from the Santa Cruz Sentinel on santacruzsentinel.com

If you're a musician with a problem with envy, you might not want to hear Ryan Bingham's story.

The Texas singer/songwriter "" a former competitive rodeo rider who didn't pick up a guitar until he was 17 "" was hanging out on his sofa one day when he received a phone call. It was someone named Scott Cooper, a Hollywood director. Cooper said he had heard Bingham and his band play and he wanted to offer them a spot playing in his new movie.

That was only the beginning of the wild ride for a guy who, as a rodeo veteran, was used to wild rides of a different kind. Bingham's on-screen role in the movie grew, sure. But the big deal was when Cooper called on him to write the film's theme song. What eventually followed was "The Weary Kind," the signature song from "Crazy Heart" starring rough-hewn Jeff Bridges as burnt-out but tender-hearted country singer Bad Blake. What followed that was an Oscar statuette not only for Bridges, but for Bingham as well.

"My life hasn't really changed a whole lot," said Bingham, who plays the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz on Tuesday, Sept. 14. "I'm still traveling around in a 15-passenger Ford Econoline van."

Bingham and his band the Dead Horses were doing well for themselves before all this Oscar attention came their way. In 2007, the band released "Mescalito," a bracing collection of hardbitten West Texas country rock powered by Bingham's distinctly weathered singing voice. That was followed by another well-received release,

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