As easy as Grey’s music is to take in, it is difficult to pin down. It’s notretro but it’s not modern, either. Much like their Stax/Muscle Shoalsforefathers, Mofro lays down a thick groove blending Hammond organ, FenderRhodes piano, horns and harmonica. And like Otis Redding, Grey is a master of tensionand release, building a song and stretching it out until it is all but snappedand then doubling back for more frenzy.
It helps tohave songs as strong as set opener “Country Ghetto,” where the audience sungalong on cue as the eight-piece band waded into the evening’s wall of swamp.Grey was certainly preaching to the converted, playing for an audience of aginghipsters and bra-less jam band chicks enjoying an in-door preview of festivalseason, but his testifying and Baptist wailing worked the crowd into aparticularly excited frenzy, giving the show the energy of a frat-house kegger.
Grey’s strengthis storytelling, and his songs are ripe with regional references to fireflies,cornbread and orange blossoms. His tangible details and the charged band createan authentic Southern vibe. The organ sounds like the keys are stuck withmolasses, while the two-piece horn section punch, swell and wail as Grey’swah-wah pedal gets a well-greased bluesy workout. Yet the key to the band maywell be drummer Anthony Cole, who uses a stripped-down kit (no rack or floortoms) as he varies the rhythms to create space for the other sevenplayers.
There are thosewho would have you believe that there is no place left for this kind of realmusic, a funky hybrid of rock ’n’ soul, but any band that can pack a clubduring Milwaukee’s all-too-short summer is evidence otherwise. At one pointGrey noted this was really the first full gig this lineup had played together.Let’s hope they make it back to town when they reach their full potential.
