to run out of gas while on a road trip, But the adventure of trying to find gas when your in the middle a nowhere usually ends up being a funny story a few years down the line.

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.

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.

I enjoy acting because it is very different to songwriting and it allows me to flex a different creative muscle.

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.

I think to really write songs, you need empathy. You have to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

No matter what I’m writing, I almost always start with the music. Definitely, the melody seems to set the tone for whatever emotions come to follow, and whatever’s going to be written down. It always starts with the music, for me.

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.

My parents were pretty open-minded people, but I think leaving them at a young age really made me grow up fast.

My uncle rode bulls professionally and he got me into it. I started riding steers when I was about eleven and he started taking me to little jackpots and I really got into it.