JJ Grey & Mofro On The Liquid Aloha Beach Stage at The Windjammer
Tickets: $45
Doors: 6:00 Show at 7:00ishâŚ
Ages: 21UP or with Parent
From the days of playing greasy local juke joints to headlining major festivals, JJ Grey remains an unfettered, blissful performer, singing with a blue-collared spirit over the bone-deep grooves of his compositions. His presence before an audience is something startling and immediate, at times a funk rave-up, other times a sort of mass-absolution for the mortal weaknesses that make him and his audience human. When you see JJ Grey and his band Mofro liveâand you truly, absolutely mustâthe man is fearless.
Onstage, Grey delivers his songs with compassion and a relentless honesty, but perhaps not until Olâ Glory has a studio record captured the fierceness and intimacy that defines a Grey live performance. âI wanted that crucial lived-in feel,â Grey says of Olâ Glory, and here he hits his mark. On the new album, Grey and his current Mofro lineup offer grace and groove in equal measure, with an easygoing quality to the production that makes those beautiful muscular drum-breaks sound as though the band has set up in your living room.
Despite a redoubtable stage presence, Grey does get performance anxietyâspecifically, when heâs suspended 50 feet above the soil of his pecan grove, clearing moss from the upper trees.
âThe tops of the trees are even worse,â he laughs, âsay closer to 70, maybe even 80 feet. Iâm not phobic about heights, but I donât think anyoneâs crazy about getting up in a bucket and swinging all around. I wanted to fertilize this year but didnât get a chance. This February I will, about two tonsâto feed the trees.â
When he isnât touring, Grey exerts his prodigious energies on the family land, a former chicken-farm that was run by his maternal grandmother and grandfather. The farm boasts a recording studio, a warehouse that doubles as Greyâs gym, an open-air barn, and of course those 50-odd pecan trees that occasionally require Grey to go airborne with his sprayer.
For devoted listeners, there is something fitting, even affirmative in Greyâs commitment to the land of his north Florida home. The farms and eddying swamps of his youth are as much a part of Greyâs music as the Louisiana swamp-blues tradition, or the singerâs collection of old Stax records.
As a boy, Grey was drawn to country-rockers, including Jerry Reed, and to Otis Redding and the other luminaries of Memphis soul; Run-D.M.C., meanwhile, played on repeat in the parking lot of his high school (note the hip-hop inflections on âA Night to Rememberâ). Merging these traditions, and working with a blue-collar ethic that brooked no bullshit, Grey began touring as Mofro in the late â90s, with backbeats that crossed Steve Cropper with
George Clinton and a lyrical directness that made his debut LP Blackwater (2001) a calling-card among roots-rock aficionados. Soon, he was expanding his tours beyond America and the U.K., playing ever-larger clubs and eventually massive festivals, as his fan base grew from a modest group of loyal initiates into something resembling a national coalition.
Grey takes no shortcuts on the homestead, and he certainly takes no shortcuts in his music. While he has metaphorically speaking âdrawn bloodâ making all his albums, his latest effort, Olâ Glory, found him spending more time than ever working over the new material. A hip-shooting, off-the-cuff performer (often his first vocal takes end up pleasing him best), Grey was able to stretch his legs a bit while constructing the lyrics and vocal lines to Olâ Glory.
âI would visit it much more often in my mind, visit it more often on the guitar in my house,â Grey says. âI like an album to have a balance, like a novel or like a film. A triumph, a dark brooding moment, or a moment of peaceâthatâs the only thing I consistently try to achieve with a record.â
Grey has been living this balance throughout his career, and Olâ Glory is a beautifully paced little film. On âThe Island,â Grey sounds like Coleridge on a happy day: âAll beneath the canopy / of ageless oaks whose secrets keep / Forever in her beauty / This island is my home.â âA Night to Rememberâ finds the singer in first-rate swagger: âI flipped up my collar ah man / I went ahead and put on my best James Dean / and youâd a thought I was Clark Gable squinting through that smoke.â And âTurn Looseâ has Grey in fast-rhyme mode in keeping with the songâs title: âYou work a stride / curbside thumbing a ride / on Lane Avenue / While your kids be on their knees / praying Jesus please.â From the profane to the sacred, the sly to the sublime, Grey feels out his range as a songwriter with ever-greater assurance.
The mood and drive of Olâ Glory are testament to this achievement. The album ranks with Greyâs very best work; among other things, the secret spirituality of his music is perhaps more accessible here than ever before. On âEverything Is a Song,â he sings of âthe joy with no opposite,â a sacred state that Grey describes to me:
âIt can happen to anybody: you sit still and you feel things tingling around you, everythingâs alive around you, and in that a smile comes on your face involuntarily, and in that I felt no opposite. It has no part of the play of good and bad or of comedy or tragedy. I know itâs just a play on words but it feels like more than just being happy because you got what you wanted â this is a joy. A joy that doesnât get involved one way or the next; it just is.â
Greyâs most treasured albums include Otis Reddingâs In Person at the Whisky a Go Go and Jerry Reedâs greatest hits, and the singer once told me that he grew up âwanting to be Jerry Reed but with less of a country, more of a soul thing.â With Olâ Glory, Grey does his idols proud. Itâs a country record where the stories are all part of one great mystery; itâs a blues record with one foot in the church; itâs a Memphis soul record that takes place in the country.
In short, Olâ Glory is that most singular thing, a record by JJ Greyâthe north Florida sage and soul-bent swamp rocker.