To listen to Ryan Bingham’s most recent album, “American Love Song,” is to glimpse the deep longing, the confusion and the heartache that underlie the American story.

The album takes a hard look at some of America’s dark stories and at the price of the American dream. In this, the album is a bit like Bingham himself, managing to find resilience and strength, if not outright hope, throughout it all.

“This record is all about … these different pieces and moving parts of this country,” Bingham told Rolling Stone Country. “It’s about growing up in all these different parts of America and experiencing all these different cultures … a bit of a love song and love story about getting through it all.”

On the track, “America,” Bingham asks: “America, where have you gone? There was a dream you gave us once. Is it not for everyone?”

It’s more than a rhetorical question. Bingham’s life has all the makings of a classic success story of the American Southwest. His mom gave him a guitar as a kid and then, as a teenager, he learned how to ride bulls and became a professional on the rodeo circuit. His habit of playing for friends and family to unwind after rodeos led to him playing small bars and honky tonks across the West. He worked his way to Los Angeles, where he signed his first record deal with Lost Highway Records in 2007.

Bingham’s blend of blues, country and Americana, informed by a deep rock-and-roll impulse, won him critical praise with his albums “Mescalito” and its 2009 followup, “Roadhouse Sun.” That success led to work on the soundtrack for the 2009 film “Crazy Heart,” with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett, for which Bingham co-wrote and performed the film's theme song, "The Weary Kind.” 

The song earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Critics' Choice Award for Best Song, the Americana Music Association’s Artist of the Year award in 2010, along with a 2011 Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

If Bingham’s success seemed assured, or if everything seemed destined to remain golden afterward, it wasn’t. There’s always been plenty of dark clouds to Bingham’s silver lining.

Born in Hobbs, New Mexico, into a once proud ranching family that had lost their land, he took to chasing itinerant jobs across the Southwest. Bingham has experienced both sides of the American dream. 

"My parents were severe alcoholics. When I was about 17 years old, I finally left home," he said. "It wasn't a choice that I made. It was basically like my parents were gone," he told NPR.

He started riding bulls, living in his truck and chasing the border rodeo circuit across Texas and New Mexico. He spent plenty of time in Mexico and even rode bulls there. That experience certainly opened his eyes to Mexican culture and the immigration issue, and brings empathy and humanity to his writing. And it leaves him clear-eyed and unafraid to speak his quiet truth to power. 

Speaking with Rolling Stone Country, Bingham flatly rejects the idea that most undocumented people are “criminals and thugs.” Bingham’s personal experience, he said, has shown him that most of these people, like his own family during his youth, are “vulnerable women and children” just looking to survive. 

“I’ve helped some of them come across the border, and that’s exactly what they are — a lot of women and kids down there just kinda looking for a better life,” he said. “It’s pretty heartbreaking to me to see how anybody would not take some of these people in and try to give them a fair shot.”

If Bingham speaks like someone who’s seen a thing or two, it’s because he has paid his dues. In the early days, that meant gigs at a long string of bars, honky tonks and even a stint at Disneyland in Paris. At the peak of his early success in 2010, that meant losing his mother to alcoholism and his father to suicide.

Through it all, Bingham has remained steadfast in his music. In “American Love Song,” Bingham turns much of that reflection and introspection toward the American melting pot, border politics and the elusive American dream. 

He has found a place in his writing for what must be scarcely imaginable confusion and pain, and to channel that into deeply human songs that touch on issues of identity, longing and belonging.

The songs ask some hard questions and take some firm stands on important issues, including the mass shooting at Parkland, without becoming preachy or polemical. The track "Wolves" was written in support of the students of Parkland High School, who were facing attacks on their honesty and integrity for their public stand against gun violence.

Many of the tracks on “American Love Song” relate Bingham’s own story in terms of the diverse influences that helped to make him who he is. 

Vocally, Bingham channels Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and even a bit of Mick Jagger’s country soul. Meanwhile, the pitch perfect production by Charlie Sexton brings to mind the great country sounds of the 1970s, and delivers a familiar sound that allows Bingham’s words and voice to carry the show. Lyrically, Bingham channels his American border experience into clever, lilting songs that pull no punches. At his best, Bingham evokes the lyric excellence of Guthrie, Dylan or Van Zandt. 

In a treasure box of great songs, “Situation Station” is a gem. In his wry, laidback twang, Bingham sings:

Well I been thinkin' bout the situation

How the world is full of frustration

As the president shits upon the nation

Wipes his ass with all denominations

Turns around and begs for donations

Ridin' on the back of a poor man sellin’ them lies, lies

It is a classic country-western complaint that would be at home with Woody Guthrie or John Prine, and it glitters like gold in Bingham’s hands. Bingham’s delivery is masterful, and the song gutsy, especially in an era when most popular artists strive to avoid the political. The next verse, which also ends the song, reminds us that whatever happens, the rest of us are all stuck in the same place:

Maybe the loser now will always win

Maybe there's still a chance for love again

After all we've been through in the end

We're all waitin' in the same, station

We're all standin' in the same, situation

To his credit, Bingham never lets the lyrics get in the way of the song. Duke Ellington's famous dictum, that it “don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” is not lost on Bingham. Even at his most plaintive and pointed he, and the band, swing. Bingham always delivers a song, never a screed. As the best singers do, Bingham delivers a song in a way that is unique, authentic and totally believable. 

“American Love Song” is about the human experience of the border world, and taking a stand on a human level by telling a personal truth of that experience. In terms of the human impulse, “American Love Song” is about the people and the spirit of the border country where Bingham grew up.

“These different kinds of people have taken care of me throughout my life and made me who I am. I feel like I’m as much a part of those cultures as I am anything,” he told Rolling Stone Country.

The songs in “American Love Song” shine with the deep reflection and introspection that come with the realities of a hard, if rewarding, life. They are haunting, infectious and masterfully delivered.