Know what I mean?

Know what I mean?

JJ Grey is from Jacksonville, Florida, and man he sure sounds like it: A drawl as thick as molasses, a courtly Southern attitude, and a sentimental streak wider than the Okefenokee Swamp. He sings the blues, and every offshoot you can think of, from swamp funk to country soul to Memphis R&B. And the guy’s got the voice to handle it all, a big, brash instrument with a bit of gravel at the bottom.

He and his band Mofro played the afternoon slot at the Field of Heaven under calm slate-covered skies. Grey was impressed with the setting (”You’ve got a beautiful country here, though I’ve only been in it for 36 hours”) and even more impressed with the crowd, whose size may have seemed bigger with all the space taken up by camping chairs. Still, no one slept during Grey’s set. It would have been impossible to keep your eyes closed at the end of “The Sweetest Thing,” a soul ballad that, in the Otis Redding style, kept boosting the intensity and then pulling back, only to boost it again a little more. In the end, Grey was shaking and testifying to his love’s “sweetness” while his band burned white hot behind him.

In the tradition of the great R&B revue entertainers, Grey likes to make a bond with his audience, even one that doesn’t speak his language. He opened up a song about his real home town in Florida by talking about the connections people form with places. He bore his soul, but knew that some methods are better than others. “I’ll let the harmonica tell the rest of the story.” In the song he complained about developers and gated communities. I didn’t get any of that from the harmonica, though it was real nice. He also sang one of those great, greasy funk songs about Southern cooking, and everybody in the band got a solo out of it. Tasty. Slowing things down, he played a song called “Slow, Hot and Sweaty,” about the weather in Florida. “Just like here,” he added. Like today? I’ll let the blue-gray sky answer that question.

photo: Kitamura