With his first release in nine years, JJ Grey has created a breathtaking collection of deeply moving, masterfully written, funkified rock and front porch Southern soul music. It’s an aggressively groove-driven record, fueled by JJ’s gritty vocals and biting guitar. “A deeply-rooted blend of southern-fried rock and swamp funk…richly evocative lyrics…plainspoken, blue-collar American music.”
-NPR
Renowned singer, songwriter, and artist JJ Grey will celebrate the February 23 release of his highly anticipated new Alligator Records album, Olustee, with a live JJ Grey & Mofro performance at The Riviera Theatre in Chicago on Friday, March 22, 2024. On Olustee (Grey’s first self-produced album and his first release in nine years), the North Florida-born and bred Grey sings his personal stories with universal themes of redemption, rebirth, hard luck, and inner peace. With his music, Grey also celebrates good times with lifelong friends, oftentimes mixing the carnal with the cerebral in the very same song. Fueled by his vividly detailed, timeless originals spun from his own life and experiences in the Northern Florida swampland, Grey’s gritty baritone drips with honest passion and testifies with a preacher’s foot-pounding fervor.
According to Grey, “The best songs I’ve ever written, I never wrote. They wrote themselves. The best show I ever played, played itself and had little to do with me or talent. To me, those things come from the power of an honest moment, and I guess I’m trying to live in that power and not force life to cough up what I want.”
