Raw And Real: A Candid Conversation with Jelly Roll

Buzz Knight:

I am Buzz Knight, the host of the Takin’ A Walk podcast, Music History on Foot. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today, we have an incredible treat, an artist who is one of the fastest rising figures in the music business, and particularly in the country music business. His music does span rap, rock. He’s broken country. Number one hits like Son of a Sinner, Even Angels Cry. The song called Save Me, which I heard in Jon Loba, the president of BMG’s office as we were recording a Takin’ A Walk episode with him. And I was completely blown away by that song, and I still am to this day. Please welcome to Talkin’ A Walk, Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll, it’s so great to have you on Talkin’ A Walk here. You started 2022 playing 800 seats, I believe it was in Buffalo, New York, and you ended up playing 20,000 seat sellout at your hometown in Nashville. What was the first experience like and what was the Nashville experience as well?

Jelly Roll:

The first experience, the funny part of that story, I don’t get to tell nobody is because I haven’t got the detail, it is. I actually missed the Buffalo show. I had a flight get canceled because of a snowstorm in Buffalo, and I ended up having to just skip Buffalo and go to Boston the next day, which was the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts. So it was just funny that my first booking of the year was in a club. And then of course, even the second show, you’ve probably been to the Palladium. I know you came from the Boston market. So it’s what? 2,000 cap club or whatever. And to end it in a completely sold out arena at home was just a testament of the year. I was having to tell Jon Loba, the president of our Broken Bow Records and the label that signed me, the guy that gave me my chance.

Of course there were some mishaps with all of the partners and media, and we’re shooting a documentary and filming this big show. And Loba upset, but he was like, “Man, it’s just really hard to find you that afternoon.” I said, “You got to remember, this is so new to us.” I was like, we had to grow into the arenas in 10 months flat. It was hard. I went into the pandemic in a two Sprinter van tour. Right? And that was a luxury by then because I took an extra Sprinter van for me and the family, and I sent the band and the other Sprinter. So I come out of the pandemic straight into a two bus tour and ended in a six bus, seven truck tour. You know what I’m saying?

And all these dudes around you are just trying to tell you what’s going on and you’re so confused. You’re just trying to trust them. You know what I’m saying? And you’re just like, “Are you sure this is the right decision to make?” We had a whole nother bus of people. They was like, “Somebody’s got to run the lights?” I was like, “God, why are we bringing lights?” “Because you’re playing a 12,000 cap club, an arena in Michigan tonight. You got to have real production.” I’d never took production out until we were doing it at the small arena level.

Buzz Knight:

How does Jon Loba make it look so easy, is my question.

Jelly Roll:

Oh, listen, Loba acts like nothing. He only seems excited. He never seems stressed. He’s always forward thing. I don’t know if he goes home and just melts into a ball of putty or something, but he’s just unbelievable, man.

Buzz Knight:

He did this podcast and I have to tell you, his vision and his leadership come shining through in that episode, Jelly.

Jelly Roll:

No, I got to check it out because I see it every time I talk to him. And I’m so blessed to have a label partner that I talked to multiple times a week. I mean him, Carson, Adrian Michaels, the entire radio team over there. I mean, I talked to these people obsessively. I mean, I probably talked to somebody in that office every day twice.

Buzz Knight:

You share some similar life paths as the great Johnny Cash, prison time, drug challenges, personal trials. What does his music mean to you?

Jelly Roll:

Oh, man. Johnny was one of the, or the whole outlaw movement, not limited to Johnny, but that whole era was still probably my favorite era in American music history. And I say American music history, not just country music history, because Nashville was on fire. Bob Dylan came down here and wrote, what was the Nashville Skyline record. Came down here and did the Johnny Cash Show. I mean, Johnny Cash had transcended country music at a time into a whole different culture and put a whole different look. And he taught me a lot, no pun intended, about how to walk the line, because Johnny knew how to walk that line. And I don’t even mean just in his relationship, I meant in the business. Right?

He stood by his outlaw-ness. He stood a man of character, a man of integrity, morals, what he believed. He wasn’t afraid to tell you to fuck off, but equally did 52 shows of the Johnny Cash Show, almost a syndicated television show, big hit. The infamous documentary you’ve probably seen about him and Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick & The Man in Black. I mean, he had some wild political shit happening in the background too, just quiet as cats. And Johnny Cash was the ultimate, to me, of that era. The guy that I aspired to be.

