Jelly Roll
Appearances
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Do you agree with that? Oh, dude, one, thank you, yeah. I mean, that's what I hope to represent more than anything, right? Is that, because I don't think I just stand for like criminal second chances. Like I think I became a voice for like all second chances. Like I'm a guy that proves that it's never too late to change.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
When I was nominated for the Best New Artist at the Grammys last year, I was the second oldest artist ever nominated for Best New Artist in the history of the Grammys. Wow. Incredible. So it's not only did I turn my life around, I did it at an age where in our business, in the music business, people would tell me I was crazy for starting.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
You know what I mean? If you ain't caught your teeth by it, sometimes in the acting world, I've noticed that you have guys who will arc later in their career. But like in the music business, they say that our best work's done between 22 and 27. Yeah. I didn't even start getting invited to award shows till I was 37. You know what I'm saying?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah. Well, first of all, to a testament of what you just said, is that just for the record, we would have kicked somebody's ass for you in there. Yeah, no. It would have been a totally different experience 30 years later with us.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I think the kind of the real, the turning point for me, so to speak, or like what I thought really did it all for me, as cliche as it sounds, was I had my daughter when I was incarcerated. Oh, wow. And I don't know why. I do know why. I used to say I don't know why, but it's obvious. I never, it was the most honest accountability and self-reflection moment of my life.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
You know, I had to really sit down and do an assessment of, I was fixing, I just got the news, a guard knocks on my door to tell me my daughter was born. He doesn't know her name. He has no information. And I am just sitting there like... realizing I'm worth like, I know this sounds funny, it's jail terms, but in jail you get commissary, you know?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I had like maybe 20 Raymond soups, 10 honey buns, a couple of packs of Skittles. Like I, this is what I had to my name. I had the one pair of clothes that I was incarcerated in. I had zero money. In fact, I was in debt. I owed restitution to my victim. I owed the courts, you know what I mean? Like I'm in debt.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I'm worth, and the biggest thing I'm the most proud of in life is that I run the poker table and have like 30 soups. You know what I mean? And I was like, as a father, I should be proud of my daughter. You know what I mean? The thing I'm the most prideful about in my whole life is that I've got myself get to such a low point in life that I'm proud of having ramen noodle soups in prison.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
You know what I'm saying? I don't know why, Sean, but man, that just covered me, dude.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yes. Yeah. And a lot of it, too, was financially driven. Like where I lived at at the time, the only people that had money did crime.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
In my neighborhood, it was a real clear cut thing. You either did drugs or you sold drugs.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Right. And even if you sold and did drugs, you were better off than the people that just did drugs. And I know that sounds weird, and I'm not trying to get into a bunch of childhood stuff here, but my mother struggled with her own things from addictive stuff to mental health stuff. My father had alcohol things. I was in a house where it seemed very common. Right.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, to me, this was what was happening. Yeah, like this was what was going on. It wasn't until later in life. And there's a famous quote in Alcoholics Anonymous that says, change happens when the pain to remain the same is greater than the pain it takes to change.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And that, yeah. That's interesting. That's cool, right? And that day in jail, I was like, I don't care how painful this change is. I'm gonna make this change. And man, it was...
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
When I go back and speak at jails, the first time I went and spoke at a jail again, I'll never forget I was leaving and I heard one guy whisper to another guy, he's like, all we got to do is be rich and famous and all our problems are solved. So the next time I went and spoke, I forgot about, I never tell them the most important part of the story.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Was that the moment from coming home to jail and deciding I was going to make the change to seeing the fruits of the change was like a decade long process. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't bear fruit from that change for 10 years. I was eating shit sandwiches. You know what I mean?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And just trying to find my way and living in a van and doing $50 shows and just like, I was willing to sacrifice. Yeah, it's daily.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I was rapping more in jail. That's how I kind of came up in hip hop. It was more of the language of the neighborhood. But I would always sing the chorus. So like Friday nights, we'd go down in the jail cell and we'd beat on the walls. And I don't know how loud this would be, but like, kind of how I'm beating on the table.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I would go every Friday and I would tap on that window and I would tap on it for like two measures. And before I dropped the first down bass note, you know, the beat. And by the time I got through tapping for those two measures, the entire unit, 230 inmates come downstairs. Jelly's finna rap, jelly's finna rap. And I would always, yeah, I was crazy, right?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I would sing the chorus and it was like, there would be like, we'd be free. Like it felt like we were free for the night. You know what I mean? Like everybody's standing on tables. And then I'd write these like choruses like, I'll be gone for a little while, but I can't wait to see your sexy smile. But I wasn't really singing. I was just like doing it like that. But they would love it.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
They'd be like, sing the gone for a little while song. You know what I'm saying? Because it was like our thing. Amazing. That's amazing. That's when I didn't realize I had the voice. Yeah. It was so cool watching music move them people like that.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I've had quite a few of them already, especially rehabs. So my rule is I'm a man of faith, and my rule is real simple. What I believe of my faith would require from me and the person that I follow is that I go speak at jails, I go feed the homeless, I go hang out with the widows, and I go to the rehabs. Because that's where I think that, you know, the God I serve would want me to go.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That's where the representation of him went. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, of course. So I get it a lot, especially out of the rehabs. The jails, too. The jails are so different, though, because some of them guys I'm singing in front of won't come home for another 10 or 20 years. But I will tell you a cool story.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I went to the Oregon State Penitentiary to do the first— I brought the first music to the yard at the OSP, the original penitentiary in Oregon, the only death row left in Oregon— or was the only death row left. And we took the music back to the yard, and there was a guy who'd been in there for 19 years. And he tells my manager, man, he's like, man, I'm coming home at the end of this year.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I come home the day after Christmas. I've been gone for 20 years, you know, whatever. I'm just looking forward to hanging out with my daughter. She's 22. I've been gone since she was two. So... We fly him out and his daughter for my New Year's Eve show. So imagine being incarcerated for 20 years. You come straight out.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
We put you in a first class flight with your little girl, who's not a little girl anymore. She's 22. And they came down and partied with us in Nashville all of New Year's Eve. That's amazing. You know, and I just, I'm thinking about how, I'm overwhelmed by this, right? And I've been doing this a few years. I just imagine what this guy is feeling, you know?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And great, went straight home and got a job. And just the character of a man whose vision and dream in jail was to go do an activity with his daughter. He's like, man, I've missed 20 years of my little girl's life. The first thing I want to do is go home and be a part of her life.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I got home when she was almost two. Yeah. And this story's even probably the coolest part of this whole story, Jay. Yeah. My daughter... her mother at the time, because I was rightfully so a fucking criminal, wouldn't let me see her. So I had to go to court. I had to get supervised visits through the courtroom.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I had to step that very slow, build a relationship, then six hours on Friday evening, but she had to be home before 10 p.m. And then I just had to keep going to the court every six months and going, look, I'm continuing to prove I'm changing. I'm in college. Look, I'm doing this. I'm like... And, you know, music, like being famous wasn't even a thought then. I just wanted to be a good dad.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I just came home. Like I just wanted to focus on just being the best father I could be. You're working on those 10 years. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I was just like building that. Fast forward, that same little girl that was born when I was incarcerated is fixing to turn 17 years old.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
She's got one of the highest GPAs at her high school. She's a dual enrollment kid and is a junior going to college. Me and my wife have had full custody of her for eight years. This is her best friend. You know what I'm saying?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, yeah, we're working on, it's a double-sided sword. We were working on a bill to stop the flow and the demand, so it's trying to figure out the balance, but it was breaking my heart that the statistic I gave Jason was, and I don't know if you know this either, Sean, this will blow y'all's mind if you don't, but Over 160-something people in America die every single day to fentanyl overdoses.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
160-something. To give you all the reference I used at the fentanyl hearing is, that is a 737 plane crashing full of human souls every single day. Wow. Now, if it was a plane that was crashing every single day, I don't predict this happens for four days before every airline in America shut down and there is a national crisis. It does something about it. Right.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
If there was a hundred and something squirrels in Central Park dying a day, there would be pickets out there have saved the squirrels. Rightfully so. I'd be one of the picketers. You know what I mean? Like literally. Yeah. So to me, it's just we can't minimize human life because they're struggling with an addiction. Addictions aren't a personal problem. Right.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That's how we've looked at them in society. We've dismissed addiction as, well, they're getting what they deserve. They chose to do those drugs. And it's like if you don't really understand addiction, I could see where you would say that. But now we're in a place where everybody knows an addict. Everybody has a friend or a family member who's like, no, that dude was a great guy or a great woman.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Thank you. This is a question I never get asked because this is like a throw-throw back. Because I know the tipping point moment, like what Malcolm Gladwell would say was my moment, was a song called Save Me. Sure.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But I know what's my moment. Because we know our moment before everybody else does, right? Yeah. Like, as an artist. Like, we know a moment that's like, y'all might not have seen it then, but something in me triggered, like, I got something here. Yeah, yeah. I came home, and my buddy had bought a flip cam from Best Buy. His name's Chad Arms.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And he was like, hey, man, they got this new thing called YouTube that came out since you've been incarcerated. It was like, it's kind of like Facebook, but only for videos. I was like, fire. He was like, yeah, but you got to go to a laptop, right? So he turns on a beat, and I just got out of jail. He's like, yo, just start rapping or something. I'll cut it up later.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I put out this thing called a 10-minute freestyle. It got taken down later because I said something about my parole officer and got in trouble. But I'm just like, you know, I'm a young kid out of jail, so I'm just talking shit, rapping. And he put it on YouTube. And at the time, it was called the 10-Minute Freestyle. And I won't make y'all do the quiz. I normally go pop quiz.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Why was it called the 10-Minute Freestyle? And it's because at the time, YouTube wouldn't let you upload a video longer than 10 minutes. That was the YouTube ban, which was 10-minute, 21-second videos. And at the time, they called it viral because it got like 40,000 views. This is baby YouTube infancy. So I was like, this is it.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That's it. That's powerful. It was easier when people knew you. Like in y'all's world, maybe like school theater. It's like, yeah, of course, you know, but like when you had to go do it at another high school, it's like, whoa, I might be onto something. I'm not a big hit here.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Man, I'll tell you how lucky I got, and I think y'all got lucky like this too, is that nobody's seen what was happening until it kind of happened. So by the time the labels were calling, I was making seven figures a year off my YouTube. Oh, wow. You know what I mean? So by the time they call, it's just like, then they call like, hey, we'll give you a million dollars. I was like, I made that.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
What are you talking about? You know what I mean? I was like, crazy. I was like, y'all got to come. So the first call to answer your question directly came in like 2018. We didn't negotiate a deal until 2021. Wow. Because they kept coming. I was like, I don't think y'all see the metrics, but y'all aren't. When I finally signed my record deal,
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I love talking about inside baseball, how the sausage invades my face. I know, it's so good. Yeah, we do too. We do too. I love it. When I finally signed my record deal, I had already had, you know, 3 million or 2.5 million YouTube subscribers, a billion views on my YouTube channel. Amazing. I'd already had a couple of gold records independently.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I was selling two to 4,000 tickets everywhere in the Midwest and Southeast, everywhere in the Bible Belt or the Rust Belt. If it ended with belt, we were killing there. You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, once we got left of Colorado, we, you know what I'm saying? But we knew we were going to go way out here eventually. Left of Colorado. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
So by the time they started sniffing around, I was like, look, here's kind of where we are. And I got the deal I dreamed of.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
How about this? Y'all will get this. I own 100% of my master recordings. I own 100% of my publishing. I own my IP completely.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Paid the taxes on it early and put it in the trust and let it grow. Yeah. Put the catalog there for the family. I broke generational curses, baby.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
It's been great. It's been really cool. My deal from the beginning was, look, man, I'll trust y'all if y'all trust me. So let's just not question each other at all. So when y'all ask for something, I'm not gonna question y'all. Y'all know what y'all are doing.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But equally, if I tell you I wanna put out an album a year or 30 songs on an album or I start making some of these what might seem like crazy artistic choices, I was like, you just gotta let me ride my wave. This is what I've been doing. This is just the way I operate.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I came into a label that was used to doing, at the time, two-year, three-year album cycles, and I put out an album a year for the first three years on my deal. You know, I just came in at a totally different pace.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
