Jonathon Boogie Long Keeps On Crushin’ The Blues Bayou Style (INTERVIEW)

If you want to follow your passion, you have to dream big. Every kid has a dream of what they might want to do when they grow up. Sometimes those ambitions change as they grow older but sometimes they don’t; they just get bigger and the kid learns to work hard to make that dream come true. For Jonathon Boogie Long, he has dreamed long and hard about music. Growing up in Louisiana, he started playing guitar to gospel music; fresh into his twenties, he won Guitar Center’s King Of The Blues competition and recorded an EP; five years later he recorded his first full-length album, Trying To Get There; in 2019, he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame; and he has toured and shared a stage with legends like BB King, Robert Cray, Gregg Allman, and Joe Bonamassa. It all boils down to, the man can rock up some blues and he’s getting noticed.

Currently working on his next album – his last release was 2021’s Parables Of A Southern Man – Boogie is definitely following his dream for the long haul. With his songwriting maturing, tackling subjects close to his heart, and being aware of in the world around him, he is really starting to shine as a songwriter, giving his guitar licks some gravy in the pot to simmer on top of. His last album alone contained songs full of emotion, such as “Savior’s Face,” “That Ain’t Love” and “Madison Square Garden.” 

But if you really want to experience the real Boogie, you have to see him live. That is where the passion is visible, emoting from his fingertips in fiery guitar solos or singing deep-hearted bluesy ballads. He can take you through the gamut of blues, jazz, rock & roll, and country; and although his recorded material is all original, he will throw in a cool cover or two during a set. In May, he will again be playing the iconic New Orleans Jazz Fest on the last Sunday, as well as some other festivals and shows throughout the spring. This means you have several chances to see him perform before the heat of the summer settles in.

I caught up with Boogie recently to talk about his roots in music, the heart of his songwriting, the spontaneity of creating songs, and the continual pursuit of following his dream.

You have very eclectic influences – from blues, Jazz, R&B, gospel, rock & roll. Which one do you consider your primary root where everything grows from?

Well, I have to give credit to two genres for that, because it started with the gospel. I grew up in church and my family sang and my grandfather played gospel, old hymnals like “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Amazing Grace,” “I’ll Fly Away;” and then the blues. So it’s kind of equal parts gospel and the blues. But my original roots come from the gospel. The very first music that I heard on a daily basis was gospel, you know.

Where did Jazz come in?

Jazz is more of a feel than a style of music to me. Like when I say Jazz influences, I mean how I’m approaching the guitar. I listen to some Jazz, smooth Jazz, but I’m not like a die-hard Jazz aficionado. There’s some influences of Jazz in my playing just cause I do a lot of off-time stuff, like a lot of chromatic runs, a lot of notes that people would think don’t fit. There’s like an old saying, if a note doesn’t fit, well, that’s just Jazz (laughs). But it’s supposed to push the musical boundaries and be a little more sophisticated. I would love to hear what Joey Alexander has to say about piano. He’s one of the best Jazz piano players in the world and he’s only fifteen. He is absolutely breathtakingly amazing.

Did you always know that you were going to take so many influences into your music and not just be a blues guy? 

Yeah, I guess. I grew up playing as a sideman in different bands and I didn’t really start singing until I was older, like seventeen or eighteen. I mean, I was always in the children’s choir but I didn’t really start singing in a band until I was probably seventeen. But I listened to so much stuff growing up and I love the blues obviously, but after I won Guitar Center’s King Of The Blues, I just kind of took off with a blues career. But I’ve always appreciated singer-songwriter stuff – Danny Schmidt, Jason Isbell, all that kind of stuff – and I knew that I could never just be a quote/unquote 1-4-5 slow blues shuffle kind of blues artist. I do all that stuff, I feel like I can play traditional blues with the best of them, but I just try to be a little more than that because I feel like I want my music to go other places. I like to add different textures and different nuances. It’s about having your own voice and I need to find my own voice within that, utilizing the tools. 

Each generation, especially with technology, gets better and better and better. Eight year old kids are out there crushing it right now because they have the opportunity to see so much stuff in a short span of time. We used to have to go buy records or a CD if we wanted to hear a certain song. And then if you wanted to slow it down and learn something that you couldn’t understand, you had to buy a $150 machine for that. Now you just click a button and you can learn whatever you want. There are a million videos on how to play it. There’s just all this information out there and every generation of musicians get better because of that. Whatever influences we WANT to have is at our fingertips and we can get all that information immediately.

Where do you see in your music blues, Jazz and gospel connecting the strongest?

