Out of the Blue: Rocker John Popper buys local artist's watercolor portrait

If life is a surfboard, local actor and artist Rick Long is riding that wave.

Long, recently divorced, challenged himself to do some self-care. So he circled July 6 on the calendar and took himself on a date to see his two favorite bands: Colorado’s own Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Colorado’s adopted Blues Traveler at the Ford Amphitheatre in Vail.

A few days later, Long took a random phone call from a presumed prankster who said: "Hey, this is John Popper, and I want to talk to Rick Long."

Long wasn’t buying it. “What’s your daughter’s middle name?” Long asked. Even when Popper answered correctly, Long was not convinced. So he tried to trip the caller up by mentioning something about Popper living in Seattle. “Um, actually I live outside Snohomish,” Popper said.

Holy smokes. This really was the Grammy Award-winning singer calling Long right out of the Blue('s Traveler).

Long had come home from that Vail concert fully reminded of why Popper and his music have always meant so much to him. So he painted Popper, with the memory of seeing him live fresh in his mind.

Long’s unique style might best be described as a “color explosion.” He first paints his subject with a watercolor base, then goes back in and adds fine details and small flourishes using ink.

Long put the finished painting on his website, which was then shared on a Big Head Todd Facebook fan page. Long has been a fan of the Littleton band since their early days at Herman’s Hideaway. That’s where Popper saw it. And wanted it. So he found Long’s phone number on his website, and he called it. And said he wanted to buy it.

Long was shaking. “I told John Popper I have two children, and that when they were both young, I sang his song ‘Just Wait’ to them to put them to bed,” Long said. “And as I was talking to him, everything hit me about the reason I painted him to begin with. Every time I paint someone, it is a person who has affected me in a positive way – and I got to tell him that.”

Popper just laughed and said, "I'll send you a harmonica." Oh, and $100 for a 24x36 print. For some reason, Popper actually preferred a print to the original. Long offered to mail it to him for free, but Popper insisted on paying “artist to artist,” Popper told him.

“Just having the honor of talking to a Grammy-winning rock star was enough,” Long said. “But now my name will be in his living room – and all because I started drawing as a kid and I haven't stopped.”

No surprise: When word of Long’s story got out on Facebook, traffic to Long’s website went up more than 400 percent. He's selling the Popper print in four sizes, along with lots of other stuff.

In the past few months, Long has appeared as an actor in Town Hall Arts Center’s “Memphis,” and in “Jimmy Buffett's Escape to Margaritaville” at the PACE Center. He had his first gallery showing at the Vintage Theatre – a series of 22 portraits of unsung champions of the Colorado theater community – and he was hired to teach acting as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. After a rough real-life spell, Long is grateful.

“What a gift,” Long said. “I have more years behind me than I have ahead of me, so I thought it’s about time I start saying thank you.”