Comin' On Home

Mofro's Swampy Funk Rock Finds A Solid Place

originally published September 19, 2007

If Country Ghetto, the new album by JJ Grey and Mofro, sounds like it has a certain effortless feel, it's no coincidence.

"The song 'Country Ghetto'? I didn't spend 10 minutes thinking about that song," says Grey. "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, this tiny little keyboard thing you can play into the computer. The same thing with '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."

Songwriting hasn't always been so effortless for him. Grey's first brush with recording came in 1994, after a demo he had 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 album.

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

Looking back, Grey remembers the struggles that came with the recording, which was produced by Fog City owner Dan Prothero. "I had a drummer over there in England," Grey says. "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 says he remembers not being sure about Blackwater when it was finished. "When we left out of the studio with Blackwater, I was like, 'I don't know what the hell we've got,'" Grey says.

"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," he says. "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 backing musicians in Mofro, 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 album, Lochloosa, in 2004. Now with the arrival of Country Ghetto, Grey could be poised for another major step up in his career with Mofro.

After releasing Lochloosa on Swampland Records (through a licensing agreement with Fog City), Country Ghetto arrives on the much larger Alligator Records. Country Ghetto, which like the previous two CDs was produced by Prothero, has been in stores for about six months. But even before its release, Grey was liking what he was seeing from Alligator's promotional efforts, including a new influx of interview opportunities.

"That's one thing that they brought to the table," Grey says. "And they do a lot of things that we've never been able to [do] 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."

With Country Ghetto, Alligator has signed the group - now officially billed as JJ Grey & Mofro - as it hits a new musical peak. Songs like "By Your Side," "War" and "Country Ghetto," with their gritty funk 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 strong songcraft also carries through on the more relaxed songs on Country Ghetto, such as the deeply soulful, heavily emotional ballad "Circles," and the tangy horn-accented "Tragic."

Along with the 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 begun a typically extensive tour to support Country Ghetto, bringing along an additional musical treat for fans - a pair of horn players for the current dates.

This will allow JJ Grey & Mofro not only to faithfully render songs from the album but 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 says. "So we'll have horns on some of those songs, too."

Alan Sculley

WHO: JJ Grey & Mofro, The Lee Boys
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, September 21
HOW MUCH: $12 (advance), $15 (day of)