The SunPost

“The song ‘Country Ghetto,’ I didn’t spend 10 minutes thinking about that song,” Grey said in a recent phone interview. “It was the same way with ‘Circles.’ We were riding down the road on the bus and I just ran and grabbed a keyboard and just started playing it into the computer. [It was] the same thing with [the song] ‘Turpentine’.… I don’t know of any song that I thought more than a few minutes about or ever really thought about. They just sort of happened.”

The amazement in Grey’s voice as he recalled those moments made clear that songwriting hasn’t always been so effortless for him.
Grey’s first brush with recording came in 1994, after a demo that he made with guitarist Daryl Hance got the attention of a British record label and earned the duo a trip to London to record. That deal collapsed, and it wasn’t until 2001 that Grey got a second chance for a first CD.

By that time, Grey had returned to his home base of Jacksonville, Fla., and adopted the band name Mofro. Signed to the indie label Fog City Records, Grey recruited Hance and several other musicians to make the CD Blackwater.

Looking back, Grey remembers the challenges that came with the CD, which was produced by Fog City owner Dan Prothero.
“I had a drummer over there in England,” Grey said. “I saw him one time at a rehearsal, and I brought him over. He’s a great drummer, playing drum ’n’ bass. But I only got to see him play drum ’n’ bass, like 150 beats per minute. When we tried to slow down and start playing some soul, oh man, he was struggling.”

Eventually Prothero convinced Grey to let him bring in another drummer, George Sluppick, and the songs began to take shape — at least to Prothero’s ears. But Grey said he remembers not being sure about Blackwater when it was finished.

“When we left the studio with Blackwater, I was like, ‘I don’t know what the hell we’ve got,’” Grey said. “Then the second record, I knew a little bit more what to listen for and I felt better about it. And then this record, I felt really good about it. This is one time when I left the studio that I felt like, ‘Wow, we’ve really got something here.’”

Fortunately for Grey and what has been a shifting cast of Mofro musicians, Blackwater made musical sense, and the group gradually began building a following with heavy duty touring.
The band’s popularity only grew after the release of the second CD, Lochloosa, in 2004.

Then with the early-2007 arrival of Country Ghetto, Grey has taken Mofro another step forward.

After releasing Lochloosa on Swampland Records (through a licensing agreement with Fog City), Country Ghetto arrived on the much larger label Alligator Records.

This CD, like the previous two, was produced by Prothero. But even before the CD’s release, Grey felt comfortable with Alligator’s promotional efforts, which included a new influx of interview opportunities.

“That’s one thing that they brought to the table,” Grey said. “And they do a lot of things that we’ve never been able to have done before. It’s no knock on any of the labels we’ve been on before…. But I’m learning it’s a whole different kettle of fish when there are 16 full-time employees who’ve been doing this for years, rather than two people max working on it in conjunction with me and my manager to try to do it.”

Songs like “By Your Side,” “War” and “Country Ghetto,” with their gritty, funky edge, rock harder and offer a bigger sound than much of Mofro’s earlier music. They are also some of the tightest and most smartly crafted songs Grey has written.

The fine songcraft also carries through on Country Ghetto’s more relaxed songs, such as the deeply soulful, heavily emotional ballad “Circles,” and the tangy horn-accented “Tragic.”

Along with its musical growth, Mofro has settled into something of a stable lineup since Lochloosa. Joining Grey and Hance are drummer Sluppick (who came on board full-time after his other band, the Willard Grant Conspiracy, split up) and bassist Adam Scone.

The group has been touring extensively to support Country Ghetto, bringing along an additional musical treat for fans on many dates — a pair of horn players.

This allows JJ Grey and Mofro not only to faithfully render songs from Country Ghetto, but also to bring new dimensions to older songs.
“A lot of the stuff that was on the other records will have the horn lines that I always wanted to put on those, but couldn’t afford to get a horn section together in the studio, that kind of thing,” Grey said. “So we’ll have horns on some of those songs too.”

JJ Grey and Mofro will perform at 8 p.m. Feb. 21 at the Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale. Tickets are $20 at www.ticketmaster.com.

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