It felt great, especially with the label, because I'm like, I just came off the song Save Me With Laney, which was a huge hit for me, but it was a big ballad. So here I am going back to the label. I'm like, hey, look. I don't want to turn to, I know y'all are going to think I'm the male Adele here, but it's like, I've got another big ballad that I love. You know what I'm saying?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Man, spot on. What would be the biggest pause for most artists, not me, is that they need their money. So every time they're going to record a new album, they got to tap in and go, hey, I need a million dollars. Oh, I see. To record this record.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And at the rate of the deal, it's the worst thing in the music business. I've been preaching against this for so long. I refuse to do it. That's why I don't take their money at all, right? Is that because in any other business, what the record businesses do to artists would be illegal, right? Like if a bank did it or a car lot did it, they'd shut them down. Because?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Because you're not allowed to put an interest rate on that kind of money. But if you don't call it a loan, you call it an advance. So when I take the word loan out of it, I call it an advance, and then we recoup it at the rate of the deal. So let's say, Jason, excuse me. Do you need to blow your nose, Sean? Can you run over there real quick? Thank you, Sean.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Okay, everybody gets an instrument. I think this would be something unique. What do we strike you as? You look like you could rock a saxophone. That's hurtful. It could be a really cool curve ball to see you with a saxophone.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I would love to see, just because I think this would be so out of pocket for the crew, is if Sean was like the electric guitar player and he carried like a big, just gaudy Gretsch, just one of the huge oversized guitars.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
All right. But pretend y'all get the deal. Pretend y'all get the deal, right? And I say, it's a 70-30 deal, 70% in the favor of the label, 30% for y'all, and I'll give you a million dollars to record the first Smartless album, right? They're like, okay, we get 10% apiece. You know, they're putting up all the money. You sign the deal.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But the problem is I recoup at the rate of the deal, which means every time SmartList makes a dollar, I take 70 cents of that dollar and I go, this is mine, that was our deal. You're like, yep. And then I go, now this would be your 30 cents, but I'm gonna put this 30 cents towards the million dollars you owe me.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That is a 70% interest rate, gentlemen. I don't care how you slice or butter that bread. Now, you've found legal loopholes to make it not that, but ultimately, that's absurd. You know what I mean?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, well, that's what happened. The cool thing was nobody wanted to sign me. So like when nobody wants to work with you, but you're like, I had to figure it out myself.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
No, as soon as you see it, and then you're aware because I've done enough distribution deals. And early in my career, I had to take a little money. So you'd go get $100,000, and then you'd see it took you six months to pay the $100,000 back. And you're like, by the time I paid the $100,000 back, they made a half a million dollars.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I was like, I'm tripping. This is – you know, it wasn't even – You go through that enough times that when it finally happens, the label calls like, hey, we'll give you, and that's where labels kept messing up. The first three or four labels, oh, I love talking about this. The first three or four labels that would call me would just offer me money.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
They thought I was just some dumb redneck, which they were right, but they thought I was a dumber redneck than they thought I was. And they would come and they'd be like, hey, you know, listen, I'll never forget one label said, it's a blank check. Like whatever you want it to be within reason, you put the amount of money you want us to give you and then we'll put a number of albums with it.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
You know, and I had a guy at the time who was ill-advised of me. He was like, let's just ask for like 10 or 20 million bucks, dude. This will change both of our lives forever. He was like kind of managing me a little bit. I was like, ah, right then I was like, I think I need to find another manager. You know what I'm saying? I was like, I don't think this is right.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I was like, because I'm also in a space where, you know, mama didn't raise no fool. You know what I mean? It's like, I was smart enough to go, I don't, if they think I can make 20 million dollars, And that's what these people do is they count beans and determine if people can make $20 million. I think I can make $20 million. You know what I'm saying?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, well, yeah, always. Ancillary participation is what they call it to try to get us away from the 360 deal, which is what it is still. They just gave it a cooler name. But it's always in favor of the artist, depending on what your deal was and how much money you took. I know some artists in town that did bad ancillary deals too, though. They did like 50-50 or 70-30 ancillaries.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
So they're in this 80-20 record deal where they're only getting 20% of their streaming royalties. Don't own any of the masters. 100% of the masters will... owned by the label for the rest of their career.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And then they go out and they'll do a 60-40 ancillary participation. And the problem with that- Meaning the concerts? Yeah. But the problem with that is, is that if I give the label even 80%, let's say, I mean 20%, let's say I said, you know what? We've done great. Y'all built my profile. I'll give you 20%. Booking agent wants 10. Management's still coming in at 15.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Business manager's still at five, which I've negotiated all those fees back over the years. But I mean, you know how this works. I mean, if you just- Next thing you know, what I try to advise artists is this. You're going to end up in a situation where you're going to make what your manager is making if you're not careful. You know what I mean? The difference is they've got 12 other clients.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
It's normally in the ancillary. Same ratio? But yeah, just whatever that is. It's ticket sales? It's out of mind completely.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Well, I think it's a need and a want. I need to write music. That's something I know. For my spirit and my therapy, I have to write songs. There's something in me. I'm very empathic. I meet people every day. I hear these stories about how my music has helped people through dark moments, and that stuff sits with me. I don't find a way to exercise that. Touring for me is just the old school.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I'm an old school rock and roll dude, man. I still smoke pot and play the guitar a couple hours every day just for fun if I can. You know what I mean? It's still like just get lost in jamming and learning other people's songs. I love this life. I love the pace. I love the bus. I love the smell of diesel fuel. I love pilot truck stops at 6 a.m., Sean. I mean, I love all that stuff.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Did you? Oh, nasty. Couldn't quit crying. Then I called my mama to tell her, and I videoed myself calling her, and my mom was a little older, you know? So I'm like, mama, I just got, I'm snot rocketing. So she can't hear me. I'm just blowing snot bubbles. And she goes, you said something about some money? I said, no, mama, I said the Grammys. She said, you said your granny? I said, no, mama.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I said, I just got nominated for a Grammy. And she's so funny. She goes, well, that's good. And then two seconds later, she goes, hey, I seen a picture of you and Tanya Tucker together. How cool was she? I'm still crying. And my mama's asking about Tanya Tucker, the country singer.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But it was cool, man. In our business, it don't get no bigger, man. The easiest way to describe it is I've been blessed to win a CMA. I've been blessed to win an ACM. I've been blessed to win a CMA. You swept the CMAs, right?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I've had some big moments. And being nominated for a Grammy, just the nomination trumps all those.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Before I got nominated for a Grammy, I was introduced as the new CMA ACM award-winning multi-platinum recording artist. Right. I am now introduced real easy. Grammy nominated, recording artist, Jelly Roll, just being nominated. Every award I'd ever won even being in my title. Yeah, that's really cool. That's how cool it is.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Ooh, that's a good one because at the last Grammys, I got to meet Taylor. Taylor Swift came and talked to me. I felt like the bell of the ball, dog. When I tell you I felt like king shit. I felt the same way I felt when Howard Stern hugged me. When Howard hugged me, I was like, dude, this dude likes me for real. I'm looking and Taylor's walking across the room and it's like, this is Taylor Swift.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
So you're just watching people part like the Red Sea. They're just like... And as she's walking, my wife grabs me and she goes, I think Taylor's walking over here. I was like, no, no. And I'm looking at her and she's looking at me and I was like, no, I think she's walking over to Boy Wonder because Boy Wonder was sitting, Boy Genius was sitting in front of me.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I thought, I think she's walking over to Boy Genius. And she did, she walked right up to me and gave me a hug. It was super cool. I was like, oh my God.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And then I was so nervous, I fumbled. I forgot, I was gonna tell her this great emotional story about how I pushed my daughter on the swing set at a park she built in her old hometown.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I just could not remember. I was like, the park, my daughter. I was like, it was just so bad.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I got to meet Jay-Z there, too. It was really cool. Stevie Wonder. I mean, it was like, it was definitely. Ed Sheeran came and talked to me. I mean, it was really cool. All good people, yeah.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Well, you got to think, all the poets have always ended up in Nashville. Bob Dylan went out of his way to come down here and write and do Nashville Skyline. One of the only places James Taylor frequented besides his island of his own where he rode at up on the Northeast was he'd come to Nashville every now and then. It's always kind of leaned that way.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And I think that we're having the biggest moment we've ever had with it. But what you got to experience is what I tell people that makes country music more special than every genre is that it's all about the song with us. Like, it's all about the hits with the other genres. Like, not in a bad way, but like, you know, it's a lot of production. It's a very produced thing.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But like, in our business is, if I take all that shit out and I just grab my guitar right now, or if I grab this piano right now and I break this song down to just me and you acoustic, it really makes the song stand out.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
No, dude, especially when you get to do it like that. The best is when you get... three or four or five of us in a room together, and we're playing Pass the Guitar. That's pretty cool. It's awesome when we're like, yo, what did you write? He's like, yo, I wrote this last week, and then Thomas Rhett's singing a song that might not ever come out that he just wrote.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And then I'm singing a song I might not ever put out that I just wrote, because it's like anything else, I just wrote it, so I think it's the best song I ever wrote. I gotta listen to it for two months before I'm like, that song's not that good.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I mean, come anytime. The cool thing about it is we do it. Wow. I think it's similar to what y'all do. It's what made Smart List the biggest podcast on the earth. We immediately heard three friends who are at the top of their class but are buddies at core just hanging out and being fucking buddies. Like, that's us.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Like, when we're all sitting around together passing a guitar, like, we're not a bunch of country music superstars. We're a bunch of dumbass songwriters trying to show that we can still write dumbass songs.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I pull from a little less personal pain, but I've gotten a thousand more muses. Okay, great. It kind of balanced itself out. I get, I'm not making this number up. I'm sure y'all do too, but I get thousands of messages across every platform a day. And 70% of them are like real messages. hey man, your song helped me out of a hole. I got sober to your music.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I dealt with the death of my father with cancer to this song. This song, we played this at my mother's funeral. We played this at my cousin who had a fentanyl overdose at his funeral. So it goes back to me being very empathic. I feel this. I'm the kind of guy that's like, if you start crying... I would cry. We would cry together. I have a nobody cries alone policy. You know what I'm saying?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
It's just automatically. I love that. So it's like, I hear these stories. You know, I hear these stories every day. So I'm not... I had a, man, this is, I've never said it this way, but there was a moment I thought I was special because of where I was from and what I've been through.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Like, I thought like, oh, this, the world's clicking for me because all this shit I went through is like, makes me special. And then I realized what makes me special is that we've all been through some sort of shit. Yeah. And that I am a representation of that.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
And once I realized that I wasn't telling my unique specialty story, I was telling the story of millions of American who have felt the same kind of pain. And don't take this, Sean, to speak on it, but I speak for Sean's brother. Like I am an active voice for Sean's brother right now. Whether Sean knew that before this call or not is that most of my life mission.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
It's getting people to understand that alcoholics and addicts are good people. They're not bad people. They're just in the middle of a bad situation. That's exactly right.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That's it. It's so powerful. The opposite of addiction is connection, baby. You're speaking to me, Will. Let's go, baby.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah. The message is different when it, a message always hits different when it comes from one of its own. You know what I mean? That's why I go back to jails and that's why I go to rehabs because I remember none of our own ever came back and talked to us. So no matter how well-intentioned other people were, It just didn't hit. You know what I mean?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Because it wasn't coming from a place that we could like... And it lights you up as much as music lights you up.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Will, thanks for inviting me on. Jason, thanks for mistaking me for Kitty Chesney, who's a foot shorter and 300 pounds lighter. Sean, I love you to absolute death, man. I love all of y'all. I can't thank y'all enough for what y'all are doing for the world, man. How happy y'all are making people. How much joy you're bringing to people's car rides every day. Thanks.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Man, I just hope y'all know that this was... I'm sure y'all did it just to connect with each other and it just kind of spread. But man, that's... You are helping so many people, man. You are a direct servant, man. You don't even, I'm sure you know it. I'm acting like y'all don't know, but you're serving people. I hope so.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
You're not wasting an hour or two of your life every day just shooting the shit with your friends, man. You're helping a lot. My therapist listens to y'all. He's never been excited about me doing anything, but this was like a really big deal.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yes, please. We'll do it. We'll leave for sure. I'll reach out. I'd love to see y'all again sometime, man.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I don't want to jump back on a train y'all already got off of, but I would like to share an experience with shower shoes for a second.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I just feel like it's a great time to, yeah, well, listen, the fun part is I'm going to tell you where they exist for a different role. When you are incarcerated, which I've had the unfortunate experience of.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah. You have to wear shoes in the shower in case somebody tries to do something to you while you're in the shower.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
don't leave your cell if you're incarcerated in a real violent facility unless you have shoes on. They give you flip flops, but you walk to the shower in your shoes, and then you normally have a friend stand outside of the shower to make sure you're double safe. Really?
