It’s 6:30 p.m in the North Florida wood, and JJ Grey is sitting on the second front porch of his perpetually under-construction Amelia Island home. A phone connection doesn’t much lend itself to being able to hear the hum of the insects around him or the muffled breeze of air coming off of the sea somewhere in the distance, but the 50-year-old is happy to set the scene for anyone who hasn’t visited the Sea Islands chain of barrier islands on the Sunshine State’s Atlantic coast.
“I’m looking at the marshes, wind is blowing, and I know there’s a swell coming in a couple days,” Grey says. He’s not drinking his usual (a Stag from Trinidad and Tobago’s Carib Brewery) but has a not-so-sweet cherry-lime drink from the health food store in his hand instead. “Something about the salt air out here.”
Thing is, Grey — who fronts long-running, tough-to-pigeonhole, swamp rock and roll outfit Mofro — isn’t talking about the inspiration for a new song. He’s actually going on about stainless steel pipes in his pumphouse and the work he’s been tirelessly putting into the residence, which Grey and his family haven’t lived in since Hurricane Matthew partially submerged it in 2016.
“I don’t care if we sleep in sleeping bags on the damn floor, I don’t care, I just gotta get this thing, I gotta keep it moving,” he says. It’s all Grey can think about, and it’s consumed his days in between shows. His pumphouse is fully decked out, and Grey spent five minutes discussing the maze of tanks and valves he was working on before we called.
“I just went crazy going Q Branch, James Bond-style. Probably way beyond overkill, but it is what it is.”
Fans clamoring for a follow-up to Mofro’s 2015 album, Ol’ Glory, are going to have to just deal with it, too. Grey hasn’t been to St. Augustine’s Retrophonics Recording Studios — where Mofro has teamed up with producer Jim DeVito to record every one of its albums dating back to a 2001 debut, Blackwater — since late last spring, but that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been thinking about songs.
“That’s the last time I was working on a new record other than the fact that I keep putting down song ideas, and I probably got 60-plus now,” Grey says. Part of the rehab on his house, he concedes, will eventually involve moving a home studio from his family farm 50 miles away to Amelia Island. “The Egg Room,” named as such since it sits where his hens used to lay, is a mere 12-and-a-half-foot box that’s barely large enough for the recording equipment racks and drum kit.
“You just about can’t squeeze anybody else in, but the new studio here I’ve already had the plans drawn up for. It won’t be hard to build, nothing like doing this house. It’s 24-by-24, the main room, and there’s actually a control room that’ll be 12-by-24, so I can set everything up, come over here and jam, get everything right,” Grey says.
“And when I get everything right enough, I can go down to Jimmy’s and get some stuff down on tape there at Retrophonics.”
Grey is going to need the room, too. After utilizing some of roots-rock's best players over the course of recording and touring behind Mofro’s seven albums, Grey has assembled a band that includes drummer Craig Barnett (who played on Mofro’s breakout sophomore release, Lochloosa), horn player Dennis Marion, and bassist Todd Smallie, who has spent time with both Derek Trucks and Tedeschi-Trucks Band. Everyone in the band lives nearby, so getting Mofro together isn’t as cumbersome as it's been in the past; the new chemistry will be on display on Sunday when Mofro headlines the final night of the 39th annual Clearwater Jazz Holiday.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen until we get there. It’s old material, but it’s new to us — some of it we haven’t done in years, so we’ve been throwing stuff in the set lately, like ‘Whitehouse,’ ‘Write A Letter’ and ‘Somebody Else.” Old new tunes, you know?,” Grey says.
“It feels like one soundcheck that we play that night. Like we’ve been playing it for years, man. I love it. It’s so relaxed and so easy.”
Which leads us back to this house that he’s gonna have to take a break from to join fans in Clearwater.
“I don’t know if everybody is like this or not, but I’m the type of person where, if I have too many things that I can’t complete over too long of a period of time, it can demotivate me,” Grey explains as we talk about hurricanes and the kind of havoc they can wreak on families. He was playing a gig in Paris when Matthew hit, and he decided to keep his family at home to ride out Irma.
