Jonathon “Boogie” Long learned to make a guitar talk before he learned to make sense of the world.
He grew up in Baton Rouge in a family where music wasn’t a hobby so much as a language. His parents sang gospel and led services. His grandfather preached fire-and-brimstone sermons, strumming simple chords and urging the boy at his side to “pick it.” By six, Jonathon was carrying a little guitar into churches, nursing homes, even prisons, picking “Amazing Grace” and watching rooms change temperature. “Music is a universal language,” he says. “It can make a mad person calm or a calm person crazy.” That was the lesson that stuck.
He cut his teeth in Louisiana blues rooms, studied under mentors like Mark Wascom, gigged professionally by 11, and hit the road at 14 with Henry Turner Jr. Years with New Orleans soul icon Luther Kent sharpened his restraint and feel, a 2011 Guitar Center “King of the Blues” win put a national spotlight on his playing, and he’s since shared stages with B.B. King, ZZ Top, and Robert Cray. The path hasn’t been linear – bad deals and shelved records included – but that grit informs who he is now.
His new album Courage In The Chaos (Myrical Media) was born out of a career that hasn’t always gone the way it looked like it might. For every night he’s shared the stage with legends, there have been contracts that locked up his songs, records that never saw daylight, and the kind of empty promises that can leave an artist questioning their calling. Rather than break him, those chapters shaped the record’s edge. It gathers pieces of music he carried for years – songs left behind in the wreckage of old deals, lyrics scribbled during low points – and reframes them with the steadiness of someone who’s lived through it. The result isn’t a glossy reinvention but a raw account of survival: a Baton Rouge guitarist turning bruises into fuel, and chaos into courage.
Across the record, you can hear the way he hears. Boogie didn’t come up worshipping Stevie Ray Vaughan or AC/DC in his bedroom. His DNA is Black gospel and fusion – big voices and show-me-something guitars. That’s why his licks phrase like a singer, and his solos sound like a conversation rather than a contest. He anticipates changes before they arrive because that’s how church music works: you live inside the moment and the next one at the same time.
Today, Glide is offering a premiere of the video for the standout track “Baby I’m Through,” a Baton Rouge blues confession that hits like a letter written out loud. The video captures this literally, as Boogie pens his letter over a soundtrack of scorching blues licks and a tight rhythm section. Without question, the influence of acts like ZZ Top and BB King can be heard all over this tune. Yet, at the same time, Boogie injects this timeless music with his own sense of soul and swagger to ultimately make for a fun and forceful work of Louisiana blues.
“Baby I’m Through” is a Baton Rouge blues confession – a letter written out loud. “There’s a point where you’re done,” he says. “You don’t whisper it to one person. You say it to everybody.” He sings like a man who has run out of euphemisms. The band leaves space for the words to breathe, then answers him with a lick that sounds like a door closing softly rather than a slam. It is resignation without defeat.
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Johnathan Boogie Long Chris Roberts And Company Man Keep Doing What Y’all Are Doing Bad To The Bone Awesome Song And Video