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
I am. I'm currently in Los Angeles. Do you have slippers on? No, I just, I'm barefoot. Are you barefoot? Goodbye, Jelly Roll. No, thank you. I'm sorry. It never happens, but I didn't have, it's a long story. I didn't have my, I left my slides on.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
This is where we got to be honest, right? I'm an honest guy. Yeah, of course. The Jason Bateman that we know right now would survive because he would be extorted. So he would pay for protection.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, it's crazy. Well, back in the days when cash was a real thing, you just smuggled in cash like they did drugs. But now, as you could imagine, it's like everybody's got cell phones in there, so they're like, hey, call your people and tell them cash at my people.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
That's the catch. Now, they do have tablets. I haven't been locked up in a long time, so I've missed some of this, but they have tablets now. When I go visit jails, they always show me their tablets so they can email and correspond that way. Wow. No kidding. But when I was in there, we were smuggling them in.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
A lot of the wrong guys are going to come first. I've seen a lot of guys pay the wrong guy for protecting.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
Yeah, they'll come in your cell when the cell doors pop. But it's also not as extortionary as we all make it sound. It's like... It truly depends on what your crime was, where you were. There's a lot of mitigating, like outside of the jokes at jail, there's a lot of politics of like what actually, why you're there.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
No, no, I appreciate you asking, Sean. I want to talk about it because I think it's a really important part of my redemption is that – You know, whenever I was a younger man, I had committed a series of crimes, one of which being an armed robbery case, which is the one that ended up really sending me to prison.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But sadly, it's been everything from armed robbery to possession with intent to distribute. I was a 10-year, 12-years-in-and-out-of-the-system kind of kid. Caught my first case when I was like 14 years old. From 14 to 25, I probably did almost most of that decade incarcerated. Wow. I call it the revolving doors that once you get in, you know? Yeah.
SmartLess
"Jelly Roll"
But I think it's important that I talk about it because it's a big thing. I want to give people hope and second chances. And also I never want to... act like I'm running from what I did, or my victim deserves better than for me to act like it didn't happen. You know what I mean? If nobody else, my victim deserves better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Jail's a different concept because, fuck, I wrote a song a day. You know what I mean? But I wrote 100 and I turned in 170 songs in my publisher last year. I just couldn't quit writing them. I was on the bus. I just could not. I could not. At every corner. I was getting done with show. You know, I do five shows a week. It's just how we tour.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I was getting straight on the bus and just grabbing a guitar and just pouring ideas. I'm putting out 27 songs when this podcast is out. My album Beautifully Broken is out right now. I had 22 on the album and I had five or six features that I was going to do for Deluxe next week. And my wife teased one of the songs that's kind of doing good, so I think I'm just going to drop them all tomorrow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
damn he's in this fucking flow he's a like a like a zen master up there it's scary how comfortable he is i got so i've never been to the cellar it's been a dream of mine i had a night in new york i'd finished tv so i went to the cellar that night and i got david tell's number on bert's tour i went on bert's fully uh fully loaded tour this year for fun did i tell you the story i I think so.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Just like, I think I told you, but just like to fuck off. I called Bert and was like, yo, can I just park my bus and just come fuck off for like five or six shows? And he was like, what? I was like, yeah. He was like, will you sing? I was like, fuck yeah, whatever. I'll come sing a song or two. So I just go up with a guitar every night between comedians.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But me and Dave would hang out every night. Me, Dave, Big J, Oakerson, Soder, Morrell. And we would all just, Bert, I'm just like having the cool, I'm just like, I'm just Rarely quiet as I am back there because I'm just listening because these dudes are telling the greatest storytellers ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's a different level. David Till gives me his number. He's like, call me if you're ever in New York. I know I see he has a flip phone, right? He pulls the flip phone out. So I'm in New York and I just like randomly and I say, Dave, when I call you, I'm going to be in New York City trying to find you. OK, he said, he said, no problem. I'll be at the cellar. That's what he tells me. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I call this dude, me and Ian Finance are sitting at the bar, and I say, I'm going to call Dave and see what time he's coming. I call, third ring, Dave answers and go, you here? I go, I am. He goes, you need help getting in? I was like, I'm in. He said, see you in a few. Flips the phone down. It was the most David Dale thing ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
His family came to my show in El Paso. Polly sent them. And they brought me... Sam Kinison's original gospel discs. Oh, wow. They gave me like five of them, Joe. It's like one of my most prized possessions now. How is it? How's the music? Oh, it's crazy. Well, it's a lot of preaching on there, too. Is it preaching and singing? Yeah, it was a lot of preaching on the first one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I didn't get to the second one yet. I hadn't had a disc player. They brought all five of them out, and I was so scared to fuck them up, I immediately put them in a Pelican crate and sent them home.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I was like, this is crazy. You know what I mean? I mean, the whole Kennison family, there's like 10 of them in there sharing all these cool stories. Polly said, the Kennison family wants to come see your show. I said, I want them to see my show because so much of my show is derivative from Sam Kennison. You know what I mean? Like there's so much. I'm a southern gospel man anyways.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I went to a southern church, so I just understood Kennison's inflections and that kind of thing. It just spoke to me from where I'm from. So it's like I have always tried to – I tell people I'm somewhere between Billy Graham and Sam Kennison. You know what I mean? As far as like how, you know, when you got to come see, I'll be, I do the Moody Center in November. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I tell Tony all the time. I say, Tony, I love you. And that panel is the coolest thing I've ever seen. But you are the show, brother. We would all tune in if you were sitting up there by yourself. Like, you are just so sharp. I relate to it, too, Joe. I compare art forms. It's just something I like to do. I know some people don't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's a middle of the week too. You should be able to make it. Let's go. It'll be fun. I'm trying to talk Carrie into putting a closed on Mitzi's door sign that says clothes gone to the Jelly Roll Show. Speaking of Mitzi's, can I tell you something? I want to, I've been waiting to talk to you about this in person. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I was so inspired by the time I spent with you down here and more importantly, the time I spent at your club, even without you. Just they treat me. I don't know if you hear the stories, but I've become a fixture of furniture there when I'm in town. And I am opening. I'm announcing this now right here that I'm opening my bar on Broadway. In Nashville, Tennessee, which is a real big deal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You've been to Broadway. It's all after country music stars. I'm the first Nashville native to get a bar. So like the first kid from the city to get a bar. But I was so inspired by the way the mothership has Mitzi's. And it's like an honor to Mitzi's. And what y'all do that I have put my bar is going to be called Jelly Rolls Goodnight Nashville. But I have a back bar.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
called buddies named after my late father and it was completely inspired from what you have done at mitzi's oh that's great all the way down to the we're going to set his chair there for him you know what i mean like it's just so inspiring and it's going to be just like y'all our rule is it's open to the public when it's open to the public and when it's not it's not
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's like because that place has created such a safe place for me to party.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
This is what me and Post Malone talk about when we're drunk by ourselves. We're like, we need to go back to Charleston. Let's just go. It's like the safest bar in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But my question was, can I send my buddy's bartender to hang out with Carrie for a week and shadow her?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great idea. I think I'm going to send her down in November around my show here. I'm going to bring her with me so she can meet Carrie that night. Because Carrie... Runs the ultimate celebrity bar to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like, she deals with complete chaos down there with them comedians. I've watched it. It is wild.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But watching Tony, I feel a kinship to Tony and Andrew Schultz in a certain way because I feel like we all kind of met each other right before it happened for all of us. All right. Like I remember me and Schultz doing the opener up song at the five, four, you know, he was doing two nights at Zany's, two shows, one show, you know, one show a night. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, I mean, it touched my soul in such a way that I wanted to do it for my father. That's awesome. You know what I mean? So I just want you to know that the Mitzi legacy has went even further and that what y'all have created there is spreading on to me. Almost got me emotional talking about a woman I never met. I just know she did so much for you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Polly's shared some really cool stories with me about her. And it's just, man, it's just unreal. I got to spend a little time with Polly because I went to that back bar there. The cool thing is because of y'all, I've now found y'all's community embraces me everywhere now. So I'm safe. If I'm in a city now, if I'm in L.A., I'm like, where's the comedy club? I bet they got a back bar. Call Adam Ray.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I'm saying? Adam Ray's like, hey, I'm at the back bar at the store. Come on. I'm like, yes. On the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
The greatest. Storytellers ever. I could listen to guys like Burt talk all night. I could listen to Joey Diaz talk all night. I've known Joey for 30 years. He still tells me new stories. It's crazy. No, dude. It's crazy, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's crazy, dude. Joey could go to the store today and have a story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I mean? It just be fucking one of the one of the best stories ever. I think we're all in the storytelling business. Right. That's what I do, too. I'm telling stories. I'm not doing it in a comedic way, but I'm I'm still telling a story. You know what I mean? Like it's all that kind of story. I am attracted to storytellers. You know, I think we all are.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, for sure. Think about the old, let's sit around the campfire, read stories.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm sure they were telling tales. Tall tales is what they used to call them. Think about how long we've been hearing these kind of stories of people just telling stories.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's deep because you're thinking about it like from a hunting perspective too. They had to go out all day and find the food.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I was doing a thousand seat club in the South. You know what I mean? And Tony was still kill Tony. And you know what I mean? And we're all fucking old. Like the fact that it happened for all of us in our late 30s is even cooler. So it's this double kinship.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They were smoking pot and doing all kinds of stuff. They were doing all kinds of stuff. Somebody had already figured out that cow shit mushrooms could make you feel great.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
How many times they had to go through it and go back and go, listen, y'all, I've done this a few times, and I'm pretty confident that there is this thing that grows in a pile of shit that makes me feel fucking like God. You know what I'm saying? It's crazy, dude. Somebody had to be that guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I mean, I'm a man of faith, but on brand with that is Jesus told stories and he taught in stories. Jesus never gave a direct direction. he always was just like, well, and then he'd tell a story and you would have to figure out, you know what I mean? It was like, okay, this story would show the, it was always in story form too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like when I was nominated for New Artist of the Year at almost 40, that's the first time that it ever happened in CMA history and country music. But like this year, most of those kids are 27 and under. Here I was a 40-year-old fucking man up there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
All that was in story. You think about stories, too. I've never been in the pyramids, but they said that All that stuff on the inside of it is just a story, right? It's all telling a story to a degree.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
The hieroglyphics are like telling stories or when they have the guys chasing these things with the spears, they're like trying to show a story. It's all trying to tell a story, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I know every time I've went deep, it was life changing for me. Like I'll do a lot of mushrooms every now and then just like, you know, let's get. But anytime I was like, let's go. It was a life-changing experience every time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I mean, it's helped me in some of my most depressed moments. If I'm really in a dark, dark spot and can't get out of it, my wife will encourage me to go trip. She'll be like, why don't you go – we got this – it's called the Buffalo River back in Tennessee. It's outside of a little town called Hornwall, Tennessee. Old Country River, man. I mean, look, Country Creek River.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I mean, it's a river, but it's kind of shallow. You can see the bottom of it. It's called Floating the Buffalo. We'll go out there and just float the buffalo. And every now and about twice a year, me and the buddies will go out there and we'll just take six or seven. Damn. And just float the buffalo. Damn.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So if I haven't got to do it in a year because of the schedule, my wife will feel that on me and be like – No, you might need to go to the Buffalo. You know what I'm saying? She'll say it really cool. She'll be like, when's the last time you floated the Buffalo? And I'll be like, man, it's been a year, hasn't it? She'll be like, I think you and Scary Larry is one of my best friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We met each other in Juvenile Hall. He's a wild character. She goes, you and Scary should go float the Buffalo. She'll just encourage me. She knows I'm going to come back a way better husband, a way better father.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Dude, it was so, I was thinking about it pulling up here is that I think y'all just got out of Vulcan and the club had just opened. And I came that night to see Ron White. And I went back that Monday to see Kill Tony. And I could feel the Kill Tony thing happening over COVID at Vulcan. So I had to go see it in person, you know? Yeah. And I could remember sitting in there. And you know how, like,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So he went on to theorize that mushrooms are the reason there's human life on Earth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I tell somebody all the time? My new theory is, because my life turned out in such a way I never dreamed, that this is a simulation. And that there is an overweight, nerdy alien that plays me. And that during my... I think about this all the time when I'm high. And that my sleeping hours are like when he's doing his normal stuff, and my waking hours are his two hours a day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I just imagine this kid that's looking back like, Mom, you won't believe what I've done with that fat dude the last nine months. It's fucking crazy. He's one of the most famous artists in the world. And she's like, you got to get off. He's like, but he's going to the Grammys.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
