Nominated for Canada’s top blues award, Florida musician JJ Grey and Mofro will bring its backbone slipping, slow-grind funk to join the international array of musical talent at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival in August.
Singing with a passion and fervor directly influenced by the classic soul heroes, Grey has written and recorded five albums of original songs steeped in the rhythm and blues, rock, and country soul of his native backwoods home outside Jacksonville, Fla.
Grey comes from a long tradition of Southern storytellers and, in that spirit, he fills his songs with details that are at once vivid, personal and universal.
After a decade of hard touring, he still spends eight months of the year on the road, bringing his music to a loyal, ever-growing, worldwide fan base and he was nominated for the BB King International Artist of the Year Award 2011.
His songs chronicle “ambiguous truths and unambiguous urges,” delivered by Grey’s “winningly uncontrived vocals.”
Likewise, Billboard has praised Grey’s “world-beating blend of Southern rock, blues and Florida swamp soul.”
Over the course of his 20-year-plus career, Grey has shared stages with the likes of the Allman Brothers Band, the Black Crowes, Los Lobos, Jeff Beck, Ben Harper, Booker T, Lenny Kravitz, and Mavis Staples and has performed at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest and The Austin City Limits Festival, among others.
At this years Roots and Blues, JJ Grey and Mofro will join Jonny Lang, Justin Rutledge, Bob Wiseman, MonkeyJunk, Mighty Popo Trio, Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors, Ben Waters Trio, Harrison Kennedy, Afenginn, Street Drum Corps, The Gillian Boucher Band, Colin Grant Band, Rachel Davis, Buddy MacDonald and Ashlea Jonesmith.
The 19th annual Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival will take place Aug. 19 to 21 at the Salmon Arm Fall Fairgrounds.
Earlybird tickets are available for $99 until Feb. 25. Tickets can be purchased online at www.rootsandblues.ca, by phone at 250-833-4096 or at the office at 490 Fifth Ave SW.
