John “JJ” Grey, Jacksonville native and lead singer of southern soul-jam band JJ Grey & Mofro, is a songwriter. Writing on loss and life, he fuses mood and soul, translating emotion into song – sometimes without even knowing what he’s writing at the time. It is the essence of songwriting.

I implore you to spend 10 minutes listening to this live recording, beginning with Grey’s succinct and emotional explanation of the song’s origin, albeit with a slight chronological twist.

Below the video is a transcript of Grey’s words spoken while driving prior to the live performance.

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“I wasn’t sure what the lyrics were about, I had kind of just wrote it, it just kind of came and I didn’t know what it was about. I guess sometime later I kind of figured out it was about the last conversation my grandmother and grandfather had together. My grandmother told me the story of taking my grandfather to the hospital on this road and he died on the way there, and this song wound up being the story of the last words they had together.”

If your ears perk up with familiarity, the gem played over the opening scene in the Netflix original series "House of Cards’" season three finale.

Ignoring the depth his band possesses, including the tremendous use of a two-man horn section that imposes their will like a symphony, the performance oozes passion. Grey’s guitar solo at the 4:35 mark, and again at roughly the 6:30 mark, looks as if with every strum, he’s attempting to bring back his grandfather for one more second, one more minute or one more mile on his final drive with his wife.

Exiting at the video’s eight-minute mark, Grey can later be seen side stage, emotional, only to return at the song’s conclusion, embracing the fans' overwhelming reaction. The emotion is deeply ingrained in the song's creation and how it blossoms when performed with the same level of emotion that created it.

Famed singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, when asked if he constantly writes songs or writes only for specific projects, responded, "No, I’m writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I’m not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of the people who wrote songs quickly. But I’m not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.”