WANT TO GO?

"Mountain Stage"

With Jenny and Johnny, JJ Grey, Jason D. Williams, The Alternate Routes and Dwight Twilley

WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Culture Center Theater

TICKETS: Advance $14, at the door $20.

INFO: www.mountainstage.org or 800-594-TIXX

"I'd say I had to lose my voice to find it," he said.

Grey, who appears Sunday on "Mountain Stage," began singing when he was just a kid growing up in a little town outside of Jacksonville, Fla.

The singer has a Southern soul sound that calls back to era of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, but his inspiration wasn't a singer. It was Rich Little, the comedian and impressionist, "the man of a thousand voices."

"I kind of used to imitate voices as I was singing as a kid," he said. "I tried to sound like as many people as I could. I wasn't playing in a club or anything. I was just a little kid."

Imitating the vocal styles of different singers, however, did lead him to singing in bars and playing with a variety of bands through his teens. He sang in Top 40 cover bands in clubs he was too young to be anywhere in except on the stage.

Grey imitated others because he was trying to find his own voice. He stretched his vocal chords, picked up little things here and taught himself to be a performer. Not everything, Grey says, was to his liking.

"I wasn't crazy about everything I sang," he said. "Like Steve Perry or The Outfield. I love Steve Perry, but I don't want to sing like him. He sings high as hell and belts it out there, and that was hard." He laughed. "I gave up on it about the time I heard Muddy Waters or Tom Jones."

Eventually, all the imitating mixed together and Grey found his voice.

"I just quit looking," he said. "I quit looking and I quit thinking about it. I just opened my mouth and sang."

And when he began singing in his own voice, doing his own songs, that, he says, is when the rubber finally gripped the road.

For Grey, the sound of his voice and the music he makes comes somewhere deeper than just his vocal chords or the air in his lungs. Singing is spiritual, and the more he thinks about the process and tries to pick it apart, the worse he thinks he sounds.

When he's at his best, he says it's like floating in a deep pool.

"But when you start thinking about singing, that pool, which seemed so deep, gets as shallow as a little kiddie pool."

It's all about being in the moment.

"The other night, Shemekia Copeland came to the show," he said. "We got to talking about singing and damage control."

Copeland is the daughter of blues guitarist/singer Johnny Copeland and is a rising blues artist in her own right. Copeland, who has performed several times on "Mountain Stage" and headlined 2008's Blues, Brews and BBQ, has a powerful voice.

The two compared notes.

"And I was saying to her: When you let go, when you're not thinking about it, you can't hurt your vocal chords."

Grey said, "It's like a baby. A baby doesn't get polyps. They don't yell so much that they need surgery. They just cry."

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5195.