RYAN BINGHAM + THE DEAD HORSES w/Liam Gerner – Fri., March 4, 2011 – The Majestic Theatre

NOTE: Strictly Discs In-Store performance today! The first 50 customers will be admitted at 3:30 for this intimate acoustic performance. (Stop by anytime after 10am on Friday to get your hand stamped for admittance).

If you haven't already picked up his recent album, Junky Star, it will be available for purchase and signing at the show on CD/LP (as well as all of Ryan's albums).

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”