My dude's telling people, like, y'all remember that dude we thought wasn't going to do it? He did it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Because I've missed it all. I'm doing five shows a week, and I'm so in the vortex of touring. Yeah, good. We do that old school rock and roll shit, so we really do play five shows a week for 12, 13 weeks, you know? That's amazing. It's awesome, dude. But again, that's why you're so comfortable up there. You're so just... Yes. It reeks of a man that's done a thousand shows.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So to me, Ron White is on Mount Rushmore of comedy. For me personally, I know it's subjective. Some people are going to, you know, whatever. But for me, because I judge comedy as a fan of like, I look at skits like, I mean, I look at specials like. What song stood out to me the most in the whole special? Like your special was your album.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's like when you see a comedian up there really comfortable. It's like when I watched the tale at the Comedy Cellar, when he leaned back on the wall, I was like, oh, he's fitting to kill. When he just walked straight up and leaned back. And then he calls Ian up and Ian's just throwing, you know, just shit at him. And he's just lighting Ian on fire. It was just, it was so good, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I feel like it reminds me of the early phases of a Bumping Mikes thing, like a new version of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Because when him and Jeff Ross are together, it's like when David Lucas and Tony are firing on each other. I feel the exact same way when Jeff Ross and David Taylor are near each other. Yeah. I get that same excited feeling of like, ooh, some shit's going to pop off. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm telling you, dude, there's a little dude that nobody believes in. He's going to school every day like, my Minecraft dude is killing it. Do you get that imposter syndrome thing ever? Oh, man, so much. I'm... I'm somewhere between feeling extremely uncomfortable where I'm at in my career right now or overly comfortable where I'm at in my career.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So I'm either having to catch myself and go, whoa, big fella. Right. Come on now, dog. You were just in jail. People that knew you six years ago hate you still. You know what I'm saying? It's like – And then I have situations where I'm like, I don't belong here. I'm having that moment right now. This is my first album, Joe, that is going to be in a fight for the number one album in the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Never dreamed. Now, this is like, what the fuck am I doing here? You know what I mean? Like, that's a different world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
How many songs do you have that I tell my friends about like it's my song?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But being Jelly Roll got me to the point that they're now saying I might have a number one album. You probably will.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then you're in a place where you're like, holy fuck. And that's where the imposter syndrome comes in because you're like, yo, I wasn't even... That's where friends are born.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I didn't have a Billboard Hot 100 song until 36 months ago.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's real. I am true. You feel it. I mean, you know me. I can't believe this is happening.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And like to me, Ron White has done more of that than I have more Ron White bits memorized than any other comedian. just by default of how good he is at weaving these little quick two-minute stories of just complete white trashery and drunkery, which is just my fucking specialty. I feel like he grew up on my street. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's the fucking wildest thing ever, dude. It is, and we deserve it. I was just with our boy Brigham doing some blood work and getting some shit to make my feel better. Broke my heel. And we were talking about that of like living in the gratitude of it and realizing, even you saying that we're such a special simulation. Yeah. This the time of this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I know I keep going back to the same point, but it's where my heart is right now is watching me and a bunch of guys that were all at this kind of same thing at the same time three or four years ago that you could feel the teapot bubbling and all of us being like a little left of center. You know what I mean? I wasn't supposed to be in country music the way that they've embraced me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Outside looking in, you'd have never guessed. Outside looking in, you could have never said that Kill Tony would be the number one live podcast on the internet. You know what I mean? Or that Schultz's podcast would be... Or that...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
me and Zach Bryan would have this similar, of course he ended up being way bigger than me, but this like similar kind of, we're writing songs our whole life that nobody really heard. And then all of a sudden they got just, it's probably the craziest synergies that could have ever happened in any scenario for me in any way. And it's inspired me to get healthy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's like gave me purpose and I've never felt more loved. I've never felt more warmed or welcomed. I spent so much time feeling the opposite of loved, you know? Um, Even walking in here and playing with Carl, there was a time in my life where I would have walked in here and that dog would have let y'all know I was not a good person. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You would have just looked and been like, why is Carl acting weird with this big guy? You know what I mean? Yeah, just what's up with kids were the same way, dude. Kids would look at me and squall. You know what I mean? And it's really inspired me to start focusing on my health, too. Dude, I'm down 100 pounds now. Officially down 100 fucking pounds.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Dude. That's a massive accomplishment. Thank you, brother. It's been all food. I'm working out. I'm walking. But what I've learned is as I'm losing the weight, it's inspiring me to just keep going. By nature, I want to go walk and do more stuff because I'm fucking lighter. I feel better. So when the homie's like, you want to go play basketball? We're playing basketball three days a week now. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You want to hear the coolest act of love, Joe? I'll try not to get emotional talking about this, but my whole band has watched me fight. cocaine addiction. They watched me get off Coke. They watched me get off lean. They've watched me figure my life out slowly. And they knew that the last mountain for me was food. So we started putting a real structure around. I hired a real nutritionist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He's out here with me now. I mean, like I'm only eating his food. I'm just like super with it. We're getting anything that could, you know, out of the green room for just, so I'm working out every day, walking around the arenas. And one day they have a basketball court because we're fucking playing. This is insane, by the way, that I'm playing fucking NBA arenas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And like I'm playing where the fucking Orlando Magic. I'm on an Orlando Magic court. Like what the fuck? I feel like a fucking fat shack. But so the first day it's just like me and like three or four dudes. The crew heard. Dude, the next day, 30. The whole crew showed up for me. And they don't, you know, these dudes are just, they're just there because they know it's helping me kind of.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So now three days a week, we're in basketball courts and having full blown fucking tournaments. And it's been so good for me because it's like reconnecting to my childhood in this really weird way of like, I grew up in a community where there were basketball courts and we would all go play. You know what I mean? It's like, it's been really like. It's been the best experience ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I'm getting to do it in like back to that weird shit. Not only are you experiencing this with your friends and people you love, and then you're doing it at the San Antonio Spurs court. And the San Antonio Spurs coach is out there giving you pointers and fucking being the referee.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you're the Sacramento Kings coach is fucking shooting with you. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
This ain't real life. No. It can't be. It's unreal, dude. Leaving Nationwide Arena. But I was also telling Brigham, talking about the humility, too, is that I'm still nervous walking in here. We're friends. And, you know, what you tell us all the time is what you told Bernie. You know what he's going to tell you? We're just two friends talking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I was like, I know what 20 million motherfuckers listening, dog. I'm not falling for that. We're just two buddies talking shit. Don't look at the sun. That's it. You're right. You know how much I needed to hear that? Yeah. Especially like because I don't get in my head about stuff. But just this week was the first time the label called and said, hey, we don't want to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We want to put this on your radar because it might make you want to promote the record. You might have a number one album. And I was like, whoa, dude, this shit wasn't even in my mind. When I had a number five album last year, you couldn't have told me I didn't have a number one album.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm building the momentum. I had a moment the other day. I was telling Schultz this. It was a really small win, but for a lifelong food addict. Joe, I was up to 550-some pounds. I was having to weigh myself at meat places, you know. And I was telling him that I used to walk in, and like a drug addict, I would scan the room and make a count of everything I could eat. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like, if you had, like, the little baby Snickers and a little thing, or da-da-das, and like, the other day I was in my green room, and somebody was in the green room, and they picked up a piece of candy and said, you want one of these? Because we just got hit in a dab or something. I didn't even know the candy was in there, Joe. Because normally they don't put shit like that in my room.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And that was the first time I was like, oh, I'm on to something. Like, I'm fucking winning right now. Like, I didn't even notice. I could have been eating them for five hours. I didn't know. I would have ate them all. I didn't even scan for candy. It's not even a thought now when I walk into places. Is there a candy dish here? You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That used to be literally one of the first things I would look for. You know, is there a candy dish here?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I've had to make so many different small habit changes, but it's been the fucking... I was just telling Bubba out there, and I was telling Bruce on the way in here, I feel this good just losing 100 pounds, Joe, and I'm still... I've never told my weight, but I'm going to tell it here because I want some accountability from people. I'm 420-something now, 420, and...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Imagine I'm talking, I'm walking around different, talking different. My shoulders are setting different. I'm fucking my wife different. I'm just kind of, you know, I'm moving different. Bro, you probably have crazy powerful legs. Dude, it's crazy. I bet you have massive leg muscles. I've been going to the gym now. Listen, dude, as much as you can fit on that thing, I'm throwing. Of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Joe, man, my goal is when I come back and do this next year, it's going to be fucking insane. Like, I've never been more dialed in. I've never cared more about it. I've never been happier. What are you eating? Like, what has he got you eating? Oh, dude, man, he's here. He's actually been really killing it for me. So from eating bad for so many years, my gut has just been fucked.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So we've just been focusing on slowing down the gut. I'm only eating twice a day. I'm eating a fruit snack in between. Do you ever do any fasting? Yeah, I'm trying to fast one day a week now just to work on like the autophagy. So some of these skin cells, so I won't be as full. I don't want to be saggy. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, that's what happens. Somebody told me, and I could have the name wrong here, y'all, but it's called autophagy. Have you heard of this?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Did you have mountains in mind when you romanticized it? Did you ever think of what mountains you would move to if you did it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I think the way they explain it to me is that it has something to do with the elasticity of the skin. And that is what helps. So that's why one day a week, at least every other week, I'm just taking a full 24 hours. But I'm only eating probably eight or nine hours a day now anyway, so I'm kind of intermittent anyways.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I've listened to that podcast with him twice in the last 90 days. Y'all's full three-hour podcast is first here. Just to kind of—I love the way he thinks. Yeah. It's just, you know— He's a brilliant guy. I love—for me, I'm always looking for, like, inspiration as a— As a songwriter, we're always writing a song. You know, as a comedian, you're always looking for a joke. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So that kind of... I'm always looking for that. So when I found that pod, I was like, oh, this dude. And he kind of did what I would... How he looks now is a dream scenario for me. He didn't get, like, crazy big, but he doesn't look, like, saggy sick. Because sometimes when you go from... being as big as we've gotten, you get down to 300 pounds and people start looking at you like, are you okay?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you're like, I'm fucking better than I've ever been. You know what I mean? They're worried. Yeah, they're worried. But they just couldn't imagine. You know what I mean? Even when I just told, I always forget his name, but your guy out there, the archer guy, worked at the archery store, great guy. But I was just telling him that I... Yeah, same thing. Same concept.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Lots of protein, lots of bone broth kind of potatoes. Anything that we're doing, whether it's rice or bone broth, we're not doing a lot of it. But when we do it, we're soaking it in bone broth, keeping it really clean protein style, kind of going low on fats to kind of let my liver kind of reset from just years of me eating. Foods, fatty foods and shitty greases. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So just been kind of taking it slow, man. I'm enjoying it, though. The cool thing is he did Bilal Muhammad's weight cut. He's worked with DC. I found him from that world. So he really gets it. And that's a complicated science. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, Ian does it every time. Said it's pretty effortless, man. Ian says it out of everybody that Bilal is just insanely disciplined.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like when he goes into camp, he's like a different dude.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Jelly, Jelly, Jelly, what the fudge are you doing? Yeah, crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm going to get to see the two champs tomorrow. I'll get to see him, and I'll get to see the Venezuelan vixen. They're both coming. So him and Juliana are coming out to the show. Yeah, I'm super excited, man. Nice. Album release night, Chicago, United Center. First time at the United Center.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
The Dorfman Brothers don't have nothing to do with that one, though, do they?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Did you hear what they did to the Nashville Zanies? So, you know, Brian and them own that building and the through the back bar. So, you know, Zanies doors here, the front door, not the door. We go to the front door, whatever that place was right here. He's turned that into a place called the lab now. And it's like a 50-person smaller. It would be like The Little Boy. Oh.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It would be like The Little Boy. So he calls it The Lab at Zany's now. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it's super. It's really, really cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. No, this place, they call it The Lab. It's beautiful. Speaking of that show, God, I'd love to see that show back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But just for us having fun today purposes, imagine if that show came back right now with Art. It could. It could come back. And the explosion that's happening right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