Oh it’s in the playing, for sure. Gospel guitar players like Spanky Alford and Isaiah Sharkey, I pull a lot of influence from guys like that, which honestly is just kind of Jazz. The gospel guitar players are heavy Jazz guys. They have great Jazz chops. A lot of that gospel stuff, it’s a certain feeling within those songs but a lot of it ends up being like Jazz. It’s definitely in the guitar playing and in my singing, which is kind of growly, almost like I sound like a black woman sometimes (laughs). My favorite singers in this whole entire world were women of color – Karen Clark Sheard, Dorinda Clark-Cole, the Clark sisters period, Dr Betty Ransom Nelson, Kim Burrell; there are so many great, amazing gospel singers and I have pulled influences from all of those people. I’m not going to claim that I sound just like them or can sing like them but I pull inspiration from them.

And you’re talking about a genre of music not many people draw influence from in rock & roll.

And that’s why my blues is a little different from other people’s blues, because our influences really make a difference on how it comes out. I think I’d have a completely different sound than I do now if I spent as much time listening to Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan and AC/DC. But I was locking myself in my bedroom and listening to the Clark sisters and Frankie Beverly & Maze records.

You have a great song called “Savior’s Face” off your Parables Of A Southern Man album and it’s quite eye-opening about religion and the modern world. It really shows your maturity as a songwriter. Did the lyrics come quickly for you or was there more contemplation?

I wrote that song pretty quick. I was in the car with my manager at the time and he said, “You know what, if Jesus walked into a church today, people wouldn’t even recognize his face. They wouldn’t even know that that was Jesus, because they’ve painted this depiction of Jesus that isn’t anything what Jesus would have looked like.” And that was kind of my catalyst to write the song. And it just ended up being this powerful thing that people really took to and enjoyed and it was interesting. But I wrote it quick. I have this thing where a lot of my magic happens real quick, cause I have trouble focusing a lot of times and it’s hard for me to sit down and just write. Then I get to this crunch time where it’s like, okay, I have to write something now cause I’m going into the studio and I need stuff. I’m a very spontaneous writer as opposed to sitting there and beating my head against it. I’m not saying I’m prolific or any of that, I’m just saying that’s my routine, cause I’m a little crazy just like everybody (laughs). It’s hard for me to sit down and say, okay, it’s writing time. A lot of times stuff will just come to me. 

What do you think is the biggest mistake a songwriter can make?

Trying to be too perfect, being a perfectionist. I wouldn’t worry so much about perfecting it as you’re really saying something that you mean. In other words, if you’re just writing a story narrative, then sell it as genuine as you possibly can. And I’m the same way in the studio. I don’t like overproducing stuff or oversaturating a song. I like it to be natural and to sound natural. 

The first time you went into a recording studio, did you have any clue what you were doing?

I’d recorded as a sideman for many years before I actually went into the studio to cut anything myself. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew I needed a product to represent my sound and who I was trying to become in my music. My first real studio experience for myself was cutting a three-song EP with producer and legendary country guitarist Pete Anderson as part of the prize package when I won the contest. I remember I had questioned something about the mix on one of the tunes and Mike Murphy, who sang “Riding The Storm Out” for REO Speedwagon, walked me into the living room area of the studio and pulled back a big red sheet. Behind it were about thirty gold and platinum albums, CMA awards, Grammy’s, and everything else you can possibly imagine that Pete had won. Mike simply said “You gonna question that?”

Now with experience in the studio, what aspects give you the most pleasure and which ones the most frustration? 

I just love writing and playing, and anytime I get to do that it brings me joy. I get frustrated with the ins and outs of post-production sometimes and that old saying that by the time you get it ready for the general public, you’ve heard it so many times in a row it gets redundant and then you got to go out and play the tunes. But I enjoy playing the music that I write so it’s not really an issue. There is a big difference in the studio performance and live performances, which I guess goes without saying.

To you, what has been the most important emotion that you’ve incorporated into your music? 

I play and write strictly from feel and emotion. One of my favorite things about music is the spontaneous moments that happen. Even though we play a lot of the same tunes, it’s never the same solo; we play some sections with a different feel just to invoke a new groove or emotion in the song. We always make it our own.

Being an originals guy, what are some covers that you include in your live set and are there any particular reasons why you’ve chosen those songs? 

Most cover songs I do are to pay homage in my own way to artists whose music I’ve appreciated over the years. I do several Hendrix songs, Govt Mule, “Empty Promises” by Michael Burkes, who was my favorite blues artist growing up, “Midnight In Harlem” by Tedeschi Trucks, just to name a few. Mostly a handful of tunes by bands that I appreciate and I do my best to do them justice while doing my own interpretation.

You have several songs that hit upon knowing what you want and going out and getting it. Why is it important to you to keep reiterating that journey?

