If you’d stand up JJ Grey and Amos Lee in a ring, they’d probably get out their guitars. Grey would lay it on Lee heavily with a few grooving riffs directly from the swamp, but Lee would counter with technical ability and hit all the right notes in the middle. Grey would have his budies from Mofro shouting at his side, fireing on the audience and providing simple yet effective sideblows, while Lee would be trusting his profi-league supporters, management and pr-department. Grey would call on Otis Redding and John Fogerty, not forgetting his upbringing with a high dosage of Led Zep blasting from the speakers of an old Dodge, whereas Lee has Bill Withers and James Taylor standing on his side to fire him on in their gentle manners. Actually, both are heavily influenced by the greatest of them all: Tony Joe White, whose spirit hangs over the ring in an ephemeral but never evading presence.

After all, Amos Lee and JJ Grey have more in common than you might suspect at first sight. They are two sides of a coin, to use an overused metaphor, so it might be fun to flip them against each other and see what sticks. The result is already visible to me: a draw. If you have a backyard party with a keg and need something to heat up the atmosphere, you’d better choose Mofro and their down-home southern fried groove. If afterwards you’d be retreating with the lady then you’d go for the more soul and sensitive side of Amos Lee, having him croon you into a good night. But let’s tackle them one by one.

Amos Lee is almost a jazz musician. He releases on Blue Note after all, where he was signed probably to fill the spot of a male Norah Jones – you remember that slightly chubby pianist and singer that looks so good on pictures and swept the world of mainstream, middleclass, mature music listening in a storm and sold millions of a nice collection of indescript songs to people who were once really interested in music when they were in college, but now want something that fits to the furniture of their living rooms. Well, it swept into my living room as well, and I put it all down in hindsight and after her two following records were getting more and more mediocre, but this is not about Norah Jones. And about the fact there are non of the dripping piano chords and softly blowed vocals with Amos Lee. It’s true Lee doesn’t scream or shout, but sings in a soft hue at times, too, but he is always right true to the bone.

I discovered Amos Lee through a mp3-blog and the song „seen it all before“ stuck in my head for weeks. I had him labeled for a black singer on a soul label, because this song has the basic but yet so effective and wonderful 3 chord chorus, an organ hanging back about a half 1/8 note and background vocals that seem to come straight from the really old productions (and what 99.9 % of all the music produced nowadays under the R’n’B-label is missing).

Then I stumbled over his first, self-titled album by coincidence. Eleven wonderful songs with a little jazz, a lot of funk and more soul and melody than a twelve ton grease truck is able to carry. And then some folk thrown into the mix. So all the most honest and real – whatever that means – song genres mixed into one. The production was clear and defined to the last point. As if you could hear every overtone and countermelody, and it is true, you can, it is the kind of crystal clearness that also appeals to close to the real sound and hifi fanatics. But also a production that finds place for strings if fitting. His lyrics are also fittingly refined and worked on to the marrow, he plays with levels and meanings. At the same time he keeps it loose and lets tones, harmonies and meanings ring out without pressing them. As if applying pressure would destroy the feeling, and it probably would with him.

Last year Lee released his second album and it is more straight forward, more country-oriented probably. Well, Norah Jones second album took the same step, but I find a lot more substance in a single song by Lee than on all three of Jones records (not that I would own any one, but of course I listened to them in the stores, ahm...). Lee comes off as more relaxed and more self-sufficient than before, but the soul still pours out of every note. Overall the songs are also more energetic and lively, and if that sounds like a contradiction then that is also the mystery of these songs. The title track „supply and demand“ is as if The Band had written a song together with Sam Cooke. But he also sings about a „Southern Girl“, finds cocaine on the „Night Train“ and finalizes his current look at life as a „Long Line of Pain“. I don’t think I will ever let go of either of these records. They are both favorites to late night whiskey drinking; alongside the whole oeuvre of Townes Van Zandt, probably because they both have that emotional melancholy in all of their songs, no matter how upbeat they are.

As an interesting aside: the first album has strict copy control software and is all about the legal side of music copying right on the backcover. The second album is not copy controlled anymore, but has a nice sentence on the inlay about how illegal copying and internet p-2-p distribution destroys the support artists and labels need to distribute the music. Shows that Blue Note is a daughter of EMI records and also a daughter of its times and the ways the music industry tries to cope with the new times. If they had spent more money in supporting and helping artists like Amos Lee from small stages to the big time, then they would not be stuck in the dismal rut they are now in – but that whole 60 million dollar contracts to Mariah Carey versus illegal downloading issue is not the point here. Suffice it to say that most of what the big labels are complaining about is home made. But then again, as Amos Lee says: „we are in the belly of the beast because we fed it“ and „freedom is seldom found / by beating someone to the ground“.

