Remembered

P.W. Long drags his aching, booze-drenched body across the floor, twisting slightly in a country breeze, as though trying to shake the painful memories from the rusty marrow of his soul. "Some see the glass half-empty, others see it half-full, I raise it to my lips and take another pull," he opines, as the echoes of George Jones fill the room with swollen twang and heartbreak that says, "She’s Gone." A one-time guitar-slinging Mule, whose Motor City country-metal rumble rode the rhythm of Laughing Hyenas, Long’s drifted from the Crescent City to Gotham, even leaving music behind for a time, before rediscovering his muse with help from roots-rock Baboon bassist Mark Hughes and drummer Taz Bentley. Like Taz’s old outfit, those hell-bound Supersuckers, Long cooks up Texas-fried country roots whose boozy, bleary-eyed amble replaces the ’suckers tired, punkish prowl, his haunted, hillbilly growl plaintive and wounded. More wistful than misty-eyed, Long offers, "I Can’t Tell the Things I Done," but betrays his remorse, asking, "would you have me any other way?" So it is that Long readily courts damnation with less resignation than acceptance, rolling on among the bluegrass chug of "Diamondbacks," toward a bluesy Southern-rock "Wreck." As they scrape his heart from the ’phalt, his hungry, rootsy rasp is all that’s Remembered.

E-mail Chris Parker at [email protected].