I feel like I kind of get lost a lot of times. “Unexplainable Feeling” is basically just saying this music is inside me and it’s an unexplainable feeling. “Madison Square Garden” is kind of like my Eric Gales crown. I’m not going to say it’s my time to forget about everybody else, I want my crown because I’m the king. I don’t have that attitude. But I’m not going to stop, I’m going to roll through this and try to keep doing it until I’m selling every seat in Madison Square Garden. It may never happen, and it may happen, but I’m always on that path, always having that goal in mind whether I ever do it or not. 

When you first started learning to play guitar, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?

I guess chords at first because your fingers aren’t very strong, you’re still building calluses, and you’re still learning how to push the strings. I never really had a problem with melody and I think one of the biggest things that helped me was that I had a teacher that could listen to something and just play it. If there was a line I wanted to learn or a song I wanted to learn, he could just sit down and listen to it and then just play it. Then he showed me how to understand that and how to do it that way, how to just hear something and then figure it out pretty quickly. I only studied with Mark Wascom. I was only eight and a half or nine when I started taking lessons, and I think by the time I was eleven or twelve, he told my dad, “There ain’t no sense in bringing him here for lessons anymore because there ain’t nothing else I can show him.” 

Then it was just sitting in my bedroom and kind of doing my own thing. While other people were out playing football, I was in my bedroom learning how to play the guitar. I picked “Amazing Grace” a ton of times. We used to go play the prison and do singings at the nursing homes with my grandfather and stuff. Every time we’d play a song, they’d get to a solo section and he’d lean over to me and say, “Alright, now pick it.”  And I’d always have to pick it (laughs). So whatever I picked was usually off the top of my head. I would improv something but I would always try to include some part of the melody in there. You just learn how to approach different things stylistically after playing for so long. 

But I struggled with chords when I was a kid like everybody does, you know. But once I broke that boundary and I realized that most music – and I’m not talking about Jazz or no crazy Herbie Hancock stuff or none of that. Most of the music that we listen to follows within the major scale, within the standard number system. Musicians will know what I’m talking about for sure (laughs). Once you can hear those scale degrees, you don’t even have to have a guitar in your hands to know the progression of the song. Like, I can chart the song out just by listening to it and then play it in whatever key you want to do it in, because it’s all the same thing once you put it on paper like that or chart it out. That’s just my approach and we all have our own approach and what works for us.

You are endorsed by Harper Guitars. How did you get hooked up to them and what do you love about their guitars in particular?

When I won King Of The Blues, it included an endorsement with Gibson Guitars. I asked them to build me a one-of-a-kind ES-335 that was purple with my name inlayed into the neck. They said I had to order twenty-five of them in order to get it done, so a friend told me about Harper and they did it for me and I absolutely love it. Thus, a friendship and relationship was born and I’ve been playing their guitars ever since.

As a guitarist, you can be pretty wild and you can be very contemplative in your soloing. Can you think of any blues players that inspire excitement and inspires calmness?

BB King inspires calmness. He was exciting too at times but he was a very calm player. And I guess I could say Albert Collins inspires excitement. But my favorite guitar player in the whole world was not a blues guitar player. Shawn Lane was my favorite guitar player that ever lived. He died when he was forty or forty-one and I never got to meet him or see him play live but I think he was the greatest. He could do things with the guitar that nobody else could do. 

How did you discover him?

My teacher’s son Chad. Shawn Lane had an instructional VHS out and when he showed me that, man, he was so melodic, like the most melodic player, just beautiful, and then he could play faster than anybody on planet Earth. In certain spots, he did things that were just literally mind-blowing. Sometimes it didn’t even make sense musically but it just blew my mind that he could go from being so melodic to doing something like from another planet. If you watch “Not Again” from that video, oh my God, it don’t even make sense musically but there ain’t another person on this planet that could do it. But that’s the reason I like Shawn so much, cause he goes from one spectrum, can play one note or two notes and make you cry because of just how good he plays those notes, and then he can completely fry your mind. So he’s my favorite guy. 

And after all the players that have come after him, you still think he’s one of the best?

Absolutely. I’m influenced by him. Eric Gales knew Shawn Lane cause he grew up around Memphis and Eric told me that I reminded him of Shawn. He’s like, “Man, you remind me of Shawn Lane.” And that was one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever gotten.

Tell us where the name Boogie came from and what that name means to you and to your music?

When I was two years old, I was placed into a self-scooting walker and I Boogied all over the house. I’ve been Boogie ever since. It just turned out to be the perfect nickname. Everyone has known me as Boogie Long from the very beginning and even after a short spurt where it was taken out of my name, I put it right back in where it will stay until I’m dead and gone. Boogie Long is who I am. 

You grew up in Baton Rouge. Did you ever feel like your dreams were a million miles away or was the confidence that you could be a professional musician always there?