Me and my buddy, Ryan Upchurch, Struggle Jennings and Adam Calhoun were talking resent. And Ryan Up Church is a multi-genre artist as well, but does it independently and has no aspiration to partner with a label. I am anti the system as far as the establishment. Meaning I think artists should own art, and I’m pressing that big in these rooms, is that artists should own art. There’s no reason these artists shouldn’t own a piece of their masters. Ryan’s just like, “I’m never playing ball with those guys.” And I said, “Well, that’s what makes this so cool about all four of us is because that was Johnny, Waylon, Willie, Chris, Jesse. Right?

If you think about it, Johnny played the game. Johnny Cash Show, big late night TV appearances, stood next to president. Man, Waylon Jennings didn’t give a shit about none of that dude. He showed up every now and then to a late night TV show, and that’s about it. You know what I’m saying?

Buzz Knight:

Yeah.

Jelly Roll:

It’s like, so it’s really cool to see that even in this generation that outlaw blossoms different ways just like it did back then.

Buzz Knight:

I love your appreciation for the historical figures in the music that’s been around you.

Jelly Roll:

Yeah, well, it’s bound to repeat itself. So I just wanted to check and see where I might fit into the future landscape. And I started getting obsessed with these eras, and I mimicked my entire songwriting style from that 1967 to ’76 era. Everything from Seeger to Dylan to Cash to Willie to Waylon, that whole James Taylor, Jim Croce. These are the guys that made me want to write songs.

Buzz Knight:

John Prine, I would imagine is in there.

Jelly Roll:

Oh, absolutely.

Buzz Knight:

Do you remember the first time that you rapped something?

Jelly Roll:

Oh, absolutely. Dude, I went downstairs. My mother struggled with mental health and addiction stuff. Right? And she’d come to the kitchen and the whole house would come and we’d listen to music. And when I realized that music was affecting her addiction. I was like, oh, this makes mom happy. I should go write music. So I went upstairs and I wrote a rap because hip hop was super influential in our culture. And I went downstairs with my little sheet of paper and she had all of her friends at the kitchen table. I called them a Golden Girls, like six or seven of them. They’d all come to the kitchen table together and they’d just chain smoke cigarettes. And I came down and she turned the record off and said, “What you got?” And I said, “Listen to this.” And I held my little sheet of paper up, and I was shaking the whole time. And I wrapped her a little rap, and I was probably 12 years old, 11 years old.

Buzz Knight:

Do you remember what you rapped you to this day?

Jelly Roll:

I don’t remember anything. I just remember that feeling of everybody cheering me on and telling me to go write another one. And in hindsight, they were just trying to get rid of me. That’s how we do kids, “Yeah, great. Go write another one of those.” I’ll give you another magic moment real quick if you got time.

Buzz Knight:

Sure.

Jelly Roll:

I walked into middle school. I went to this school called Cameron Middle School on Murster Road. It was across the street from the JC Napier Project Homes. And so, needless to say, I was one of seven white kids at the whole school. Right? And I would walk every day by the breakfast because you get free breakfast at school and they would always be sitting outside of the lunchroom, pounding on the table and rapping. So I’d say maybe my seventh grade year, sixth grade year, I finally got the courage to go over and see if I could fit in the mix.

And I walked in and they would freestyle about teachers and stuff that was happening in middle school. And I came in, and I think I made a joke about running from a principal and him catching me because I was fat, because I was a big kid too. And whatever the line was, I just remember watching 100 black kids in the hallway lose their shit. Just like, because this is like … Eminem wasn’t out yet. Nobody really connected with the Beastie Boys. They had been out, but it wasn’t in a culture that, I knew who the Beastie Boys were. But these kids didn’t. Vanilla Ice was … You know what I mean? This wasn’t even really a thing-thing yet. So this was an unheard thing. Why is there a white kid in here rapping? And he’s good at it. So it was really, really, I remember that being the two times I caught the bug.

Buzz Knight:

What was it like working with Eminem?

Jelly Roll:

Nothing short of unreal. I mean, he’s the GOAT. Anything connected with him is just, I think he’s the greatest rapper ever. I think he will go down as the greatest rapper ever.

