Grey area

JJ Grey is a white boy.

Specifically, the songwriting wellhead of the porch-swing-fitted MOFRO is a 39-year-old North Florida white boy—a dirtfloorcracker, as he quips in song—a man of the unapologetically Southern variety, fond of his short-cropped hair, country-road accent and some achingly personal blues-basted rock and soul. 

You can learn most of this and more about the gifted Grey by listening to any of his band’s three substantial studio outings since 2001, the latest coming as the mean yet refined Country Ghetto, a record as unashamed of its simple grit as the man who penned its 12 irresistible tracks.

But if you only listen to MOFRO—a worthwhile endeavor for fans of many a music stripe—the one detail about Grey you might miss is that he is a white boy at all. This, of course, is intended as the highest of compliments for Grey, who conjures more North Mississippi blues and Motown gospel soul than a bevy of recent Grammy nominees for “Best R&B.”

At blues festivals, especially, Grey tells Xpress: “I sign as many black autographs as white—especially [for] older folks.”

This isn’t a cheap ploy on Grey’s part to resonate “black soul” in some dishonest way, to act a part. Indeed, MOFRO, the lone vehicle for Grey’s music these last seven-odd years, is as honest a tune as you’ll find on (though mostly off) today’s radio.

Grey reflects this racial blur in the words of the new album’s title track:
Love touches us all/ Yes we’re black and we’re white
Out here in the cut/ Still living side by side
So never mind what you seen/ And just forget what you heard
Another ignorant redneck/ Just some Hollywood words

Once you get to the “redneck” refrain (and a dozen other quotables in MOFRO’s catalog), you may be surer of Grey’s ethnic lineage. Still, there’s something very soul about what JJ and his longtime collaborator, guitarist Daryl Hance, do with a stripped-down quartet of drums, harmonica, guitars and Hammond B-3—imparting a too-rare reminder that good soul is thankfully not the property of any one group or locale.

Thus it seems no accident that Grey’s musical journey was personally touched by one of the soul greats, a man he clearly admires (and emulates) in the stool he chooses to sit on, and in the voice he brings to the stage.

Bill Withers, the trusted muse behind such meaty classics as “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” happened to see Grey at a concert in Los Angeles while MOFRO toured with B.B. King in 2003; Withers asked to meet him after the band’s set.

“I thought I was gonna meet some record-industry guy. But then I got back there and it was Bill Withers,” Grey recalled to Xpress.

Impressed with Grey’s gifts, Withers offered some once-in-a-lifetime advice: “He just laid it on the line to me about protecting your mojo and your light, about not being Superman and trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders … about keeping what you do alive without losing the luster for yourself.”

Did Withers actually use the word ‘mojo’?” we had to ask. After a reluctant pause—this is an encounter he’s discussed little with the press—Grey confirms, “Yes, he did.”

All Austin Powers quips aside (it’s no coincidence that Withers’ “Just the Two of Us” appears hilariously in the Powers trilogy), when the guy who wrote “Use Me” is giving you pointers on protecting your musical mojo, you better believe you’re onto something good.

Down-home good is precisely what MOFRO music is. Elemental juke-joint blues and sweet, twisted ballads are occasionally augmented by Otis Redding-esque horn arrangements and/or gospel refrains. And the anti-carpetbagger laments bring it all soberingly up-to-date: In signature song “Florida,” Grey, no friend of developers, croons: “They’re killing her one piece at a time/ I know some fools who think I should let go/ But they’ve never seen Florida through my eyes.”

While none of MOFRO’s records reveal a man short on confidence, Grey talked with Xpress at some length about getting comfortable in his own skin, mirrored in the recent band-name switch to “JJ Grey & MOFRO,” a subtle yet telling shift.

“For some people [the name change] might not be a big deal at all, and for a handful it might be a super-big deal—for God knows what reason. But for me the only thing that made it enough of an issue to address was that this is the diary of my life, so to speak, laid out musically.”

Grey describes a need to identify MOFRO’s songs—swampy backwoods landscapes, characters he knows and loves—as a reflection of himself. There will be no solo records. There is no alter ego.

This, however, is the very magic Withers said to guard.

“When I was young and started out, I’d hide behind the speakers and sing,” admits Grey. “And I still felt like I was hiding all the time. MOFRO was the name I made up, and at the end of the day, am I still hiding [behind the name]?

“Even though I’m singing about these things, singing about my grandmother”—whose farmland Grey lives on today—“am I still trying to hide?”

As with any good Southern boy, black or white, Grey’s pride eventually rose to the fore. The answer today is a resounding “No, sir.”

[Stuart Gaines is a freelance writer and editor based in Asheville.]