Dare Records
2004
Lochloosa
About This Album
Three years after their celebrated debut, Blackwater, north central Florida's Mofro return with another offering of steamy, greasy "front-porch soul" produced by Dan Prothero. Lochloosa refers to Lake Lochloosa, on the outskirts of Jacksonville, FL, the earthly and archetypal home to Mofro's John "JJ" Grey and Daryl Hance. A raw meld of swampy funk, back-to-basics rock, and Southern soul bleeds from these grooves, as it did on Blackwater. Lochloosa is a hand-carved example of the kind of music that happens after midnight when all the civilians have gone home. Things get blurry, intimate, less self-conscious, sexual, maybe even a little dangerous. A practical contrast would be from Florida's own terrain: this set feels more like Tony Joe White than it does Lynyrd Skynyrd. Oh yeah, that is a good thing. The unabashedly masculine, heartfelt concern for the terrain and a way of life that comes from it is presented with wiry, tough, sinewy songs that never stoop to whining or cheap, sloganeering ploys. Here are songs that howl with a down-home recklessness that balances rough-and-tumble celebratory hedonism with folksy backwoods spirituality.

On the title track, Mike Sharpio's Fender Rhodes slips the tune out unobtrusively with a laid-back soul groove that is widened by Hance's slide guitar and a lonely whispering harmonica courtesy of Grey.
Track List (try tracks 3,5,8,10,11 and 13)

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