No, he should do it, man. I think about guys like Brian. I would cry laughing to hear whatever his story was. I think about the Joey Diaz, the Mother Mary story. You know, I'm going to that, you know, like there are stories on there that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
People have stories of some fucking nutty thing that happened on the road or what have you. No, it's crazy. I'd love to start seeing people in my genre try stuff like that more. They ever did it. Just try to like I'd love to hear, you know, Jason Aldean tell a story. You know what I mean? If he got with somebody backstage, like one of the homies, you know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like if Rosebud was back there with him and was like, all right, tell me your best story and I'll punch it up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I think Jason Daldin would at least kill a six-minute story. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's got at least one good story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's funny how, I love when anything you talk about has a theme. And this one has been storytelling. And that's, it's all I ever wanted to do. Before I was writing songs, because I knew that music could be written that way, I would just write these kind of stories for my mother. You know what I mean? I would just try to, you know the story. We've talked about it a lot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But it was a way to connect with her, even before music. And then when I found out music was her shit, I was like, oh, this is the double connection. Like, oh, this is, I'm doubling down on this. And I still to this day think I'm writing for my mama. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like to this day, I'm still like when I'm really finishing a song, I'm thinking to myself, I wonder what my mama would think about this, you know, in this really weird way. Like first thought, like I wonder mama like this, you know, does this represent? And then the second thought is, why does this song exist?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's always my second following thought is first of all, I was like, well, my mama dig it. And then the second is, you know what I mean? It's like, and the second is like, why does this exist though? You know what I mean? What could it do? What purpose could it actually serve? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And if it's a, it could be anything as much as it's just, you know, it just makes me happy or it could make people happy or it could make people move is enough of a reason. Out of these 100 plus songs that you've written recently, how many of them you think you'll ever record? I recorded probably 30 something of them. Wow. I'm going to put out probably 28. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I think four or five will probably end up circulating next year through other artists that'll just cut some of the songs. Because sometimes I'll write a song, Joe, but I'm just not the vessel. And I know it when I'm writing it. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Sometimes. Sometimes. But sometimes you just know that it's like, I couldn't sing this with a certain amount of conviction. You know, like for me personally. You know, it's not that I couldn't, you know... I don't know. I don't know if this is a good comparison, but it'd be like I could write a song about hating my wife, but I could never sing it because I don't really hate my wife. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I could never sing it with conviction. Now, as an as a songwriter, do I have the skill set to write a song about hating my wife? For sure. But would I ever sing one and represent myself that way? And it's just not just I couldn't sing it with conviction. But there might be a guy in Nashville who just got his heart broke. Well, you know Colter Wall's Kate McKinnon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
he told Post Malone Post Malone hit him up and Post was like hey man I'd love to work and pretty much he was like yeah if you ever want to come to the ranch we can maybe write a song or something he's like Post is like if you want to fly to the middle of Canada we can write a song but if you think I'm getting off this ranch to write with you fuck no yeah he really works on a ranch yeah
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's how Cody Johnson is, too, though. Cody Johnson flies out on the—I joke with him all the time. I'm like, you're a cowboy that plays a country music singer on the weekends. Because, you know, I mean, he plays music for real, but he literally goes home and ranches Monday through Thursday. You'll FaceTime this dude, and he'll be out just in his ranch somewhere tagging cattle. That's amazing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I mean? And then Friday night he'll fly and go sell out two nights at the Staples Center Friday and Saturday.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It seems like everybody's all peaceful and shit. We'll stay up and watch the rodeo late at night because PBR plays on TV or whatever. Dude, I'll watch that stuff. I don't know much about it, but I just can't quit watching. I think it's the wildest shit ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I love watching stuff that doesn't seem real, though, right? Is it J.B. Mooney? Is that how you say his name? Is it Mooney? Mooney, right? I think it's Mooney.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's crazy. How cool is that? Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, but we're talking about a dude that, you know, with no helmet, cigarette lit in his mouth. Animal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like, what the fuck are you doing? It is so American, dude. Especially when you had the cigarette. You're just like this. It almost looked like it was out of a movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
With horns. Yeah. And when it gets you off of it, it wants to hurt you afterwards. It wants to stomp you. It's pissed off. Yeah, man. Fuck all that noise. I can't quit watching them, though. I don't know why. I'm just so attracted. I've always been attracted. I loved songs about rodeos, though, is what did it. We talked about this before, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
There was 90s music, had all these old-school, really cool rodeo records. Mm-hmm. And I feel like somewhere, it's kind of like everything goes in themes. And then country music went through like, you know, the hunting and fishing era. But in the 70s, it was more of the storytelling era, like the poncho and lefty style stuff. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But to me, the 90s cowboy music was like still some of the best country music ever made.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You want to hear a cool rodeo story? Reba McIntyre got discovered at one. At a rodeo? You want to talk about a real cowgirl? Reba McEntire was like Oklahoma or somewhere, and she would sing the national anthem at all the local rodeos because they knew she was a local singer, but she was a real cowboy. So one night she was she was singing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Oh, this is, you know, back in the day when it was old school, like a record exec discovered you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I mean? And like flew you to Nashville and signed you to a record deal. It's a true story, though. Reba was just like did it because she loved it. Like like if you were singing in church, she just every weekend they'd have the rodeo in town and she'd go sing the national anthem for.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's hard. I think about, I think about doing something for 10 years to no avail. Right. It's really, really hard, man. You've all, this is what I tell people. I was a desperate, delusional dreamer job and everything I regret, I did out of desperation, but I don't regret one thing I did as a delusional dreamer. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Cause there was moments, um, we were, we were, I did this, I went to the, um, juvenile yesterday and, uh, uh, Columbus, Ohio, I went to go play cards with the kids in their units before my show. I try to do stuff like that all the time. And we were all talking about, you know, time, energy, stuff into this and songs. And I talk about writing 170 songs last year.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I was like, do y'all know that there was so many moments in my life where I in hindsight, I'm glad nobody sat me down, really, that I had to have looked fucking crazy. You know, that kid asked me, he said, when did you feel like you made it? I was like, I think that's why God kept blessing me is that me and DJ Highlight, that's my DJ from Columbus, Ohio. He was there with me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We did the one o'clock slot at Rock on the Range 12 years ago. Right. The festival, you know, Rock on the Range, Jamie. This is a big deal where Jamie's from. We played the fifth stage of five stages. So we played the smallest stage there. 30 minutes after they opened the gates. Joe, we started drinking at 10 o'clock that morning because we were rock stars in our minds. We had made it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We were that delusional. We were backstage, full-blown shooting shots and celebrating. There was 40 people there. There was thousands of people just walking right past our stage to the stage they were going to. We didn't care. We had made it. You know what I mean? You're telling me we got $1,500 to do this? This is insane. We have arrived.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I'd go home, my old beat-up band in my whole neighborhood probably had to look at me like I was fucking nuts. You know what I'm saying? But nobody said nothing to me. I had to look like the crazy person kind of, right? At this point, I'm in my early 30s, mid-30s even, and they're like, All right, big guy. But you're at Rock on the Range. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You can feel an energy shift? Yeah. I felt an energy shift in life in that room that night. I was like... this is fixing to explode. Like everything associated with this club, everything associated with Tony, everything associated with Joe is fixing to fucking rocket ship. And it felt like almost like I'm getting goosebumps, Joe. I'm not even bullshitting. I'm getting goosebumps.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I think you should be celebrating. Yeah. You're supposed to be. Yeah. And when I told that kid that it was cool to see his face kind of light up, he was like, man, that's perspective. You know what I mean? I was like, dude, I was... I would celebrate whenever I would get a clap in here when I was in juvenile, when we would have freestyle Fridays in juvenile.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And if I spit one line that got a, ooh, man, I went to my cell, did push-ups, and started looking in the mirror different. You know what I'm saying? I was like, it's fucking fixing to happen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Right. That kind of delusion will just celebrate every moment I had. I made a moment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
This is rock on the range, dude. This is 2017, probably. Wow. This was our second time. I think we'd made it to the second stage by then. Yeah, this is 16. Yep, this is the second time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, it's crazy. I'm just getting used to doing shows when it's dark.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Shows when it's bright out are kind of crazy. Dude, it is unforgiving, especially when you're trying to – you're working. You're trying to build something. You're looking out, and there's a lot of people that are coming to give you a chance. but they don't know anything about you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Man, I tell you, there's a line in a song, Joe, that's an old song. It's called Just Breathe. And she goes, the end of the song, she ends the song by going, 2 a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song. Because if I get it all out on paper, it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I almost get emotional when I tell people that, because to me, that is the greatest line ever written as to how I feel. You know what I mean? Like this idea that I have to get this out of me. It's like I don't when I write, it's not like. I'm, I have to, it's like a, a thing in me that's burning in me. It's like, I have to get this out of me. Brother, I wake up out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I wrote, I wrote the, somebody saved me on a sheet of paper out of a dead sleep. Really? Notebook side of the bed. Just like I wrote notes here with you. And you'd say something that would inspire me. One of these is a song title right here, right now. You said it earlier. I'll tell you off, tell you off, tell you off camera.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I wrote a song on the album. It didn't make the album, but Burt one night said something. He was like, yeah, man, this is where dreams go to die. And he was talking about a bar he used to go to where everybody would talk about what they would do but never did, so he quit talking about what he was going to do. But what he don't know is I just quietly grabbed my phone and wrote, dreams die here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I'm saying? I went and wrote the song. It sucked. I'm going to send it to him, but I tried. You know what I'm saying? You never know. Maybe revisit it in a year or two. Yeah. But I connect with that in a way that's – writing is – It's an outlet for me. It always was. It was always a way to express and to tell stories around me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I do too. I got a small legal pad beside my bed, like the little one. And I got one. This is a crazy place. But I have one on top of my commode. That's a good place for it. So in case I'm going in there to pee or something and on the way there just – Because sometimes, too, I'll have to grab my phone and do melodies in the middle of the night because I have dreamed of melodies before.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like you hear it. Like stone cold melodies in my dreams. Like the Somebody Save Me melody was in my dream. The first words. The problem was me and D-Ray joke about it. It took us two hours to write the song that would have took us 20 minutes to write because I was convinced Somebody Save Me was supposed to be the chorus.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I know I'm weird when I talk about stuff like this, Joe, but this is how the universe works. I don't think I was wrong. Because when Eminem ended up taking that song, you know Eminem redid that song?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, you got to hear it. It's crazy. Eminem redid the song. And he took the verse from Somebody Save Me, the first verse, and made it the chorus. Whoa. So his version of it is he's rapping, and then my first verse is the chorus. And then he raps again, and my first verse is the chorus again. So maybe I was kind of right. Wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
In the groom, I kept going back to like, you sure we should start this way?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Joe, I'm fucking flipping. It gets even deeper, dog. John Manili, my manager, calls me and goes, he says, Paul Rosenberg just called me. That's Em's manager. He says, I think Eminem wants to do something to save me. I didn't ask John Manili right then, Joe. I said, man, I hope he takes the first verse and samples it. That's all I said. And John said, whatever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I don't know what he wants to do with it. We just send it over. Because, you know, Eminem's the greatest ever. You don't send him instructions or notes or ideas. You know what I'm saying? You're just like, yo. And we didn't talk about that until we met. And he was just as whipped out, too. Because the funny part about him was...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He was struggling with whether or not he was going to keep the original chorus and do Somebody Save Me at the end or do Somebody Save Me as the chorus and put the original chorus at the end. And he ended up doing Somebody Save Me in the original chorus at the end. So he fought the battle the opposite of the way I fought it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
