Long live the King
There are many ways to judge a guitarist, and one of my criteria is the guitar face. Those twists of the mouth. The rolling back of the eyes. It’s the way you can’t tell if the experience of communing with one’s instrument is orgasmic or more like being sucker-punched. Jonathon “Boogie” Long makes great guitar faces.
I suspect Guitar Center employs a less subjective measure when judging blues guitarists, but Long has those qualities as well. Last September he was crowned the fifth annual King of the Blues by the instrument retail behemoth, part of a nationwide search for undiscovered talent.
“I’ve been on the road since I was a kid,” says Long, 23, before his set at Bigheads, a half-hidden strip mall bar off Old Hammond Highway.
“Dixie Rose was the first band I played with; I was with her for a while when I was a kid. I went on the road with Henry Turner when I was 14. He was touring a lot back then.”
This led to more and more gigs, including a stint with Austin’s Chris Duarte on Rounder Records. “I went to Austin when I was 16 to see how they do it there and have been playing with Luther Kent since I was 17,” he says. Curiously enough, they met out on the festival circuit. “He came up to me at a festival and said, ‘I know you. You’re that kid.’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘You gotta come sit in with me at Phil Brady’s.’ I became second call on his list; anytime his guitar player couldn’t make it, he called me. Then I became first call after about a year or so.”
I wondered if Long got to the blues on the well-trodden route through Stevie Ray Vaughn, given his predilection for guitar pyrotechnics, but he was quick to divest me of that notion. “I know that is how a lot of people do that, and that’s how I’m different. I just hung around the local cats, and there was enough soul and stuff going on here. I hung around the old guys, all those cats: Kenny Neal, Larry Garner and even some of the older guys like James Johnson and Oscar Davis.”
With his newly minted title, Long received five days of paid recording time with Pete Anderson at a studio in Glendale, Calif.
“It was Michael Murphy, who was the singer for REO Speedwagon on ‘Ridin’ the Storm Out,’ on keyboards (and) Peter Freiberger from Delbert McClinton’s band on bass,” he recalls. The resulting EP, The Pete Anderson Sessions, is a satin-smooth helping of soul befitting Long’s interests.
The opening track, “Bad Karma,” is a sinewy cheatin’ ballad about a “sweet Mississippi queen” who says, “Boogie, come take my hand/Come on this rollercoaster ride,” but—breaking from the blues tradition—Boogie demurs. “Do Right Woman” is an organ-heavy soul jam that would motivate the crowd at any jam-band tent at Bonnaroo.
At Bigheads, Long and his band take to the stage, but really, it can’t hold him. Long frequently wanders the room, his face a twisted ruckus as his fingers do their lightning work on the frets. His playing feels less perfected than it is channeled, fluid and a little wild, but never out of control.
Long is slated to perform live at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival downtown on April 14. jonathonboogielong.com
