Ryan Bingham Releases They Call Us the Lucky Ones After Seven Years
ryan bingham is back with They Call Us the Lucky Ones, his first real full-length album in seven years. The record lands as a straightforward Ryan Bingham album, not a detour, and it arrives with The Texas Gentlemen sharing front-cover billing.
The Texas Gentlemen on the cover
The Texas Gentlemen have spent a few years touring with Bingham as his backing band, and that working relationship now sits at the center of the release. Ryan Ake, Cody Huggins, Daniel Creamer, Scott Lee, Paul Grass, and Richard Bowen all contribute, with Bowen handling fiddle and mandolin.
The album is described as dirty, gritty, loose, sweaty, and a little risque, which suits a voice that is already busted and a frontman who leans into abrasion instead of smoothing it out. That rough edge matters here because Bingham’s draw has never been polish; it is the way the songs still sound lived-in even when the arrangements spread out around him.
Seven years and a reset
Seven years is a long gap for any artist who works in full-length albums, and Bingham uses it to reassert the shape of his own catalog. The review says this is exactly what you want from a Ryan Bingham album, helped along by the talent he surrounds himself with.
Marc Ford, Bingham’s first producer, sits in the background of that larger story. The review also calls Ford the best guitarist The Black Crowes ever fielded, a line that points to the kind of roots-rock pedigree orbiting the record without turning it into a museum piece.
“Cocaine Charlie” and the road songs
“Let The Big Dog Eat” gets singled out as repetitive and fun to sing along to, while “The Ballad of the Texas Gentlemen” is built as a road song. “Americana” is a silly kiss off whose lines are deceptively smart, and “Blue Skies” plays as a simple love song, like a cowboy song.
“Cocaine Charlie” runs nearly 7 minutes and builds into a Cormac McCarthy-like epic, while “I Got A Feelin'” works as an anthem for down times. That range gives the album a practical argument: Bingham is not chasing a single mode, but he is still writing toward the same hard-bitten lane that has defined him.
For listeners, the takeaway is simple: this is a return that does not ask for a reset of expectations. It is a full-length release built on a long-running band chemistry, and the album’s roughness is the point, not a flaw to be sanded down.