No, I'm always, it's like the, yeah, you're right. I'm in that space. I'm in my stride. I'm in my quest of, I'm looking for it at every angle right now. I'm like, I wrote a song. I wrote so many, it's talking about storytelling again. Sorry, I keep going here. It's my fucking storytelling podcast. I probably have four songs on this podcast that I wrote just very old school storytelling.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Like the music I grew up loving, like how Willie Nelson would tell these stories and these characters. Yeah. And it has been so, talking about muses, I wasn't sure if I was gonna tell this story, but I will. As a part of my journey, my mental health and with things I struggle with, I will pop into when I'm home in a or a meetings, even though I still drink and smoke pot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I don't claim to be a part of the program because I have so much respect for those who are sober, like can really live the clean, sober life by the program. But it's helped me so much not to go back to some of my demons. It's taught me about gratitude lists. It's just helped me a lot. And I go to, you know, a few a year, never say nothing, just sitting back quietly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm just in there trying to learn, you know. Never went in there thinking like an artist. Just kind of going there thinking like an addict. So I just want to be an addict in here. That's why I don't talk. And I watched a man having a breakdown in there. And this happens. You know what I mean? People are coming in here. I mean, it's an AA meeting, right? And he's shaking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And at the end they go, does anybody want to get a 24-hour chip or a desire to change? And the guy said, I drank this morning, but I do have a desire. And he was already shaking where he hadn't drank in five, six hours. And... The guy goes, old head walks over, most gangster shit I've ever seen, puts his arm around him and says, it's all right, baby. None of us came in here on a winning streak.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Dude, I was like, I had no intention of going to this meeting. The only reason I even went, believe it or not, wasn't because I was having a craving, even. I had an hour to kill on the way to a writing session. And I was like, well, fuck it. I could either spend this hour scrolling on fucking TikTok and thinking about how fucking Ukraine's going to kill us, or... You know what I mean? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I went into the meeting and I left and I walked in the writer's room and it was like, you know, it's fun when we write together because everybody's got an idea. I said, boys, I don't know if this is the idea, but I want to tell you what just happened to me. I just seen one of the most beautiful acts of humanity I've ever seen. Just because this guy's shaking. He's crying.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And this dude's walking. I'm getting emotional because I'm watching it. The whole room's getting emotional. This dude, just super cool, just kind of walks over. Almost like, I've seen this before. He was the only one. All of us were sad. This dude was happy. He walked over with a smile like he'd seen it. He was like, oh, don't worry, baby. Nobody comes in here on a windy street.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And so I went back to the meeting a week later. We started the song. The guy ended up being like 25, 30 years clean. They came in to help the other guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So we wrote the song. It's called Winning Streak. I've sung it on Saturday Night Live. Wow. It was cool. It's not even out yet. It'll be out on the album today.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's just, man, you. Yeah. Anytime I see anything that makes me feel something, I feel the need to try to write it. Whether it makes me happy or sad or, you know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I listen to it once a week in the cold plunge because the original version is like seven minutes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So if I start it while I'm getting into my skibbies, song's over, I get out of the cold plunge. Yeah. But it's that song. Dude. How about James Taylor, I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain? The greatest song ever written, Joe. The greatest song ever written. Don't listen to that song when you're sad. Dog. I'll cry if I'm happy, but bro, that song will get you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
every time that's all get you and that's a story too and that motherfucker had a voice man he had a voice what a special voice and it was so effortless joe yeah he um when he opened his mouth it was almost like he was just talking to you like me and you but he would sing like an angel and you know he was self-taught guitar so he plays like shapes and chords that don't really technically exist really yeah he literally because he self-taught himself they'd be like well that's kind of a
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It looks like a G, but you're doing this, not that. It's like, it was crazy, dude. He's authentic. My father, who I named buddies after in my bar, we were driving down to Gulf Shores, Alabama one time. And I was a kid. And we started listening to Fire and Rain. And he starts, my family would tell these stories. about music.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I don't know what it was, but before they would play a song, it was like they would take, and I'm like this to this day, I would take great pride in being like, oh, I'm fixing to show you something. So I'd give you the setup, you know? So my dad goes, I'm not going to set this song up. I'm going to tell you about it afterwards. We're going to listen to it again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Look at him, all this long hair. That was before he went bald.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
In Hot Take, he was married to a woman that is arguably a better songwriter than him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I love that none of that mattered to him, though. Watch this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So my dad tells me this story, Joe. And we are riding down I-65. I've only seen my father cry three times. Give me some more of this, Jamie. Yeah. And we are going down I-65. And we are squalling. I mean, like two children, Joe. My body's aching.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
When I watch this to me, this is some of the best, the whole song, but right here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So simple, but real knows when the cold wind blows, it'll turn your head around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He toured with Carole King forever, right? Do they ever have a relationship? Hopefully. Right? You're talking about another great songwriter. God, dude. Here we go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. I knew I was him. And that's live back when they were like, you know, that was live, live. That might be one of the first diss songs. Right? Right? I think that's the first diss track. Hold on, hold on. When was this song put out?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I've had, talking about James Taylor, I've had fans come up to me and they would be crying. And they go, I'm so sorry I'm crying. And every time I tell them the same thing, I say, don't worry. If I ever meet James Taylor, I'm going to cry. For sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I bet Marvin Gaye was a monster. Oh, my God. I'm just fucking... When did Sweet Home Alabama come out? So you know Sweet Home Alabama was a clapback track. Yeah. It was in the diss world, too, so I think it was right around that early 70s era, too. So it was after that. Your Sylvain came out before it. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Probably the same time, right? It was just a year before.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. Yeah, the idea was, and Neil Young was speaking a lot about what was happening down there in the South at the time, and Ronnie's position was just simply like, hey, man, We stay the fuck out of your business. Stay out of ours.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
No, no. Neil Young apologized later. It was really cool. He owned it. He publicly said Ronnie was right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Oh, they were so funny. You want to talk about people that couldn't get the pussy away from them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. That's 77, so that's Ronnie. Oh, no, that's Johnny. That's Johnny. Once again, how great Gary Rossington was. To me, he's the greatest guitarist that ever lived. Up there with Hendrix and them. He's a Mount Rushmore guitarist. Because I can't name another guitarist, Clapton, of course, that has more riffs that you want to go, you want to hum. Right. Right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Because like... Yo, the Freebird solo. You know what I'm saying? Dude, think about it. Give me three steps. There has not been that since, if you ask me. You know what I mean? Like him, Clapton, Hendrix, they had those kind of guitars. But this was different because it was riffs. It wasn't like a solo. They were singing over these riffs. And the riffs were bigger than the melody sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They captured you. If you tell somebody right now, like, have you ever heard the song Sweet Home Alabama? And they go, how's it go? You wouldn't go sweet. You'd go. Yeah. It's crazy. That's how good Gary was, man. That solo in Free Bird is insane. Oh, it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Oh, the story about Sweet Home Alabama. they're sitting at a sound check and it's just Ronnie and Gary. And Gary's holding electric. And he goes, man, I got this. I just don't know what to do with it. It's... And Ronnie goes, well, hell, just keep playing it. Let me fuck with it. So they just looped that. And that's how they wrote the song. Yeah, dude. I'm such a... I have like...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I got to go. No, dude, they were the best, man. When Gary's family gave me that guitar after he passed away, it still is up there with like my top probably 10 possessions that I've ever been gifted. You know what I mean? I have it in my studio now, and I hung it in a case with the note that his family wrote me with the picture that we took the night he played the guitar.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And I put a lock on the case. Instead of just casing it forever, I put a lock on it so I can still play it. So when we do the album, there's a couple of tracks that we played a Gary Rossington guitar on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Because it was a Gary Rossington played guitar. Wow. And his family, the estate gave it to me right after he passed. Does it sound different? Well, it's an old Les Paul, and it's older, so it's got a different pickup on it. So it's got some different tunes and textures to it. What's the difference between like the older pickups and the newer ones? I don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm not as educated in it as most like real guitarists. I'm a, I'm a campfire guitarist, but it's, you know, over the years they always found different ways to make them. So they were, as they were improving them, but the sounds and textures were getting different. So, but I forgot exactly what he does. Cause he takes a pickup from another guitar and puts it into, I think in a, most of his guitars.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Cause there's a lot of real guitarists that'll like, they'll want to play this guitar, but they'll want to put this from this guitar on this guitar. Cause that's their shit. Yeah, because they like the way, well, I like the pickup on this or I like this and this or I like the way this, you know, whatever. Makes sense. And then they'll have a kind of hodgepodge like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But, you know, something else, when Gary survived that plane crash, let's think about him playing guitar. He had a rod that went from right here, Joe, to his elbow. Oh, my God. And still played the guitar that way. So if you ever watched Gary play the guitar, he always kind of played it high like Charlie Crockett.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But it was – or down here like this because he couldn't full-blown get full extension on the wrist. Yeah. So he was playing all those from 70 – whatever the 70 – when was the plane crash? Jamie, you know? I figured you might know off the top. How many people died in the crash? I know Ronnie did for sure. I think it was two or three. Wasn't Ronnie standing up?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So that video you just showed might have been one of Ronnie's last performances.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's crazy, dude. It is crazy, man. God damn. You said it was 77?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Wow. Just totally different, man. I've gotten so far into there. We've been covering Skinner on the road for years and years anyway. That's probably not a Skinner song I can't play. If we were to go to a bar tonight, you could probably just randomly pick a Skinner song, and I'd go up there and be able to just kill. Just love Skinner, dude. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know the reason, they still tour, and one thing I don't, as a Die Hard fan, I don't object to it a lot. Now that Gary's gone, it's a little rougher, because he was the last living one. But Johnny Van Zandt, which, how are him and Ronnie Ken? I always confuse it. They're cousins, right, or are they brothers? Because remember, the three Van Zands, do I want to talk about a family, Joe?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Johnny, Ronnie Van Zandt created Leonard Skinner, was the first lead singer. Johnny Van Zandt took his plot when he died, and the other Van Zandt brothers, the lead singer of 38 Special. Crazy. Crazy. Yeah, it's the younger brother. So his younger brother took right over. And like I tell people is there's the average Leonard Skinner fan.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's not like me and you like obsessed with him to a degree. They don't know anybody other than him to be their singer because he's been their singer 44 years longer than Ronnie was. That band was only been out for four years when Ronnie died.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Exactly. You know what I mean? So it's like and the fact that it's a true Van Zant and Johnny's still the lead man to this day. So when I go see him, I still feel like I'm watching Ronnie a little bit. Looks just like him. Still got the same long hair. It's Johnny Van Zant, dude. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
No, that's the difference. Johnny's like a really, really calm, cool man. He's also older now. These dudes are all, Ricky Medlock and them, he was with the original group, too, pretty much. He's still there. Them dudes are all in their 70s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They're going to come out for my Jacksonville show. They came and sung with me last time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Johnny and Ricky always come out and sing, man. They're fun. That's awesome. Yeah, dude. It never gets any better. Dude, look at you. You're living the life. It's fucking weird, dude. You're living the life. It's the shit we grew up listening to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. This is weird. Especially people you watched back in your childhood. Yeah. Out of all the comedians I met, the only one I've probably ever made an ass of myself to is Ron White. Because I literally have watched him since I was a teenager. Because he was such a voice for...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I don't want this to come off disrespectful, but being from the South in my household, we thought Jeff Foxworthy was incredibly funny. We liked his books more than his comedy, though, because we felt like his comedy almost felt a little forced to us as Southern people. It just didn't sit right, you know, in my household. In what way? In this way of like.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It was hilarious. All the books, we religiously. But when we're watching a blue collar special as a family, and I know this wasn't the way to watch it in hindsight, we're all waiting on it. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He's the voice of our household, but I'm also in a household full of drunks, by the way. My father's a raging alcoholic. My mother does drugs. All my brothers do drugs. But it was like, you know, we loved Jeff. We love Bill, Larry the Cable Guy. But, man, when we just – Ron was our – you know, he just spoke to –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah. Dierks Bentley goes and plays this, like, with his bluegrass band, like a 200-person bar every week.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, like his little subversion of a bluegrass band. That's how I feel about our songwriting community, too. I've wrote in L.A. and I've had big songs come out of L.A. But Nashville is just, man, it's the killers. You know what I mean? It's the dudes that are just, the dudes and girls down there that are in those rooms every day are snipers. They've been doing it forever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you get to know how to pivot. You know what I mean? Like that's something else that comes with being on that stage a bunch is like the more you do it, the more circumstances you've been up against. Nothing starts to scare you no more. Right. Like even if I walk out to a crowd, like if I'm opening for somebody still and I walk out and I'm like, oh, I'm not really work for this one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm not panicked. I've done it enough now. I'll even watch some guys in my band get a little panicked. We'll be on the second song, and you'll see them going like, why are they not just so excited we're here? I'm like, just relax. It's okay. We're going to get there. You know what I'm saying? Let's just have fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you're kind of responsible for getting the first laugh of the night. You are 100% responsible for it. Man, you've got to break the room.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