The same is true for the two Mofro albums available in Europe. The debut albums seems to be available as well, but I am neither Indiana Jones nor Bill Gates, you see. I stumbled over Mofro – JJ Grey added his name to the bandname only on the last record, when it evolved from a two piece to a full band – on a compilation from Glitterhouse records which had the song „That boy“. I listened to it and when it was done I listened to it again. The third time I listened to it, encouraged by the claps and screams of an audience mixed into the back of the song, I picked out my guitar and tried to play along, gave up and added only a lick here and there. My first idea was G. Love but he is boring and lame in comparison. Moreover I don’t think that white boy goodey time guitar lick splasher would get up and sing a song about domestic violence that gets fully on the side of the girl and give her strength.

„Lochloosa“ is the title of the first album on Glitterhouse and also the name of the town that JJ Grey comes from. Sense of place and remembering his own roots and the uprising is definitely very important to JJ Grey. The title track is a slow, soulful, burning crooner about - „homesick but that’s alright / Lochloosa is on my mind“ – his hometown, the wild nature, dangerous swamps and open fields and how they are endangered by golf courses, land development and business alike. There are introductory paragraphs about these issues on both records, about how certain elements of where you grew up welcome you with a hearty „you’re home“ everytime you you’ve been away for a while and then come home. On Lochloosa it is focused on the nature, on „country ghetto“ obviously more on the social side of living. „I was brought up to earn it and not waste it, to respect and protect womanhood and promote manhood, and to be thankful for what you go“ writes Grey on the second album and even if that sounds patronizing and reactionary to many urban postmodern ears, in connection with the music and the soul Grey puts into his music you’ll soon find that he is completeley earnest and honest about these things. About a way of confronting life with real principles, principles that come from fighting to be able to sustain yourself over generations on a day to day basis.

Mofro also play with the cliches included in their story, calling themselves „Dirtfloorcracker“, but by their example taking out all the ugliness and filth, making it clear that „country“ and „white trash“ are different things. There is the same amount of trash amongst rich city people and poor country people. But in the country people live closer to the earth than eco-fans in big cities will ever know. Apparently Grey lives in a trailer 40 miles out of Jacksonville, Florida, amidst the swamp, the alligators, the snakes and country folk living way below the poverty line.

When Grey sings every fibre in his body seems to vibrate with his sentiments. From the most soulful crooning supported with steel guitar licks and harmonica to funky grooves that would burn down any backyard party or street fair music, these two to four people can really lay it on. Of course, due to his starting place Grey is closer to the original homo swampus, Tony Joe White, and Lochloosa is probably the only proper inheritant to „Rainy night in Georgia“ there ever was, but they can stretch it to both sides, also cranking up the electric guitars and beating the drums heavy. But they will never lose their groove. And whatever they throw into the mix – rumbling bass lines, organ, laptop steel, harmonica, drums – they will never play a note too much. A dosage of southern rock mixed with folk and blues and all the blood that drenched the Southern earth throughout history.

„Country Ghetto“ is heavier from the start, with its distorted guitar lick over a heavy bass and the lines „there is a war going on“ that has organ, background vocals and even horns. The whole record seems bigger, more blown up but still as bound to the ground as the best of Joe Tex. There are even strings to be heard on some of the slower songs. The title song is a big nod to Tony Joe White, but the drumming might also lead you back to The Meters or the best of the Stax / Tamla catalogue. The absolute highpoint to me is the song „on palestine“ with its heartdrenching harmony and rising dynamic arrangement, which is more like the echo of guitars, and at the end of that song a big humming choir meets a stripped guitar solo over reduced arrangements. That’s bliss, just like the second to last song „The sun is shining down“ which is as good as „At the dark end of the street easily“. Whatever the production did on this record, and they do a lot of stuff, they never overdid it. They hit right on the spot where it is exactly enough. The next album might be reduced to guitar / harmonica / drums again and recorded outside of Grey’s trailer with the mosquitos buzzing in the background and animals screaming in the night. After all it is obvious that whatever has been put into these songs – and it is mainly the horn section and background choirs – the songs all come from a guitar lick with a steady, hitting drum groove.

What’s most important is, that even though you can hear on all sides that there is no real and honest music anymore, it still can be found. Music that vibrates with live and energy, tells of real live and real problems, that makes people dance without fantasizing about the imagined glitter life of „in da club“, that makes people fall in love without the unreachable dreams of endless richess. And it is there on major labels as well as on small independents. You can find it in the jazz club and in the backyard. These two artists alone provide a starting place to search into a generous and impressive back catalogue of artists that mixed all kinds of styles. They don’t care about black music or white music, about the distinctions between folk, blues, soul or rock, but overlap the boundaries and fuse all the good things. Amos Lee and JJ Grey share a common sentiment of writing songs that move people to their hearts, songs drenched with soul and love. And songs they can play on any busstation or streetcorner by just picking their guitars and starting to play.