Baton Rouge guitarist, singer, and songwriter Jonathon “Boogie” Long has announced his new album Courage In The Chaos, set for release November 14th via Myrical Media.
The 12-song collection is the most honest and musically adventurous statement of his career, drawing from decades of songs and experiences that chart his life as one of Louisiana’s fiercest blues-rock voices.
Alongside today’s announcement, Boogie has released the album’s lead single, “A Fool Can See,” with an accompanying music video. Built around a hook that recalls fool’s gold—something that shines until you get close—the track sets the tone for the album’s raw honesty. “I kept hearing this idea of fool’s gold – how something shines until you get close. The rest wrote itself,” Boogie says. Over a swaggering groove, the lyric clocks all the little tells that reveal the truth of a thing – a relationship, an industry promise, the stories we tell ourselves to get through the night. His guitar is vocal here – bends that sound like someone choosing not to say what they’re thinking, then finally saying it anyway.
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.
Lessons with his mentor Mark Wascom taught him how to find things by ear and trust feel over theory. Blues jams with Louisiana elders like Kenny Neal and Larry Garner gave him a second education. At eleven he had his first paying gig. At fourteen he walked into the principal’s office, said he was done, and went on the road with Henry Turner Jr. A teenage side-man in grown-man rooms, he learned to travel light, listen hard, and take care of himself.
The long apprenticeship made him fast, then it made him patient. Years with New Orleans soul titan Luther Kent recalibrated him. “I tried to be the hot-shot,” he admits, “then Luther’s band slapped me back to reality.” JazzFest sets with the big band taught him space and seasoning. In 2011, Guitar Center’s King of the Blues crown put a national spotlight on his fretwork. Bookers and managers followed. So did the usual mix of breaks and bruises.
If you’ve followed his story, you know the highlight reel: tours and festival main stages across the U.S. and Europe, stages shared with B.B. King, ZZ Top, and Robert Cray, and two Billboard Top 10 Blues albums earlier in his career. You may also know the valleys: bad contracts, shelved records, and the kind of setbacks that test an artist’s faith in the path they’ve chosen.
The new album, Courage In The Chaos, out November 14th via Myrical Media, is the most honest picture of who that name belongs to. Built from a mix of fresh writing and songs he carried for years, the record works like a map of his musical life – Baton Rouge blues, Black gospel phrasing, jam-band flash when it serves the song, and a singer’s instinct for how a line should land. He made it with a close collaborator who encouraged him to “reach back to the roots” and finish ideas that never left him. The result feels immediate and lived-in at once.
At its core, Courage In The Chaos is a record about resilience and identity. It gathers pieces of Boogie’s past – songs, stories, and sounds carried across decades – and reshapes them into something present and unflinching. The album fuses Baton Rouge blues, gospel inflection, and roots rock energy with a raw edge that feels both lived-in and urgent. Through it all, his guitar and voice move together as one, a reminder that for Boogie, music has always been less about showing off and more about telling the truth.
Maybe that’s why Courage In The Chaos feels more like a homecoming than a pivot. It brings back the grit of his earliest Baton Rouge gigs, the seasoning of the Luther Kent years, the spark that had strangers on TikTok calling him the best guitarist on the app after fifteen seconds of improvisation. It also carries the steadiness of a man who has learned not to outspeed his own story. The guitar still screams when it needs to. More often, it sings.
Courage In The Chaos by Jonathon “Boogie” Long
1. A Fool Can See
2. Hell or High Water
3. Insanity
4. Empty Promises
5. The World is a Prison
6. Drinking Through
7. Can’t You See
8. Baby I’m Through
9. Tomorrow
10. Lipstick
11. Catfish Blues
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