“I will not do that again. We will fly out and go somewhere else, inland or something. It was just nerve-wracking with the wind never letting up, you know, it starts to get to you. And when the tail came across, it was strong,” Grey says, adding that it was nothing compared to what the people in the Keys or Cuba got. Could a storm ever be devastating enough to make Grey pack up and leave Florida altogether?
“Nah, I love it. It was enough to make me say, ‘The hell with that. When it’s done, we’ll come home, fix it, clean everything up and move on,’” Gray says. “But I ain’t never leaving here.”
And he’s probably never going to stop singing about Florida either, but for now fans are going to have it wait. JJ Grey has always had a lot to say. Just be patient with him, Mofro.
Clearwater Jazz Holiday w/Sheila E./Morris Day and the Time/The Doobie Brothers/JJ Grey and Mofro/Devil Makes Three/more. Thurs.-Sun. October 18-21. $20 & up. Coachman Park, 301 Drew St., Clearwater. More info: clearwaterjazz.com. (Read full Q&A below.)
…I didn't have a pump house. Everything was in this little rotten garage building. Long story short, I bumped everything over. On the draw side I pumped an inch and a quarter. I just wanted plenty of water for the house. I didn't want no place where it got bottlenecked. I wanted the full one-inch and a quarter, so I had to kinda customize the big tank, the aeretor, so I spent all day doing that. I put a bunch of stainless steel valves out there because it's salt air out here. And, uh, I just made it do all kinds of things. I can just flip a valve and jump from the irrigation pump, let it run the house if I had to. If I had to flip off the one pump, then I could. I just went crazy going Q-branch, James Bond style on this pump house. Probably way beyond overkill, but it is what it is.
I don't know, you got pretty beat up by Matthew, and the county wanted you to get the house up off the ground, so you might as well get it all covered now.
And it's up. It's up five-and-a-half feet, and my pump house is the same thing. It's blocked up in the air. All my pumps are on stands on top of the tanks. It would take… I don't even want to talk about what it would take…
Yeah, yeah, let's not go there. Are you at the point where you're done now, drinking a Stag from Carib Brewery?
Yeah, yeah. I just had, I can't remember the name of it. You get it at the health food store. It's not as sweet, cherry-lime drink. I'm up on the second front porch of the house, looking at the marshes, the winds blowing, I know there's a swell coming in a couple days, so I am gonna get up for that, too.
Yeah. You're gonna get to surf. Have you made any time to visit Retrophonics lately, or are you just demo-ing the songs right now?
I haven't done anything with music. I went down to Jimmie's, Retrophonics, last year, in the spring or early summer — that's the last time I was working on a new record other than the fact that I keep putting down song ideas, and I probably got 60 plus now, I've never been in this position before. But, I can't, I don't know why, but all I can think about is getting this house finished, so I can just move into it. I don't care if we sleep in sleeping bags on the damn floor, I don't care, I just gotta get this thing, I gotta keep it moving.
It's not one of those things — you’ve talked about the smaller person in our heads who can drive us to do some unsavory things. Nothing to do with that?
Nah, for me. It's kind of all part of it in a way, in the sense that. I had somebody tell me one time that my philosophy was like, some kind of Kung-Fu, or something…
Zen?
Zen. Like Qigong-King. It was chopping wood, carrying water. So whatever you, whatever I'm doing, I just try to relax and literally enjoy even doing this house. And I actually missed, I don't miss it, honestly. All of this time I've been touring, I come home, and I work on things, but usually it's things I can complete before I leave. I don't know if everybody is like this or not, but I'm the type of person where if I have too many things that I can't complete over too long of a period of time, it can demotivate me. That was the bad news. But the good news is this house beat me into shape a long time ago. I am relaxingly pushing this thing forward. I don't call my contractor, scream and cuss, and he's overseeing 75-percent of the work, really he's overseeing all of it making sure that I'm not messing up on the stuff that I'm doing or haven't done. So far, so good.
