Young James Long
Biography
Young James Long came together in the winter of 2003 as an improvisational project involving slide guitarist Kirkland James (legendary in North America from his live work in Tenderloin), drummer Taz Bentley (of Reverend Horton Heat, Izzy Stradlin & The Ju Ju Hounds and Tenderloin fame) both of Dallas, and singer/guitar player P.W. Long (of P.W. Long). The group caught some early snags: First, Bentley detested improvisation; secondly, James is tone deaf; and third, Long can't play. They scrapped the band after a couple of sessions but Long and James liked some of the material they had generated from the improv attempts, so they called on drummer Taylor Young (Polyphonic Spree and Young Heart Attack). Young was no more adept at or tolerant toward improvisation than the others and neither James nor Long could remember whose stupid fucking idea improvisation (where all songs were nevertheless limited to 2 minutes) was in the first place. Undaunted, the three began to mould the snippets--wrought of painful and tuneless improvisational indulgences--into rock songs. They took it to the stage that summer, with a regular gig at the Muddy Waters bar in Dallas. Yeah, the name of the joint is a bit corny, like some boozer in Leicester or somewhere that John Mayall or Peter Green played every Thursday in 1967, but it wasn't a bad place and it was across the street from YJL's favourite BYOB bar in Dallas, Ships. And, by the way, for YJL's drinking money, Dallas has as fine a smattering of imbiberies as any town in the Southwest of America. YJL did a few more gigs in Dallas Fort Worth and Austin, even gracing a SXSW stage in 2004. There were all of 6 or 8 people at that afternoon, "B"-list-venue performance and YJL was so thoroughly disregarded by the "crowd" that P.W. recognized, among the faces present, an old friend who was so uncompelled by the noise coming from the stage that he hadn't recognized that his old buddy was up there playing. P.W. approached him after the set to discover his friend to be not only blotto but, he suspects, high on goofballs as well. But that's really no excuse. Nevertheless, a few songs got recorded along the way, but before anything like an album emerged the band parted ways because James is crazy. That's how Young tells Long he remembers it. Long agrees with Young but is pretty sure Young tells James something different (as everyone is a little afraid of James, because, remember, he's crazy). James would probably say that Long is flaky, inconsistent and impossibly hampered by vodka. Young seemed willing and up for any plans the band would idly make, so the fault of the original split likely falls to one of the guitar players (James if you ask me). Anyway, they are re-united after never really having been a band and their first mini-release is coming out in February. Soon after, they should be delivering live, non-improvisational rock in any dank or subterranean shit box (only electricity is required) of the UK and EU.