Buzz Knight:

You have this unbelievable lack of being categorized in one genre. You’ve got rap, you’ve got rock, you’ve got country, you’ve got spiritual. Damn, you’re even like a motivational speaker in your own way. How does that make you feel that you defy categorization?

Jelly Roll:

Lifelong dream. I feel like my whole life I just wanted to defy categories. I just feel like a lot of us live in that space. We were just so taught that we have to fit into a certain box for identity, identity purposes. Because when I was a kid, you couldn’t come to school on Monday with a Shania Twain shirt and come back to school Friday with a Snoop Dogg shirt. Right? You were either a country person, you were a rock person, you were a rap person. You were identified in these little boxes. And I just remember thinking then, well man, that’s not right because I like Offspring and Snoop Dogg. I like Johnny Cash and I like Jim Croce. Why can’t I? And what has happened through the era of streaming is now we see that more than ever. And so me blending the genres is just me doing what I feel passionate about.

But my daughter’s an example of, I listened to her cleaning her room yesterday. Every time she cleans her room, she turns on the music to make sure the whole house can hear it. And that’s maybe our punishment for punishing her to make her clean her room. And she blares everything from Arianna Grande to Cardi B. You know what I mean? It’s like the fact that my kid knows the new Chris Young song and she also knows the new NBA YoungBoy song. That’s not weird to anybody in her school. And my generation, that would’ve been fucking weird. You know what I mean?

Buzz Knight:

Jelly, if you were in the prison system, what would you do?

Jelly Roll:

Well, if I ran the prison system, I would attempt to bring more programming, rehabilitation, and trade work skills there. And I would try to create systems to offer housings in different areas, right? Because a lot of the problem that happens, especially in the juvenile cases, because I’m super passionate about the juveniles because I was a juvenile offender that got charged an adult. You take a 15-year-old kid that’s in a broken home with a family that does drugs and a cousin that lives there that sells drugs and you put him in juvenile, and then you send them right back to that house and wonder how that kid triggered back into trouble. I think that I would focus on offering opportunities for inmates to get out of prison and move to halfway houses in different states with trade work available there or different cities.

Take the Chattanooga guys and move them to Humboldt, Tennessee, and take the Memphis guys and move them to Chattanooga, and just try to create culture and structure because you can’t continue … I know trouble’s everywhere, but sometimes new playgrounds, new playmates. And I think that I would just focus on that. Focus on the rehabilitation of it. I look back at my time in jail and all the time I did, and I didn’t learn a single skill in there. I didn’t learn a single skill. They just make smarter criminals. You put 200 criminals in a room together and don’t give them anything to go look forward to, they’re not going to do nothing but gamble, fight and teach each other criminal ways. That’s it. That’s all that happens in jail.

They gamble, they fight, and they teach each other better ways to be criminals. My favorite thing about the George Young story, I’m sure you’ve seen the movie, Blow, is when he says, “I went in with a bachelor’s degree in weed and came out with a PhD in cocaine.” That is so true. How many guys I’ve seen go to jail, small drug dealers and meet a big drug dealer in jail. They’re not focused on rehab. Now, luckily here in Nashville, Sheriff Hall is really open to the idea of programming. So I’ve been talking to him a lot. So we’re going to start making changes on that, hopefully on a national level. But we’re going to start where it matters most right here at home.

Buzz Knight:

And when you did the sellout at the arena, you put your money where your mouth is to begin a project there. Can you talk about that?

Jelly Roll:

Yes, sir, no. We started putting together studios inside of the juvenile downtown. The Impact Youth Outreach that we partner with, we hired more staff for full-time care for people that come out of juvenile. So they’ll go straight to this program. We’re getting it court ordered by the judges. Let me tell you the most beautiful thing about this. And we’re building studios outside for kids when they come home, music programs inside. The next thing we’re going to try to bring in there is another trade work, where we partner with Lee’s Heating and Air and try to bring HVAC in or something just to teach kids more trade work. But this is just scratching the surface. I have big dreams. I want to open halfway houses around town, and I want to really make a difference when it comes down to this city. That’s one of the things I want to be remembered for, is I want to be remembered for feeding the homeless and visiting the jails.

Buzz Knight:

Do you have a documentary in the works?

