Courtesy of Holland Long

Frantic Recovery: Wilson Long (foreground), Joe Castiglioni (center, rear) and Byron Long

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• What: Frantic Recovery
• When: 9:30 p.m. Friday
• Where: The Coffee Pot, 2902 Brambleton Ave.
• How much: $5
• Information: www.myspace.com/franticrecovery

Jukebox

• Inconvenience Store
• 2 4 6 8

Earlier stories

From The Edge

• Band of brothers

Distorted chords burst through a big amp, ringing dirty as drums pound out time in a Salem garage.

It's a post-punk, post-grunge sound, definitely influenced by Nirvana. So are the lyrics:

"I see you there looking right at my head/Why don't you pick another one instead/You point your finger just left of me/The whole time you were laughing at me

"I don't even wanna play/I'll just sit here in the shade/Save it for another day."

The song is "2 4 6 8." The band is Frantic Recovery. The lyrics are a response to life.

Frantic Recovery singer/guitarist/songwriter Wilson Long was 9 years old when he learned that he had muscular dystrophy, a hereditary disease that causes muscles to atrophy. About 10 years later, his younger brother, Byron, learned he also had the disease. Byron was 7.

Instead of letting it get them down, they started taking it out on instruments. Now they have a record, "Blurred Faces," and a CD release party set for Friday at the Coffee Pot.

Wilson Long, now 28, says that half the songs are about being young, coping with his disease and thinking about death. Doctors told him he might not live past 18. That doesn't mean the songs are total downers, he said.

"The songs say 'Why be bitter? Enjoy life while you have it,' " he said.

Add his guitars, Byron's drumming and bass lines from Joe Castiglioni, and you have rock.

"We tell people that we're heavier than Dave Matthews but lighter than Metallica," said Byron, now 15. "We don't pay attention to the writing. We just know what we feel."

Early diagnoses

It started with Wilson Long walking on his toes a lot. Cramps in his calves led his parents to take him for a diagnosis. Afterward, he thought about dying early, but it didn't stop him from living his life. He went to school. He worked. And at 19, he started playing guitar. A year later, Byron was diagnosed. But Byron's thoughts weren't dark.

"I saw how well he was doing," Byron said of his brother. "It helped me a lot to get through it."

Two years ago, they decided to start a band. Byron wanted to play drums and learned quickly by finding music videos he liked. He played and rewound those tapes to teach himself how drummers like Dave Grohl of Nirvana were doing what they did. His feet were strong enough. His arms are stronger.

"Go ahead, show him your muscle," Castiglioni tells Byron. And the teen exposes a right-arm gun, apparently strengthened from pounding the trap set.

"They say you can't build up your muscles" when you have muscular dystrophy, Byron said. "I've proven them wrong."

The brothers were diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Symptoms are generalized weakness and muscle wasting first affecting the muscles of the hips, pelvic area, thighs and shoulders, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association Web site. Duchenne eventually affects all voluntary muscles, then the heart and breathing muscles. Survival is rare beyond the early 30s, according to the Web site.

But so far, the Long brothers are "kind of defying diagnoses in terms of health, in terms of everything," Wilson said. With atrophied leg muscles, the brothers use wheelchairs most of the time.

They live at their parents' home. Wilson is focusing on songwriting. Byron is a sophomore at Hidden Valley High School.

Their family has been a big support, they said. Their sisters, Holland and Maggie Long, help them set up equipment and do onstage troubleshooting. Their parents, Jim and Beth Long, always come to the shows, they said.

"Our parents were like, 'go do whatever you want to do,' " Wilson said.

"Go jump off a building," Byron added.

Wilson jumped back in: "You're already in a wheelchair."

The room filled with laughter.

"Life's short," Wilson Long said. "Make fun of it."

That sense of humor and collective persistence is impressive, said their father, Jim Long.

"I'm not sure that they know there's anything they can't do," he said. "They're good boys and really enjoy life and are as normal as you can possibly be with wheels."

Making a band

Wilson Long and Castiglioni used to work together at WSLS (Channel 10), but hadn't seen each other in years when Castiglioni answered the Longs' myspace.com bulletin searching for a bassist. Castiglioni switched from his main instrument, guitar, to provide the solid bass lines of Frantic Recovery.

The name came after Byron hurt a leg playing football. Football!

"That was a pretty dumb idea," he said.

As they sat in a restaurant parking lot, Byron told them he needed a "frantic recovery."

The trio made an album, "Two Wheelchairs and a Microphone" -- a title they reject now, because it makes them sound like a joke band. Now the band simply calls that record "TWAM."

The new record, "Blurred Faces," is a full-on studio production. The lyrics are often provocative.

"9 years old, afraid of death/I got tired of making friends/So I started making enemies," Wilson Long sings in "9 Years Old."

"You're contrived and you're a lie and at the end of the night you might die!" he screams in "Y.M.D."

Adam Baber, who recorded "Blurred Faces" at the Red Room studio in Roanoke, said the experience was a delight.

"They were more full of life than I've seen in most people's one pinkie nail," Baber said. "I'm proud of what they're doing. I'm proud to be a part of what they're doing. I like those guys a lot. ... They're bodacious human beings."

The band hopes this is only the beginning of a long musical life. The Longs practice individually, for hours most days, and rehearse with the band once a week. Despite their sense of humor and their ability to work out issues through music, one nagging thought won't go away.

"That's always like our biggest fear," Byron said, "is not to be able to play our instruments."