MOFRO | BLACKWATER REVIEW

We have come to expect the best from producer Dan Prothero and local Fog City Records. Dan, whose mission seems to be to produce the FIRST album of many a great band, has graced our ears with the primary projects of Galactic, Robert Walter's 20th Congress, and Papa Mali. Now he has gone great lengths (and distances) to record North Florida's MOFRO and it's clear that Dan has not lost his touch for either spotting talent, or bringing out the best they have to offer. What's interesting is that as Dan's production run has progressed, he has gone from DJ-oriented (breakbeat records with Bernard Purdie and Mike Clark for Ubiquity records) to recording music that is designed for pure listening. Also interesting is the "eery" sound that seeps like a "Fog" through the Fog City catalogue, as if the spectre of Daniel Lanois haunts Prothero and his recordings (that's a major compliment!).

Though billed as "funk" MOFRO is not funk the way I see it, but rather the kind of inspired southern soul/blues we have come to expect from artists like Bonnie Raitt, John Mooney, Lee Michaels, Little Feat, Curtis Mayfield, Wet Willie, Blind Melon, and Gregg Allman. While everyone seems to be using the term "soul" loosely to describe soulless creations like "Soul2Soul, Destiny's Child etc, Soul Asylum..." true soul is a precious and fleeting quality in music, and vocalist JJ Grey sings as if he has a soulmine in his backyard. Like most great soul, he tells stories about the people he knows and the place he lives.

This comes through most evocatively on his homeland missive "Florida" where Grey laments "Now skyskrapers and superhighways are carved through the heart of Florida. Building subdivisions while the swamps are drained making room for people and amusement parks. It's like watchin someone you love die slow, yeah killin her one piece at a time. I know some fools who think I should let go, but they've never seen Florida through my eyes..."

The music that frames his vivid vocal picture is greasy backwater funk, full of acoustic slide guitars, dobros, harmonicas, brushed drums, and hammond organs for texture. Like Galactic, Robert Walter, and Papa Mali, the acoustic instruments are effected to give them an eery, haunting effect. In fact, Blackwater is so moody and ambient that I could see it becoming a choice "Coming Down" selection for the jamband scene, much the same way that "Air" dominates raver afterparties. In classic Shakespearean form, the album intersperses its somber tragedy with downhome comedy. For instance, "Ho Cake" is rocker that extolls the virtues of Southern cooking (any song about ham hocks gets the big thumbs up from me), while "Free" is a midtempo groover. Perhaps the best moment of the whole album is the breakbeat-backed "Cracka Break" which features Grey telling a short story about some stupid criminals who get busted in a heist so ill-founded that "the judge had to instruct the jury not to laugh during the trial..." Like genuine soul-food cooking, the ingredients are simple but you can't fake the flavor, and it's flavor like this that make MOFRO a tasty dish.

Overall Blackwater reminds me a great deal of one of Fog City's previous records Papa Mali's "Thunder Chicken" in mood, ambience, and quality. It's an album that gets significantly better as it proceeds and you get used to it, like muggy hot weather. Though openers like "Blackwater," "Ho Cake" and "Air" are quality tunes by any standard, the later missives like "Free," "True Love & Freedom," and "Brighter Days" truly hook you into the MOFRO world. These are songs that improve with every listen, and deserve both attention from hardcore blues/soul/rock fans, and mainstream radio stations. By the end of the album, you can see, hear, and smell the deep south back country that they love so much. It's country that produced some of this nations' rock and soul, including the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Widespread Panic. If MOFRO can keep producing music with the same integrity, grit, and artistry displayed on their first release, we may have to add a new name to that pantheon.