Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses

Country singer Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses performing at Farm Aid 2009.

I just saw the film Crazy Heart, a drama staring Jeff Bridges in a pretty fantastic role as Bad Blake, a hard living country singer in what seems like the twilight of his career. While Bad Blake plays with a string of pick up bands while touring the Southwest, one in particular caught my eye at the beginning of the film.

The group consisted of country star Ryan Bingham and his band The Dead Horses, who I’d caught at Farm Aid 2009.

Bingham co-wrote the title track of Crazy Heart, “The Weary Kind,” with T-Bone Burnett, which recently won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song and is up for the same distinction in the Academy Awards.

Photographer’s Notes:

Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses were the first band that I caught at Farm Aid 2009 and a great way to start the festival. Since it was relatively early in the day when Bingham and company took the stage, the photo pit was relatively quiet at this time – a nice luxury in a day where the photo pit was soon jam-packed with no room to move.

Primary considerations for this show were a stack of monitors lining the front of the stage and a couple of road cases in the photo pit, both of which served to constrain shooting angles a bit. Luckily, the band was set up a bit from the edge of the stage and made for great shooting.

Since the sun was still high in the sky, Ryan Bingham benefited from a really nice mix of open shade and subtle stage accents – nearly perfect shooting conditions.

Here’s Bingham performing “The Weary Kind.”

About the author: Todd Owyoung is an internationally published music photographer specializing in concert photography and band portraits. He also grills a mean steak.

Contact Todd for image licensing and assignments wherever the rock show lives. You can also get in touch with Todd via Twitter.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, crazy heart, dead horses, farm aid, images, live, photos, ryan bingham, the weary kind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.