I'm just sticking to my focus to doing this, and eventually I'm gonna slow down, and I'm gonna say, "We'll the next thing I'm gonna do is built a studio out here." Move the studio from out there on the farm because it's so small there. I can't even get the whole band in there to rehearse. It's one about 12-and-a-half by 12-and-a-half feet inside. By the time you have a desk in there with all the recording equipment, and all the racks plus the drum kit, you just about can't squeeze anybody else in, but the new studio here, I've already had the plans drawn up for. It won't be hard to build — nothing like doing this house. It's 24-by-24, the main room, and there's actually a control room that'll be 12-by-24, so I can set everything up, come over here and jam, get everything right, and when I get everything right enough, I can go down to Jimmie's and get some stuff down on tape there at Retrophonics.
And do you know what you're going to call the studio when you get it built?
I don't know. The one I got now is called The Egg Room, but that's because it literally was the egg room, so… I don't know. That's a good question. I haven't even thought about that one yet.
Right on. You mentioned moving the studio into a bigger one. Did you have that motivation before you had this lineup with Dennis and Craig and Todd, I mean you seem hyped up on it. The guys are close by. The energy is totally different now, not to take away from anybody else you played with obviously.
Nah, nah, nah. But you know, Craig played on Lochloosa with me back in the day. He toured with me on the way back when in 2004, I think it was. Yeah man, I am gonna tell you right now, last night I went to Pete (?) our guitar player, his surprise birthday party at the Bluejay listening room, and I got up and made a fool out of myself on the keyboard. Everybody was there, well Craig couldn't make it, but everybody was there clownin' around, and some of our friends from New York was there. Some of the cats hanging out down on vacation, most of these cats came out of UNF, Pete, the guitar player, he's a beast. He broke his little finger.
At the party?
No, on tour.
Oh.
Throwing a football on a day off, but he finished out the tour with a broke little finger on his fretting hand, and I was like, "Dang dude. He could probably break everything except his thumb and his index finger and probably still play 10-times better than me." So I'm gonna start getting lessons from him — he's such a badass. But it's so relaxed and so easy. And the other guys were easy, too, but they were always so far apart, and in all honesty, rightfully so, they all have a lot of irons in a lot of fires to where it's hard to make a full commitment to what's going on at any given point because they got their own stuff going on, and I'm pushing for them to, they need to put out their own records again and that kind of stuff.
That was just the little bit. The big thing was nobody lived in the same town. Another factor is these guys are all used to playing a billion different kinds of gigs, so they can, man, they can learn material so quick — it's pretty insane. So it makes it easy, you know. It's a thrill and so much fun to play with them.
Yeah, it's always tough when the first day you kind of meet is the first day before tour, to practice and stuff like that. Earlier, you kind of hit on it, and I don't really want to talk about what your house can withstand, but can you talk about what it feels like — I know you're a Florida lifer — to get beat up by a hurricane like Matthew, and does it ever create thoughts about you wanting to leave, or does it just make you want to find a new extra layer of appreciation for mother nature.
Nah, I love it. I'm not leaving, not going anywhere. I was actually in Paris, in France, I was playing Paris, I think, when Matthew hit here. My wife and them had all split and gone inland, but Irma, last year, we stayed back and stayed in the cabin that we're in now, and I will not do that again. We will fly out and go somewhere else, inland or something. That was, oof, but I ain't never leaving here.
Does it make you feel bad as a father or a husband to have them there in the danger.
Yeah, that bothered me a little bit, but I got a lot of family. With Irma it wasn't that big of a deal. It was just nerve wracking with the wind never letting up, you know, it starts to get to you. And when the tail came across, it was strong. But that was nothing compared to what the people in the Keys or Cuba got, you know? It was enough to make me say, "The hell with that." When it's done, we'll come home, fix it, clean everything up and move on. It'd have to be, barely a Category 1, or something like that, I won't leave, but if it's anything stronger than that, then I'm gonna split. But I ain't ever leaving here. Hurricanes are a fact of life. These ain't the first two I've dealt with.