Jelly Roll:

We do. We do have a documentary in the works. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to talk about it, but we do. Hulu filmed me, ABC News filmed me where I’d say 60% of 2022. I mean they spent a lot of time with me and it should be coming out sometime right here before the mid-summer. I’m really excited and nervous, because you let a camera crew into your personal life for four or 500 hours, they probably caught some wild shit.

Buzz Knight:

Do you still get performance nerves?

Jelly Roll:

Every time. Oh, unbelievably. I played the Leslie Jordan tribute at the Grand Ole Opry recently, and I was shaking on stage. You could just see my hand shaking. The microphone you could see shaking a little bit. Yeah. And the day I quit getting those nerves, I’ll quit touring.

Buzz Knight:

I have to tell you as we close, as somebody who has felt the deep connection with you and others felt that connection, I have to ask you, how do you balance work and life to the betterment of your health and wellbeing?

Jelly Roll:

I am learning that now, because I have spent so much time focused on building the music side of the career that at times I do get lost on the family side, which is always the most important side. Going into this year specifically, I found a better balance. You know what I’ve gotten finally bold enough to say, to help with that, Buzz? No, no. It’s a crazy word, and it’s hard to say. When you’re a kid from Antioch that never had anything, you just say yes. Because you know what I’m saying? Because you’ve never had anything. And then you say yes to so much, you find out that I haven’t been home for a daughter’s birthday in six, seven years, and it just breaks my heart. So it’s things that I’m going to try to do better moving forward.

Buzz Knight:

Thank you for saying yes to being on, Talkin’ A Walk. I’m so grateful.

Jelly Roll:

Stop it. No, these are the easy ones. The nos whenever they get you to do a one-off in Seattle and it takes three days of your life and you still say yes. You know what I’m saying? To go to a 300 person club for radio and it takes four days of your life to get to Seattle and back on your daughter’s birthday, and you’re just like, you know what? Next time they call about that one, I’m saying no.

Buzz Knight:

I’m so grateful. Thank you so much.

Jelly Roll:

Thanks for your time, Buzz. Anytime. Congratulations, man. On a personal note, I love to see people step out and into the unknown and take ownership, and that’s awesome. It’s so cool. I wish you blessings on these podcasts. I hope you do 1,000 of them. I hope you build a catalog and sell them for a hundred million dollars later in life. That’s my prayer for you. You’re an artist at heart, Buzz. Artists deserve to own art.

Buzz Knight:

You’re the best. I hope I get to meet you down at the Country Radio Seminar. I’m going to be down there.

Jelly Roll:

Oh, well then you’re absolutely going to meet me. I’ll tell Loba, make sure we see each other no matter what.

Buzz Knight:

I hope so.

Jelly Roll:

I’ll make sure that happens. I’ll come find you. I’m in town all week.

Buzz Knight:

Awesome. Thank you. I really look forward to it.

Jelly Roll:

Thank you again, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

I have a special gift for you that I’m bringing. It’s a book. It’s a little book, it’s called How to Walk. It’s by a Buddhist monk. I give it to all my guests. He’s deceased. His name is Thich Nhat Hanh. And it’s this little book of spirituality, and I can either mail it to you or give it to you in person.

Jelly Roll:

You know what? I’ll talk to Lobo. I might get you to mail it to me.

Buzz Knight:

That’s cool.

Jelly Roll:

I’m such a book reader. I might read it before you get here.

Buzz Knight:

That’d be awesome.

Jelly Roll:

I read. I make it a goal to read a book a week, sometimes two every single week. I have a thing where once a year I recycle four books that have helped me the most over the years. Right? I recycle. Once a year I read Tuesdays with Morrie again by Mitch Albom. I read the Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom because they’re my two probably favorite books of all time. I read The Alchemist once a year and I pick a Malcolm Gladwell book that I’ve read before. So this year I read Talking to Strangers. Last year, I reread Outliers.

Buzz Knight:

It’s awesome. Well, I’d be honored to get it to you, and I’m so grateful and tickled. And thank you for the music that you give us and for just kicking ass, and this is going to be an even better year for you than last year.

Jelly Roll:

Oh, I can’t wait. Thank you so much, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

Thanks, Jelly.

Speaker 3:

Talkin’ A Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.