JJ Grey

Saturday, October 13, 2018 at 8PM at Landmark on Main Street in Port Washington, NY

From the days of playing greasy local juke joints to headlining major festivals, JJ Greyremains an unfettered, blissful performer, singing with a blue-collared spirit over the bone-deep grooves of his compositions. His presence before an audience is something startling and immediate, at times a funk rave-up, other times a sort of mass-absolution for the mortal weaknesses that make him and his audience human. When you see JJ Grey live -- and you truly, absolutely must -- the man is fearless.

Onstage, Grey delivers his songs with compassion and a relentless honesty, but perhaps not until Ol' Glory has a studio record captured the fierceness and intimacy that defines a Grey live performance. "I wanted that crucial lived-in feel," Grey says of Ol' Glory, and here he hits his mark. On the new album, Grey and his Mofro lineup offer grace and groove in equal measure, with an easygoing quality to the production that makes those beautiful muscular drum-breaks sound as though the band has set up in your living room.

When he isn't touring, Grey exerts his prodigious energies on the family land, a former chicken-farm that was run by his maternal grandmother and grandfather. The farm boasts a recording studio, a warehouse that doubles as Grey's gym, an open-air barn, and of course those 50-odd pecan trees that occasionally require Grey to go airborne with his sprayer.

For devoted listeners, there is something fitting, even affirmative in Grey's commitment to the land of his north Florida home. The farms and eddying swamps of his youth are as much a part of Grey's music as the Louisiana swamp-blues tradition, or the singer's collection of old Stax records.

This just in: Special guest Clarence Bucaro will open our show. His latest release is Passionate Kind.