JJ Grey & Mofro @ Belly Up Tavern, 3-30-07
Show review and photo by Natalie Kardos
JJ Grey hails from the part of Florida that most people never think about. Not the Florida where old people go to retire, to drive their Buicks and Cadillacs at mind-numbingly slow speeds down highways bordering surf, sun, and sand. Not the Florida where spring breakers go to show off their bodies and drinking skills. Nay, JJ Grey comes from the swampland of Florida – where the insects drone all day long, hurricanes come and go, and the one true sign that you’ve arrived in this world is owning a Lincoln Continental. The Country Ghetto, if you will.
This background clearly shows in his music. It’s funkier than foot odor after walking all day in 95% humidity, and heavier than boots full of swamp muck. The boys of Mofro have all been thoroughly schooled in the fine arts of funk and soul, and JJ Grey possesses that smooth Southern way of always talking in rhythm. And when he opens his mouth to sing, boy, you better take a step back. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I never would have imagined that a voice that big was coming out of a thin, tall, white Floridian.
Songs like “Tragic,” “Circle,” and “A Woman” are testaments to JJ’s impressive vocal range. In the lower registers, his throat sounds like it’s full of rocks (in that bluesy good way). And in the upper registers, it sounds sweeter than the honey in your tea. But in addition to his singing capabilities, JJ has another talent that harkens back to blues and funk music. He’s one hell of a bandleader, in the vein of the late great James Brown. During the show, there was never one second where he wasn’t absolutely in control of Mofro. You could tell it in the way he gave cues to the drummer by stomping his feet, the way he called on the band members to give solos, and even in the call-and-response game with his harmonica during their second encore. The man knows how to extract the very best out of all of his bandmates.
For most of the night, one song melded into another in a continuous flow of Southern funk and soul music. The audience ate it up, dancing to the beats that were flowing off the stage. As a photographer, even I found it hard to stand still while taking photos of the band. The continuous onslaught of funk lasted about two and a half hours – eighteen songs worth, including a grand total of three encore performances. My personal highlight was JJ’s solo performance of his song “The Hurricane,” which you won’t find on any of his albums (yet). He played it earlier at his acoustic in-store performance at Lou’sd Records, and his tour manager, who had never heard the song before, asked him to play it again that night. It was well worth hearing twice. It’s a sweetly modest acoustic retelling of what it’s like to sit in a house while a hurricane rages outside for thirty-eight hours straight. But more than that, it’s about the things that make us feel small and mortal. To me, listening to that song made me feel the way that some people feel in church.
The band was visibly having a great time, and so was the crowd; neither one of us wanted the night to end. But eventually it did, and we all shuffled home, feeling the pain in our feet for the first time in two hours, but relishing it nonetheless.
NK