thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

It took a while, but singer-songwriter J.J. Grey -- frontman of the roots-rock outfit Mofro -- finally got to make the album he wanted to make eight years ago.

Back then, his band was simply Mofro, without his name as its precursor. It was 2001, and he went into the studio to cut "Blackwater," the group's debut record. When he emerged from the process, he was terrified that the final product would be a muddy, confusing mess.

"I really wanted 'Blackwater' to sound and feel like 'Orange Blossoms,' but it was sort of a disaster," Grey told The Daily Times this week. "The producer (Don Prothero) ended up saving it, and now I love that record -- in the end, it was a lot better than I thought it was when we left the studio. At the time, I didn't even think we had a record.

"In the studio, I would be standing around looking at the guys playing on 'Blackwater,' and they were all from totally different genres and cuts of music, and they had to sort of be coached about what I wanted -- Dan was waiting on me to give them direction, but I didn't have a lot of studio experience, so I didn't know what was expected of me from a producer. I just sort of stood there, so there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging."

With "Orange Blossoms," released last year on blues label Alligator Records, Grey took his time. He started work on it in 2007, recording it three times by himself just to get it sounding the way he heard in his head. By the time he got to the studio, he had a ready-made album to hand to the studio musicians, who listened and played according to his pre-recorded directions.

"It didn't take a lot of coaxing or prodding to get things done and made it easier on the cats coming in to play with me," Grey said. "There's nothing worse than a guy who jams on an instrument asking, 'What are you going for?' and trying to play something and hearing in return, 'This ain't gonna work.' Because then he asks, 'Well, what direction do you want?' And if all you can say is, 'I don't know,' then it can be a disaster."

"Orange Blossoms," however, is anything but. It's the high-water mark of the Mofro catalog, the audio equivalent of a roadside barbecue shack off the side of a little-used Southern highway, the kind of place that makes the mouth water from a mile away and serves up steaming plates of soul food so good it makes you want to take up residence. There's a reason such imagery comes to mind -- Grey calls Jacksonville, Fla., home, and Mofro's music is a blend of slow, syrupy soul, funk and blues drizzled over an undercurrent of Southern rock.

More than anything, there's a natural warmth to "Orange Blossoms" that's reflected in every heartfelt chorus, every trumpet blast, every skittering backbeat of the drums. It feels genuine -- like Grey hand-crafted every song in some musician's workshop filled with tools and dust and industrial fans and the smell of cigarette smoke.

"I don't think about it -- I just let it happen," he said of his songwriting process. "The longer you do it and the more you're not involved mentally, the better it is. The songs write themselves after a while, and the best stuff you've ever written almost feels like you have no hand in it at all."

Grey counts among his idols Muddy Waters, Sly and the Family Stone and Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Otis Redding as his biggest vocal influence. Mofro was originally Grey and fellow Jacksonvillian Daryl Hance, who both went to London several years ago to seal a deal with a small London label. That fell through, but the pair decided to stick around and seek out additional members.

The whole time, Grey was writing the bulk of the material for "Blackwater," and when the group returned stateside, they gathered with Prothero. The sophomore album "Lochloosa" continued the band's evolution, and slowly but surely Grey started making a name for himself on the rock and blues circuit around the Southeast. In 2006, after recording the band's third album, Grey and Mofro were signed to Alligator Records, a move that's been a boon for the group.

"I recorded 'Country Ghetto' on my own dime, and then Alligator said they'd love to put it out," Grey said. "When it came time to record 'Orange Blossoms,' they asked how much I needed and paid to get it made. With Alligator, they were able to introduce the tunes to the radio, and that's something that's never happened with us before. All that's been really, really cool."

Having a label in his corner, he said, has been nice -- not that Grey is one to rest on his laurels. After all, it's been through a lot of hard work, much traveling and pouring his heart out on stage every night that's gotten him this far. And with a powerhouse of a record like "Orange Blossoms" in his rearview mirror, he doesn't see a need to slow down anytime soon.

"It's been a real gradual process -- gaining a fan here, a fan there, that sort of thing," he said. "There's never been this huge surge forward, other than when National Public Radio ran that piece on us back in 2001. But it feels good to go to a town now and see people singing along, letting go and getting down with us."