Lot Long’s, “Long Time Coming”, a rock and roll masterpiece 37 years in the making is now available 

Lot Long’s, “Long Time Coming”, a rock and roll masterpiece 37 years in the making is now available

By: Kevin Vickery

The two-man band, Lot Long features Hoosier rooted musicians, Warren Bullock of Middletown and Michael Crider from Anderson.  Though the two have been long time residents of Louisville, KY and Nashville, TN respectively, they have both maintained a deeply rooted friendship and common bond over their mutual love of rock and roll, particularly the harder, “riff-rock” variety that was so popular in the 80’s. 

Their first full length collaboration, “Long Time Coming” was recently released on all major streaming platforms and a buzz is quickly circulating through online reviews about both the band and their debut album, nearly 40 years in the making.

Personally, I love the album and figured I should probably throw in my two cents given that I’ve know these two guys nearly my whole life and they are two of the closest friends and a couple of the best musicians that I’ve ever had the pleasure of making noise with.  So, let me take it from the top…

I met Warren on the first day of Junior High School when he sat at the desk in front of me in Mrs. Emswiller’s 6th grade math class at Shenandoah Middle School. We bonded quickly as we were both the only children of fairly strict single mothers.  We both also had a certain affinity for letting our mouths get us in trouble at school by chatting too much and by talking back to teachers for a laugh from other kids.  We bonded over sarcasm, comedy, Star Wars. and most importantly our quickly growing interest in rock and roll.

We were both learning to play guitar so I invited him over one weekend to bring his guitar and hang out.  It took about five seconds to learn that he had been playing since age five and I had only been taking lessons for about five months which seemed like five minutes comparatively.  He had a beautiful, black vintage Fender Stratocaster and I had a busted up, hand me down guitar ordered from the JC Penney’s catalog and then given to me by a family friend after they gave up on it.  I was still making my way through “Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method, Grade  1” and he was already playing by ear picking out cool songs off the radio with ease.

I made two decisions that day.  First, I most definitely wanted to be in a band with this guy and secondly, that I needed to switch to bass.  Both of those things happened and now fast forward a few years to high school.

We had replaced our mutual love of Star Wars with Van Halen and I had fortunately made it through my break dance phase without incident.  We discovered Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Black Sabbath while simultaneously developing an interest in the rock radio bands of the time like Journey, Bon Jovi, Motley Crew and Def Leppard.

We had the earliest versions of our band up and running which featured more drummers than Spinal Tap and our seemingly never ending quest to find a good lead singer.  Back then we would literally audition anyone who was even remotely interested, especially if they had long-ish hair. I can remember countless hours spent in both of our garages tying to work up songs with guys just because we heard them singing in the hallways of our school.  None of that ever panned out and only left us with a few embarrassing memories of failed attempts to rock the house at the annual school talent show.

Things all changed during our Junior year when a mutual friend introduced us to Michael Crider from Anderson.  He was the same age as we were and was also an only child, a real smart-mouth and loved rock music, especially Van Halen, KISS, and Whitesnake.  

Unlike other guys we’d tried working with, Mike had real musical talent. He played in the Highland High School drum-line, was a decent piano player and a genuinely great vocalist.  He could sing in the upper register that was demanded to keep up with the big-hair music of that era and could scream it out with the best of them.  He also had a natural ability to dissect harmony vocals. When mixed with Warren’s voice and even my hack singing, we were delivering three-part harmony on a vocal level ahead of our age group.

We were all kindred spirits before I even knew what that meant which was a good thing because with three only children in the band what could possibly go wrong?  We only had to all three be the coolest, the funniest, the smartest, and none of us were ever wrong as long as there was some poor drummer or keyboard player around to blame things on.  With that award winning attitude. And some of the finest mullets ever to be grown, coupled with the world’s heaviest and worst sounding PA system we were up and running.

That band became known as Vice Versa and we kept it alive for several years, recording a handful of songs with studio time we’d won from “Battle of the Bands” contests and did a lot of gigs at schools, local fairs and festivals in our area.

We limped that band along through our college years but the landscape of rock was changing (enter Grunge) and that added with our different schedules and the miles between us lead to us all going our separate ways after graduation.  It all sort of reminds me of the lyrics from the Brian Adams song, “Summer of ‘69” which says:

“Me and some guys from school,
Had a band and we tried real hard.
Jimmy quit, Jody got married.
I should’ve known we’d never get far.

Oh, when I look back now,
That summer seemed to last forever.
And if I had the choice,
Yeah, I’d always wanna be there.
Those were the best days of my life.”

Our Summer of ‘69 was the Summer of ‘88 when we all had girlfriends, cool cars, time on our hands and the best group of friends that we could ask for who also happened to be our bandmates in the coolest band around (at least according to us).

One important thing spawned from that Summer which was Warren and Mike’s commitment to eventually record an album together as a duo.  Well, it only took them 37 years but they’ve finally done just that.

Over those years I watched in the distance as Michael’s guitar playing has gone from zero to self-taught excellence.  Warren’s playing hasn’t skipped a beat either and has only matured with age.  To this day I can still hear Michael’s vocal influences like Sammy Hagar,  Paul Stanley, and David Coverdale swirling together along with Warren’s influential guitar heroes, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Neal Schon.  The duo’s voices and guitar playing blend together perfectly, in an almost “Beatle-esque” way and when thrown into the mix with both of their collective song writing abilities, the result is both musically and lyrically pure hard-rock perfection.

The songs on, “Long Time Coming” are all great and I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite.  Opening track and first release, “Cry Baby” has garnered them the most spins on Spotify so far and is a great tune.  Rhythm Revolution calls it, “Powerful and cool” while The Route of Rock says it’s a, “Potent force”.  I agree as its swampy guitar intro yields to a crunchy riff and killer syncopated vocal harmonies.