If you're one of three, Alexander Kay's doing it on this tour and she's killing it. But it is a rough one because one, you've got your fans that knew you were one of three and they showed up early. So that's the only thing you have to advantage. The rest of it is people literally walking in with popcorn and beer in their hand wondering why the show's already started. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, I tell people all the time, you're not going to be a good performer until you performed in a place where people looked at you like you were interrupting them. Right. You know what I mean? You ever been in a place where you're like, hey, I'm sorry I'm bothering y'all by playing loud music up here. You fucking knew you were coming to a bar, bitch. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's just, you know. But those are the funnest, too, though. I got to open up for Morgan Wallen this year a few times. And it was really fun because in the last few years, we've just been headlining. We haven't got to really, you know, go out and do something that was so much dramatically bigger than us that it made sense for us to do it. And I love Morgan. So I was like, I'm in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And we went out there and it was cool because you feel it immediately. You're like, even with the hits I have, you know, there's 70,000 people here that bought a ticket to see Morgan Wallen for they knew my name was on the bill. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, so there's a lot of people here that are with me, but I'm still having to tell you, I'm still up here like, oh, OK, tonight, you know, I say there's three scenarios in my business. And I don't know if this is probably different for y'all's, but in mine, my three scenarios are this. One is the you're welcome. We're here. Right. Which is the simple like, thank y'all. We thank each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You came to see me. I'm going to give you a great show. Thank you. It's the easy one, right? The other one is the thank you for listening. I appreciate that you gave me enough respect that you sat here and listened to me. And the third one is the one that makes me in. It's the hey, motherfucker, I'm singing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you have to go through a couple hundred of those before you get good. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care. And that's what's been so about like the tick tock explosion is you have these kids that will have this big hit job and they'll have five or six hits in a row and they can start selling 2000 seats at a theater overnight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I think it was by default. It was kind of a universe thing where there was a little bit of stale water that needed to be stirred. Yeah. And when you came, that stale water stirred and it awakened everybody. Like, hold on. There's choices outside of the same routine that we've been. Because, you know, I mean, I'm sure y'all's life was store, store, store, weekends out, store, store.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's kind of like the podcasters that have a quick, quick flip and they go to the comedy clubs on a Friday.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But can't make nobody laugh or stay. These kids go straight into 2,000 seat rooms and then stand up there like, I've never done a fucking show. I've never stood in front of anybody. Oh, my God. Imagine getting a big TikTok hit, Joe. Never doing a show in your life and showing up. You know what I mean? Or imagine it's even worse. They put you on an opening tour for somebody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They're like, we got an amphitheater act that'll let you be two of four. This'll be great. And you're going out there looking at 6,000 people. Oh, my God. You've never stood up in a bar. I'm watching it happen to people all the time. I'm having to grab these kids and kind of mentor them now. And it's the flip side of it where, like, booking agents are dragging them to the slaughter. Of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They just want to make money. They don't give a fuck. And here's the problem. Imagine you're a kid. You're 20 years old, 22 years old. You've got a big successful record, and you're going to meet booking agents. You're excited. I've been there. You know? And the first one's like, we're going to put you right in 2,000-seat rooms. You're going to get $22,000 a night. You're like, woo! What? !
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
A night? And we're going to do it three nights every weekend. Oh my God, I'm rich. I'm buying a Corvette. That's fucking it. Immediately. And then you go to the next booking agent and they're like, now hear me out. My plan is for you to go play these 200 cap rooms like the Hi-Fi in Indianapolis, the End in Nashville. We're going to go do that for six months.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We're going to get like 40 shows under your belt. You'll get like $1,300 a night, $1,200 a night. And they're like, fuck you. The other guy just said I'm getting $25,000 a night immediately. But this guy actually knows what he's doing. You know what I mean? This guy actually is doing it right, but they go back to the money.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then they end up having to circle back, and they've got to re-figure it out anyway. I tell people all the time, you might be able to skip the line a little bit, but you can't cheat the game. You know what I mean? You had to put them hours in one way or the other. The same thing with fighters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, and it's like the perfect example of this in the UFC to me is one guy could be Sugar Sean who went on to be that guy right immediately. I know he just had his loss, but I mean, he still looks like sugar to me. You know, that kid's tough. And the other one could be that kid that we all love. But I always confuse it. Was it Hooper or Hopper?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
The 19-year-old kid, he had a Sugar Sean kind of thing going. He was a contender series guy, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And to me, that's kind of the tale of the same kid, you know what I mean, where it's like for Sugar, it kind of worked. But this is what I tell my people all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Good. Yeah, no, you could tell it was a big weight cut, especially for such a kid. His frames, they're kids. I think we still haven't seen what Sean's real man body is going to look like yet completely. Is he 30 now? Okay, so we see him. But what they say is 25 or 26 now before you actually see a full development.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
There's still a growing thing that's growing. Yeah, I guess it's different too, man. I'm thinking about that kid like Chase is that getting put into that national spotlight at the biggest fighting organization in the world at 19. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you're like – Tavondre Sweat is the defensive end for the Tennessee Titans. I'm a huge Titans fan. He was our first-round pick this year defensive end. I went to go hang out with him because I just think he's great. I think he's going to be a superstar. He's 22 years old. He's probably 6'5", 300-and-something pounds. True. And he can't grow a full beer jet. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's almost like I'm swear, dude. It was like feeling the grunge movement in the 90s. Like when you first heard a little something, you were like, this is different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I'm saying? It's patchy. You know how it is when you're in your early 20s? It's still patchy. And I'm looking at Jeffrey Simmons, who's our veteran defensive end, who's 6'6", just cut like a... And I was like... oh, that's where you're going to be at in four years, three years. You know what I mean? Because we picked up Jeffrey Simmons as a rookie too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's like even at 22 years old, they haven't fully developed in yet. I'm looking at Devondre Sweat right now and I'm like – You still got a baby face. You know what I mean? Look at baby face Sweat. You know what I mean? But you see this face of him right here? That's all you need to know about his personality. That's who he is as a human. He's the sweetest dude ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But you can still tell by the look of his face. You know what I mean? That face is going to slim down and get a little more, you know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Every time we snap the ball, because the wide receivers, they're going to hand fight. Backfield, there's going to be some action, but not full contact every play. Right. Every single play. As soon as they say, what? These two linemen are fucking collision coursing. Jesus. And they're both hitting each other with the intention to try to knock the other one down first, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
The goal is like, if I could hit you and knock you down and go right past you, after that I just got to fight my way around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Full-blown athletes their whole life, been playing since they were eight. Colliding with each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They don't even touch it. No. That was when Nate Bargossi hosted Saturday Night Live, not this time, but last year. He did that skit joke about it coming from the UK. And he was like, and we will have a sport named football. And they were like, oh, where you'll kick a ball? They'll go, no. And they'll go, so you never kick the ball? They go, sometimes. Sometimes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's so funny about trying to explain football to somebody not from here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Man, that's what I'm saying. The water is complete. I mean, it is...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
What are you talking about? It's the American way, dude. It's like, hey, we don't care how y'all do temperature everywhere else.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We're like, nah, I don't like it. You'll love that Nate skit there because that's what he does. He just kind of goes through trashing all these ideas. The best part is Kenan looks at him at the new skit and goes, what about my people? Will the slaves be freed after the war? He said they will be freed after a war. But not this one. Just fucking, I don't know. It was a good skit, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It was really funny. He's a funny dude. Another Nashville guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's a simulation, Joe. I think it might be. I just couldn't believe that I'd be in a place where Theo Vaughn would, one, be my buddy. He came to my L.A. show. It just made me so happy. I almost cried when I seen him. I was so excited. But then to have him, you know, just fuck, dude. I said this a lot. There's a dream for an artist.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
There's nothing more pop culture than being brought up in a comedy special. Like, if you was an artist back in the old days, and you got brought up on an HBO special, you were on fucking fire. You could not be bigger. You know what I'm saying?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So it's like, I have those, that to me is like those unreal moments when you watch a guy like Theo with his platform impersonating me to a T, and we're friends too, and it's just like... I would have never even I never thought I'd win an award to give a speech or more or less that the speech would be so viral that a comedian would have a impression of it. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's like it's like I don't know. It's the greatest. That's the greatest compliment you can be paid in pop culture is if a comedian will burn on you a little bit. That's hilarious. That one was perfect. I'm still like, that's my, like, the first time I get dropped in a special, I'm going to lose my shit. It's going to remind me of little me watching HBO specials. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's how I describe your club. I was like, it's the gym for the greatest comedians in the world Tuesday through Thursday. And then the other greatest comedians in the world come and rent it from Friday to Sunday. I was like, it's crazy, dude. It's like no matter what day of show you are.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Theo's such a, hi. We're trying to steal him from Nashville. God, I know. We're trying to steal him. Well, listen, for what it's worth, I think the wife and I are on the way, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, my wife was born in Houston. Oh, okay. She's always had Texas in her heart. I went out on the river up here, and it's just... Come on. I'm coming, brother.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I love it, dude. I just love the city. I love the space. Before I got here last night, just the few people that knew I was coming, I'd already got texts from my friends down here, from Carrie to Bruce to people that, you know, just even my wife was like, you love it there. I was like, she loves Texas anyway, so she's all in. We're talking about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
We'll always be back and forth because Nashville's always Nashville to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's something else I was talking to his manager's name, Scooter. Have you ever met Scooter? Yeah. Scooter's the best. And I was like, I think if I came down there, we would get, you know, if I brought the culture, the way I approach songwriting in Nashville here. I think we could have a little paradigm shift down here, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know what I mean? Let's go. You feel me, bubba? Let's go. Come on, man. A musical mothership. Let's go. I've told you this before, drunk, and I meant it then and I mean it now. I'm going to come to you one day, and it's not going to surprise you, I hope, with a concept about doing the mother. You're just giving me the right to call it the music mothership in Nashville.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'll give you the right right now. All right, cool. Go for it. I got a plan, man. Because what y'all do for comedy, we have singers. Have you ever been to a writer's round? No. Joe, when you come to Nashville, please, please come a little early and let me take you to a writer's round. Okay. You will have a ball.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And it's the coolest thing ever because it's a dude, not being funny, but a dude that looks like me if I wasn't me or a dude that looks like young Jamie. And then he sings Live Like I'm Dying by Tim McGraw. And he tells the most heartfelt story about where he was at in his life when he wrote the song and how he came up with the concept for it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And it's this beautiful thing. And there's only one place in town that's really famous for it. It's called the Bluebird Cafe. They happen everywhere. And the first time I left the mothership, I was like, I'm doing this for music. I'm going to create this same culture for our songwriters. Because what happens is if you can create a place where people feel safe, they show up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So what happens is, because like, I don't go to the Bluebird Cafe a lot because it's a pain in the ass to get in and out of. So if one of my friends calls, like, hey, I'm at the Bluebird. It's a legendary spot and I love it. They're like, will you come sing something with me? It's like, you know what I mean? There's no structure. You built your club for comedy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You knew that if the comedians were happy, they would show the fuck up. And that if you did everything you could to cater it to the comedians first, that they would come and bring their best and the best comedians would be there, which means that people were going to come see the best art, right? Same concept I'm going to try to do with music. It's my next move, dude.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