I always felt like I had a genuine connection with music and I always knew it would be my path. I grew up around a strong community of musicians and blues lovers that really looked out for me when I was coming up. Ever since I was a child, I was accepted into some pretty good circles of players and performers. I was very fortunate in that aspect.

Who was the first real rock star you ever met? 

I’m honestly not sure who the very first rock star I met was but I remember sixteen years old meeting Joe Bonamassa at a show in New Orleans. He signed my live DVD and I told him I would see him out on the scene somehow one day. Five years later or so I won Guitar Center’s King Of The Blues for Best Unsigned Blues Guitarist In America and Joe was the host of the finals in Hollywood. I also played his cruise out of Spain back in 2019 and got to play “Hey Joe” with him and Robert Randolph, which was an amazing experience. He’s a very cool guy and I’ve appreciated seeing him throughout the years.

Tell us about the first time you played Jazz Fest in New Orleans

The first time I played Jazz Fest was with Luther Kent, who is one of the best blues singers in the world. I want to say it was 2008 or 2009. That was the very first time that I played it with Luther. Then a couple years later, once Quint Davis came and saw my band, I started playing it every year. 

And you’re on the list this year

Yeah, I’m playing May 7th, which is the last day. 

At last year’s Jazz Fest, I understand that you wrote your setlist on a napkin. 

Yeah, I did

Was it that spontaneous?

Yes. Like I was telling you, I have trouble focusing on certain things, my mind is always running. So when it’s time to make a setlist, it’s, alright, here’s the set! (laughs). It’s totally spontaneous. So yeah, this is what Jazz Fest needs to hear today and I just wrote it out on a napkin. And you know, I’m one of the easiest people to soundcheck too. We’ve had people tell us, “Oh my God, ya’ll are so easy to work with.” We all understand how to play music, we know what we’re coming there to do and it doesn’t take an hour or two to soundcheck. It takes us ten minutes. We plug our shit in, we get a good sound and we’re done. I’ve been on shows where like Robert Cray sound checked for two or three hours. They had a whole two-show rehearsal and I was like, what?! But I don’t need that much time. It doesn’t take that much time (laughs). I’m way more spontaneous than that. Even in my writing. There will be a couple of songs that aren’t even finished when I get to the studio and I finish them in ten minutes when I get there and write whole freaking stanzas and crazy musical things and next thing you know it’s a song.

What do you love about Jazz Fest?

I love the culture of it, like how important it is to the city. There’s people like the crawfish bread guy and all the parking attendant people, and that festival makes those people’s whole year. There’s a lady who works the stage every year and she is grinning ear to ear with joy because it’s festival season and I think that as corporate as it seems, they bring in a bunch of big names to sell a lot of tickets and there really ain’t much Jazz on it and all those things people say about it, it really is extremely important to the people of that city and I think that’s the most important thing. I live so close to the city so I want to see the city thrive and the people of the city thrive. You know that crawfish bread guy, he probably makes a million or more dollars over that two-week period off that and that’s his entire year financially. It’s not just about filling his soul, that’s his bread and butter literally. It’s just good to see everybody, the same people, and the same family year after year making such a great event happen. There are so many people that funnel through those gates and they do the best they can to make it a fun, family-friendly, safe event. That’s my favorite thing. That’s just New Orleans and you can’t go wrong with New Orleans.

So what have you got going on this year?

I’m working on a new album. I have no idea what it’s going to be called yet as I’m still working on it. As of now, I’m nine songs in and I want to do ten. And I’m doing it all on my own. We’ve got Jazz Fest on May 7th and on May 3rd  I play the NOLA Crawfish Festival with a side project I’m involved with called Gator Blaq, which is led by Terence Higgins, drummer for Warren Haynes and Ani DiFranco, and includes bassist Cassandra Faulkner, Keiko Komaki on keys and Eric Johanson on guitar and vocals, in addition to myself. I’m working on a few things currently including another trip to Romania possibly and a Florida tour in November. Check www.BoogieLong.com for new dates and news.

Most musicians go through trials & tribulations, especially early in their careers. What are you learning as you journey through the different stages of your career?

I’m learning that if I want to be successful in this business I’ve got to work hard yourself and make my success the most important thing in my own life. I’ve been managed by the best, I’ve had record deals, and I was complacent because I knew I was in the hands of the best and didn’t do everything that I could as an artist to make their job easier for me. In the long run, it left me having to deal with a lot of things that I used to have someone else dealing with for me. But that’s all part of growing as an artist and the learning experience of life itself. I’m playing, singing, writing, and feeling better than I ever have, and I am ready to continue my journey on this lifelong musical road. It’s all an experience, and God knows I’ve had some amazing ones, and I’m ready to make some more.

Live photographs by Leslie Michele Derrough

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