Big sing-along choruses reign supreme throughout the album especially on songs like, “Drive”, “Rain” and the title track, “Long Time Coming”

Zillions Magazine’s calls second single, “Drive”, “A blistering, full-throttle Hard Rock Alternative Metal track that doesn’t just rev the engine, but floors it. – it sets its tone from the first crashing chord. – Thick, unapologetic guitars are present in riffs that seem manufactured in a back-alley machine shop.”

The Ark of Music mentions how “The song, “Rain” takes a psychedelic turn through its sparkling prog organ riffs”, while adding, “Fiery distortions and pinch harmonics command the title track, “Long Time Comin’,” with vocal harmonies snatched from the 70s and a gritty, leather vibe that could top any biker’s playlist”.

I firmly believe all their original material is fantastic and a must listen for any real hard rock or heavy metal fans out there.  Lot Long has also included one sole cover song on the “Long Time Coming” album and it is none other than Van Halen’s “5150”.  I was gobsmacked when Michael told me they had taken on this VH classic as it has to be one of their meatiest songs and easily one of the most difficult to tackle.

On covering this Michael said. “When Warren and I met in the late 1980s, one of the first things we bonded over was our love for all things Van Halen. As a guitarist in that era, Edward Van Halen was a hero to Warren and countless others. I grew up playing drums and had always wanted to be the drummer in a rock band until I saw Van Halen in 1986. I saw Sammy Hagar burst onto the stage and immediately thought, “THAT is what I want to do”, and I never looked back. Then once I started playing music with Warren, I knew I found my own Edward.”

He continued, “Fast forward to starting this album, and we both knew we wanted to do our own version of 5150. Recording this was quite challenging. Sammy’s vocal range is out of this world, and he recorded this song at age 38. I, being decidedly NOT 38, realized this was going to be tough to tackle. I knew I had try to do the whole song in one take or my voice would wear out. So, that’s what I did and this recording is the end result. The drums were no joke either. Alex’s complex drum parts proved to be difficult for me to play, but I like how they came out. But Warren had to do the majority of the heavy lifting on this song. He had to emulate the guitar parts written and played by arguably the best guitarist to ever live. And he absolutely nailed it. Even though I knew what he’s capable of, Warren knocked this out of the park. I absolutely love how this cover version of 5150 turned out.”

Warren has also commented on tackling this tune saying, “ I knew I wanted to do a Van Halen cover as part of this album, but when Mike threw out doing “5150”, I winced a little bit, knowing how tough of song it is to play.  Still, something about the challenge seemed appealing to me.  I spent more time learning it than I have on anything in a long time, but it was rewarding when it started to click, and it was really a lot of fun too.  I obviously can’t play it like King Edward did, but nobody can – I don’t want to understate Mike’s vocal performance, which is phenomenal, and particularly the drums he pulled off.  Because my focus is always guitar-centric, most of the time I don’t pay attention to a ton of drum detail, as was the case with this song; however, when I start mixing the tracks for any song, I always work on the individual track sound before I start putting everything together, so I got several runs-through of listening to just the drum track. In doing so, I had several moments where I was incredibly impressed with what I was listening to.”

He added, “I ended up being very pleased with how the vocal harmonies sound at the end of the song as well.  In all honesty, part of me expected to get half-way through this and decide, “Man, we just can’t pull this off” and switch songs, but here it is!  We’re obviously no Ed, Sammy, Alex, or even Michael, but overall I’m very happy with how this turned out.  Shout out to DLR too – I love any Van Halen song, but a large majority of the songs on my original wish-list were Roth-era songs, with the utmost respect to both flavors of the band.”

When Michael first started sharing tracks from this project with me I asked him where the band name came from and he told me interestingly enough, “We were trying to think of a name for the band and I had read an article where they discovered after 50+ years who this guy is from the Led Zeppelin IV album.- He was a thatcher from the 1800s and it was discovered that his name was Lot Long. So it was a nod to the classic rockers.”

Even more interesting to me is the way that they recorded this project.  Even though Im old school, I knew that they hadn’t actually rented studio time, hired a producer, etc and assumed that it was all done digitally through modern techniques.  I also knew that they had multi-tracked out of necessity since they had played all the instruments as well as the vocal tracks themselves.  However, I still assumed at some point during the writing or recording process that they had gotten together at one of their home studios but when I asked Michael about this he told me, “I haven’t seen him (Warren) in 15 years or more. We talked on the phone once during this process. The rest of it was just done via email and texts.”  Warren then took the tracks that Michael had sent along with the things he recorded himself and did all the final mixing and mastering using his home computer and recording software.

Despite that, the whole album feels like a time capsule full of all the best music from the late 1980s was sealed for 40 years or so.  Then after it all blended, fermented and the cream rose  to the top, “Long Time Coming” is what blasts you in the face when you break open the seal.  Just as it pours out of the vault, it blends with the air of 2025 to give it just enough crispness and modern flavor to keep it all fresh and delicious to both the modern listener as well as the experienced rock lover.  Overall, it’s a great collection of work and I would highly recommend it to any seasoned rock fans who’ve bridged the gap into using streaming services for listening to music.  

I’m so very glad that Warren and Michael finally found the time to put forth this collaborative effort and hope that there is more to come from Lot Long in the future. And I’m putting it on record now that if they ever want to showcase these songs in front of a live audience like they deserve to be heard, I have bass and will travel.

To kept up with Lot Long you can find them on Facebook and you can check out their music on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube and more.