No, do it. I just want to call it the Music Mothership. It's a great idea. And we'll talk about the logo because I want to kind of do a music. I want to do like a guitar version of the alien. You know what I'm saying? Do it. Do it up. Do it up. Imagine you're a little alien with a guitar. You know what I'm saying? And call it the Music Mothership.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, for sure. Same kind of idea. Take the phone. So you know what else happens too? I thought about this. If I take the phones like y'all do, then it becomes a laboratory. Yeah. Right? Because then it goes from like, not only will I sing you the hit I just wrote, how about I got a song Morgan Wallen's finna put out next month that nobody's heard? Ooh. Ooh. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And it's a safe place. Morgan shows up to sing it. Nobody's videoing. Nobody's picturing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, that a bunch of people that are Mothership fans wrote on paper. Yeah. It gets wild immediately. They're fucking nuts. There wasn't a warm-up question. Brian Simpson is so good at it, by the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Can I tell that story? You can cut this if you don't want me to tell it. But my favorite story I tell about you is my time at the comedy club with you. It was one of the first times I did this pod. I think you had shows that night and I went to both of them. And the first one was killer. But the second one, you had gotten a little slippery and it was fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It was it was it was like because I remember right before you walked out there, you even looked at me. That's the word you said. I felt a little slippery. It's just a little loose. You had your cup in your hand and I just seen a twinkle in you. I was like, oh, I'm staying because I was going to leave. I'd already seen the show, you know, and you did two shows. I was like, oh, I got to see this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I think this is going to be a little different. It was the fun ones. Yeah, it was fun, man, because I got to watch the same set, but you fuck around a little more and kind of get lost in it sometimes just having fun with it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, like you could tell you were like you did the first one like this is what I know I got. And the second one, you had a couple of cocktails like I'm going to riff on this point a little bit. Just fuck off. Sometimes when you do that, you have the best part of the joke.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then you go and test them and chew the meat and spit the fat.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, just constant. Time under pressure. Yeah. Me and my daughter, she writes songs. She's already so much better than I was at 16. But she would come to me a couple years ago and she'd be like, hey, I want to put some of this stuff out. I've been writing all this stuff. And I was torn because I was like, well, you should have the right to put out whatever you want. That's the freedom that exists.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But I know something you don't know, that you just wrote your first 30 songs. And they're incredible for your first 30 songs. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you go go write 100. And let's see if we can find five that are worth rewriting, rework and refiguring out. You know what I mean? And I was cool. It taught me a lot about her personality because she was like, I get it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
She got it immediately. I wouldn't got it at 15. You know what I mean? She got it. She was like, cool, no problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Just... There was... My daddy, I sat down with him at a bar called The Tin Roof on the Mummery Street one night, Joe, and I looked my dad in the eye and I said, I'm done. I said, I've done everything I can. I remember I was probably 29 years old. It was probably a decade ago. And I said, Dad, I've been out of jail five years or four years, whatever. I've done everything I can in this business.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know how hard I've worked. Do you think our brother Roger will give me a job on a meat truck? Because my father sold meat. So did my brother. He said, I know your brother will give you a job on the meat truck, but I want to give you some perspective. I said, I'm open for a healthy dose of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And you were like, this could be something. And then it just turned out to be the explosion. It's like, I felt that happening. So to see Tony at fucking Madison Square Garden and then to see how y'all showed up for Tony at Madison Square Garden, every fucking comedian on earth came to see that dude to fucking kiss him on his fucking cheek.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He said, you've only been out here trying this as hard as you possibly can for five years, just five, four years, four and a five years. I said, dad, that's five years. He said, if you went to Vanderbilt, you still wouldn't have your bachelor's degree. Joe, it's true. Right. It's so true. It covered me. And he said, Jason, if you're working as hard as you really is, I know you are.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
If you're really writing every day, if you're doing shows every week and I was opening up 50 bucks a night. I mean, you know, my story is that old school get in the van and go do a thousand shows for fucking gas money. You know what I mean? He's like, if you're really doing that, there's no way it's not going to work. If you're really doing it, not you're faking it, not you're half assing it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
If you're really this is all that matters to you. If you were going to Vanderbilt right now and you did it for another five years, you'd finally be a brain surgeon. He said, if I was you, I'd wait and see if I was a brain surgeon. I swear, dude, I'll never forget. And I'll never forget calling him crying the first time I moved into a neighborhood with a surgeon. You know what I mean? Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You know, when you call him, like, you won't fucking believe. I just met my neighbor. Guess what he does? What? He's a fucking plastic surgeon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, that old man knew something, though. But he just knew that the law of work would never work against us. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then trying to block it out to make the art. Exactly. Yeah. If you can't allow it to be the muse for it. For me, it was a little different because it became the muse. And the chaos that was happening around me just became – I had a moment where – and this is such a cool epiphany I had, Joe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
For the longest time, I thought I was special because I was from Antioch, Tennessee, and I grew up in a certain kind of way around certain kind of people and that I was special because that was – I hung on to that like I'm different. And then I realized what was happening was I was just like everybody else.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
That's what the superpower really was, is that every fucking neighborhood in America is like Antioch almost. You know what I mean? So it was like a totally different thing. So I started realizing, oh, this isn't this is the muse. I'm speaking for every man when I'm writing just the chaos that's happening around me right now. This is the every man's story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It was in my songwriting, I'm going to say 2015, 16-ish, I realized that I was trying to tell special stories. And that God had put me in a situation. He was screaming at me to tell a story of a group of people that had never had their story told. But I was just going out of my way to try to come up with a special story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then when I started being like, you know what? No, I'm just going to write about my neighbor who's struggling with drug addiction. I'm just going to write a song about my baby mother because I'm infuriated that she left our daughter high and dry like this because of drugs. You know what I mean? Like, I just started writing from that perspective. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And then I realized that it was connecting with people because it was the every man story. You know what I mean? I almost called this album Cinderella Man. Right. And I'll tell you why I didn't. But I thought I watched the movie and I was like, I had a moment in that movie where when he's walking, you've seen the movie, right? Y'all all seen the movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
He's walking in a, for those who haven't, it's about an old boxer who in the depression, it kind of was on a losing streak, kind of long in the tooth. James Pratt. James Pratt. They would call him a journeyman is what we call him now. Just did look like you're never going to work out for him. Working, couldn't get a job on a loading dock almost. Family split and bred.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
One of the greatest movies ever. Russell Crowe, right? Yep. And he comes out, and towards the end, he ends up fighting this championship fight, and it's a crazy movie to watch. But when he's running, he goes by the old doc, and they're all cheering for him. And I relate to this because this happened to me, and he didn't understand it. So he looks at his manager. You remember this scene?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
This is the scene that I related to the most. He looks at his manager and goes, why are they cheering for me? He goes, because you're them. I was like, I'm the fucking Cinderella man. That's why this worked for me at 40. You know what I mean? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But I ended up calling it Beautifully Broken because as I started really writing, because that was my idea going into the project, I'm going to write the Cinderella man story. And all I could think about was other people. Every time I'd pick up a pen, I would think about this young lady at a show who told me that Save Me helped her because she was raped by her uncle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
So I'm like, what do I write for her? I see winning streak. I watch this moment. I got to write that for him. You know, now I might write some of them from first perspective, but it changed everything. And all of a sudden I was like, this is how it made about me. You know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
This album is about finding beauty in broken things. You know?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And instantly it was like, once again, how God works. As soon as I took me out of it, the album blossomed. Immediately. I wrote 80 songs that sucked. Just couldn't find my way to what story I was trying to tell. And just as soon as I was like, let's go back to where's the muse coming from? Who am I writing for? I say I'm the voice of the voiceless.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
When I had the opportunity to go talk about fentanyl down at Capitol Hill, I didn't hesitate. I knew I was going to talk for a bunch of people that couldn't talk. You know what I mean? It's like, who am I writing this for? And dude, it changed that whole writing style, dog. Then I got lost and wrote another 80 songs. Because now I'm having fun. I got a direction. I feel like I've heard from God.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Nobody's trying to impose their beliefs on you real quick. They're just trying to make... They got 60 seconds to get a fucking laugh. And the Kill Tony crowd will boo you if you don't. You've got about 30 seconds with them in an arena. In an arena? Real dangerous grounds, dude. Bro, they were... Especially New Yorkers. The first show in New York.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm Moses. You know what I'm saying? The burning bushes spoke. I know what I'm supposed to be writing about. It took me 16 months to get there, but that's just how it works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
As soon as I took me out of it. You know what I mean? As soon as that took me out of it, it was that easy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
When I'm at my best, it's when I didn't know they were even cheering for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's because I'm one of them. You know what I mean? It's kind of like the, yeah, it's that same kind. Yeah, this album was the most fun I've ever had getting to an album. I learned so much about myself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
and actually getting better every day because I'm doing the work, trying to be better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I was telling the Titans when I went and talked to them at the game, I was like, I don't focus on winning anything but life. I know that everything else is going to be good as long as I'm focused on being a good father. Like priority number one is like, am I a good husband? What I've learned is if I'm winning as a husband and I'm winning as a father, I am fucking kicking ass in business.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But it's also, that's something, we talk about things that distracted people. I was in so many bad relationships early. Or even times in my life I was single courting multiple women. And that's such a distraction. Like when I got with my wife and fell to the point of being like, I don't want to spend time with any woman but you. The time I have to spend, I want to spend it with you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
And it's like my whole world suddenly went from feeling like it was this big to this big. And when it got that small, I was like, oh, man, this is it. We're in a foxhole. Yeah. And then I just started kicking ass outside of that. You know what I'm saying? Life just starts winning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
They were rough. They go hard. You know, when I knew the arena thing was going to be huge for Tony, I flew down here for the first one he did because we were drunk at the bar that night. And he was like, I'm going to play an arena. I was like, I'm going to come sing the national anthem. And it was a joke because I don't sing the national anthem. I have a rule. I don't sing the national anthem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Man, that's deep. That's probably the hardest part. It's a lot of work towards it, too, though, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, yeah. Lots of work. But that's work in relationships, though, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I'm telling you, dude, that little fat nerdy alien that's playing me on the game every day is fucking killing it. He's killing it. My brother, I appreciate you very much. Yeah, I love you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
I got to put Jamie on blast before we go, though. Oh, that's right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Me and Jamie had some cocktails one night. Don't look at Jamie. And we had a deal that if I ever played Ohio Stadium, Joe Rogan, that Jamie was going to come out and play the guitar. Jamie, you got any video of you playing guitar?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's just a lot of heavy metal music. Will you pull up a Buckeye Country Fest then so you can show everybody the flyer of the concert you're going to be playing next year?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, fuck Jelly Roll. Y'all come to see young Jamie play that guitar.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Yeah, she's... She is badass, man. When she made her Opry debut, she wore a jelly roll jacket, and it tickled me so pink. It made me like the cool dad for my daughter because my daughter loves her, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
Thank you for your time, brother. Beautifully Broken, available now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But I told him I was going to do it. So I came down and we're watching the first comedian this night at the H-E-B Center. Right. The first bucket pool comes up. And you could tell this bitch did not have any idea she was going to get called or anything to say. This is the first you talking about a gift from God for Tony, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
She's not up there 18 seconds, Joe, before they realize that she's just, you know, falafeling. The boo birds came. They didn't start slowly and grow like they normally do. It was like 13 or 12,000 people made the decision at once. Boo! What a horrible feeling. What a horrible feeling. And I was like, oh yeah, this is going to explode in arenas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
It's chaotic. Full disclosure, as a bus, imagine like... a bunch of music dudes every Monday that were like, religiously, it's something we have together. You know what I mean? It's something that the whole band can agree on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
But you're talking about people that do more when they get there. And me and you were talking off record, right? I mean off record, off the microphone. We were walking in here about you hang around nine long enough, you'll be the tenth. Yeah. And God bless me that in the last few years, in light of my success, I've had really cool friends. Like Tony and I have become really good friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2212 - Jelly Roll
You and I have become really good friends. And I've been able to watch like a student of the game, guys like y'all, Bert, Tom, and go, man, these dudes are turning the heat up. as it matters, like the content's flowing, like it's only getting bigger. Last year, Joe, My most successful year of my career, I wrote more songs than I've ever wrote in a single year as a free man. That's amazing.