Paul came up listening to the best of solid-gold honky tonk and traditional country music. You can hear it in his songs. His heart lies with bits and pieces of every strain of southern sound. You're sure to catch drops of blues, southern rock, and even a little folk sifting through the cracks. Whether in a smoke filled honky tonk playing over a crowded dance floor or picking at a bonfire with friends, his music is sure to make your blood flow. 

He also likes whiskey and Lone Star.

duende – [duen-de] (noun) 1. a quality of inspiration and passion 2. A heightened sense of emotion, expression and authenticity 3. a spirit
Duende, the title of The Band of Heathens’ fifth studio album (and eighth overall), marks their tenth anniversary as a group, and it certainly applies to its overall theme about the collective search for connection and communion in a technology-fueled world increasingly splintered, distracted and lonely.  As band co-founder Ed Jurdi, who first learned of the term, explains, “It’s the essence of the artist,” or as partner Gordy Quist says, “It’s a word we don’t have an equivalent for in English, Artistically, that’s where we tried to set the bar, to do what this band does best.”

Indeed, Duende lives up to those high ideals, a stylistically diverse effort that takes a leap beyond their last, more acoustic, introspective effort, 2013’s Sunday Morning Record, with an eclectic batch of material that shows where The Band of Heathens has been, but more importantly, where they are going. 
There are high-energy rockers like the Keith Richards-Chuck Berry guitars and barrelhouse piano in “Trouble Came Early” as well as the Grateful Dead-by-way-of J.J. Cale Oklahoma boogie in “Keys to the Kingdom,” and the New Riders pedal steel country twang of “Green Grass of California,” an ode to the more potent strains of sensimilla on the dispensary shelf and a fervent plea to “legalize it.”
  
Duende also touches on some of The Band of Heathens’ favorite topics, from the sacrifices of a life lived on the road (“All I’m Asking”) to the limits of materialism (“Keys to the Kingdom”), social media absorption (“Cracking the Code”), and a moving depiction of Mexican immigration in an age of increased discrimination (“Road Dust Wheels”). 

Engineer/co-producer Jim Vollentine (Spoon, White Rabbits, …And You’ll Know Us by the Trail of Dead) helped the album’s diversity sound coherent, adding unique touches such as mellotron and drum machines to the loping rockabilly of tracks like “All I’m Asking.”
The term “Americana” was practically invented to describe The Band of Heathens’ approach, which has mutated almost as much as the genre to which they’re identified.  And while the Rolling Stones and The Beatles remain touchstones on songs like “Sugar Queen” and “Deep Is Love,” respectively, influences as diverse as Sly and the Family Stone (in the psychedelic fuzz-tones of “Daddy Long Legs”) and Latin music (“Road Dust Wheels”) also rear their heads.  Literary inspirations also come into play, ranging from a character in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar depicted in as a strutting cougar in “Sugar Queen” (“She even talks dirty/When she’s on her knees to pray”) to Tom Standage’s A History of the World in Six Glasses, which recounts how beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola have shaped culture and civilization to modern times (“Trouble Came Early”). 
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For more information and updates on the upcoming release, please visit www.bandofheathens.com, www.facebook.com/thebandofheathens, www.twitter.com/bandofheathens, and www.youtube.com/user/bandofheathens.

Ryan Bingham's music defies classification with folk, blues, country, and rock 'n roll all part of the recipe. It's authentic and powerful and the songs are rooted in real life - in survival and sacrifice and, yes, sometimes just having a damn good time. Nobody making music today has a voice like Bingham’s, one that has the worn and weary character of an old fighter more than twice his age but the power of a young man. It’s an intoxicating mixture that reaches new levels with the support of his talented band. Bingham is a singer-songwriter, not a product, and his latest studio album American Love Song movingly shows how the overarching theme of the personal and communal American existence can encompass triumph and tragedy from one moment to the next.

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