I like when you talk about your family, you talk about your kids and you talk about the way your daughter changed your perspective on things, obviously, and I know you got many songs from that. I know you weren't allowed to listen to listen to jook music when you were a kid. What kinds of things aren't JJ Grey's kids allowed to do? I know dad didn't cuss in front of you.
He did eventually. I try not to do that in front of my daughter. Very little TV, and almost no iPad and all that kind of stuff — very little of that. She got a time limit on the weekend when she can do that kind of stuff. They look at movies and stuff, my wife will buy movies, but mostly old ones. Swiss Family Robinson, stuff like that. Stuff we would consider classics, not the retard-building, clone-making nonsense that's on TV now. That's like, "What the hell is this?" It's grotesquely absurd. Sarcasm, especially dark sarcasm, it's addictive, and it gets darker and darker and darker. I told her about that. Mildly dark sarcasm, and the whole show is built like that. Simpsons or the Family Guy you tune in eight seasons later, and it's so ridiculously dark, so I'm like, "I'm not watching this shit, man." It's because our sarcasm has to out-sarcasm itself, over and over again. They're not the only people guilty of it — I've been guilty of it. If you say it like that long enough, talk like that long enough it becomes a mantra. You can start to fill your life up with stuff like that, so I'm not forcing her to do anything other than the fact that there's a limit to how much of it. Gotta get her solid enough on her own two feet to where she can make choices about stuff like that herself.
Yeah, I like that story you told about Toots from the Maytals, how he changed your lyric because he was like, "I'm not a dead man."
Yeah, that's right.
And what about your son? Last time I talked to you, you did a solo set in Clearwater, and we talked about your older son, getting into sports and stuff like that — how'd be doing?
He's doing great. He's training people, and he's working with a friend of mine on that portal thing to upload workouts and stuff like that, and get people using that. He's a health dude, and he's in really good shape. I ain't seen him since I've been home. I've been here every day. It's lie 50 miles from here to the farm. He's staying out there, but we're probably gonna hook up this weekend and really catch up — see all what's got going on. I haven't checked with him in a little bit.
And I know you're not playing Jannus Live, which is one of your favorite venues in the country.
I love it.
You're playing Clearwater Jazz Holiday when you come through. Festival sets. When you headline you approach sets as if they’re one long song, and normally go with what’s clicking. Any surprises for Clearwater Jazz Holiday? I feel like you have a deep connection with the Tampa Bay area. Skipper's, Vinyl Fever…
For sure, 100-percent. I don't know what's gonna happen until we get there because these guys with, I say "new," but it's old material, but it's new to us — some of it we haven't done in years, so we've been throwing stuff in the set lately, like "White House" and "Gonna Writer A Letter," "Somebody Else." Old new tunes, you know? It feels like one soundcheck that we play that night, and it's like these guys make it so easy. Like we've been playing it for years, man. I love it.
I know you get emotional sometimes on some songs, and you save those for the end just cause you don't feel like breaking down in the middle of the set, people wondering if you're OK.
Yeah.
Does that still happen to you with those songs? What's it still feel like for you? It's kind of a gift to still be in touch with that every night. I think for a while you weren't able to get in that point.
Yeah, most of the time it's there — 99.9-percent of the time it's there. Has been for a while now. I don't know what it is. It's that chord progression.
Yeah, the minor-6.
It just does something. And then the lyrics, they just hit that for me, and it's like, "Whoa." It still happens. Every night it affects me. Some nights heavier than others, you know. So much of that has to do with how well you hear everything, but I hear everything pretty damn good these days with the in-ears, and the crew we got, and everything — that's what sets the whole thing up.
Right now, and I look forward to talking to you again one day, about new music, and I'm glad that you're home and able to work on your new house. Thanks for being a great ambassador for Florida. Some people trash it, but you represent all over the world.
Cool man, thanks brother. I'm just enjoying it. So many people talk trash, but they would live here if they could.
I know, right? They all would. Have a great night.
Alright, brother. You, too.
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This article appears in Oct 11-18, 2018.