Today, Jelly Roll is one of music’s biggest stars, but his journey to this point was anything but ordinary. The multi-platinum musician had a troubled youth, which included time in jail, before turning his life around and focusing on music.
In the conversation below, Jelly Roll talks with writer Chad Carsten about his early influences, how his life has changed and the “unexpected writing session” that sparked one of his biggest hits.
I know you told the story about your crazy past many times. It was like the Wild West days for you. Now you’re just at the top of the world, musically!
Yeah. It’s just you know, I mean, I think the hardest part of coming to grips with it is feeling deserving of it, because even no matter how hard you work, when you get here, there’s still like, like guilt associated with making it from a circumstance like I did. So, I still have trouble accepting that my house is my house, you know?
Yes! You cleaned up and you got married and now you’re balancing an influential career while trying to maintain a family and that’s got to be a challenge in itself you know? So, props to that, man. So, can you recall the first poem you ever wrote during your childhood and how that specific moment influenced your own future lyrical writing abilities?
You know, what’s crazy is I remember the first rap I ever recorded, but I don’t remember the actual poem, the first poem I wrote. But I wrote so many of them whenever I was young, but I vividly remember the first rap I wrote, and the first rap I recorded when I was like 15.
Oh, wow. 15. You were already writing some fire bars, huh?
Oh yeah, no, I was already like, had a little CD with two songs on it, giving it out my freshman year of high school.
And you were spitting freestyles at parties and stuff too, right?
Oh yeah. No, anywhere they’d let me rap I would rap.
There’s videos from over a decade ago still up on YouTube where you were just freestyling off the top of your head for like 30 minutes!
(Laughs) Yeah man, we used to— It used to be like a hobby for us. We’d all get together and just rap.
Who were you influenced the most by in music during your early youth?
Oh, you’re talking like influenced by?
Yeah. Like it could be rock, country, it could be hip hop, anything.
It was a real even split. So, my sister listened to nothing but rock. I had a brother who listened to gangster rap, a brother who listened to like Motown and like hip-hop, my mother listened to everything from oldies to Waylon Jennings. And I just heard so many different styles of music, and I was the youngest of like five. So, you were just exposed to so much different music.
Were there any specific albums you had to hide from your parents that you didn’t want them hearing?
No, they were pretty cool with it. I mean there was so much eclectic music taste in the house, anybody who was going to get in trouble for the music they were listening to would’ve happened before me anyways. I think the first cassette tape my brothers and sisters bought me was Wreckx-n-Effect’s “Rump Shaker”.
And would you say those influences inspired you to get into different territories of music within your own tracks? Because you can drop like fire gangster bars, and then you can dive into country Travis Tritt style stuff going on. And then you’re like, “Okay, I’m doing this classic rock stuff”. What keeps you motivated to keep trying new things after all these years?
(Laughs) Well, I think being influenced by it all and enjoying the process of writing songs and wherever it takes me. So, I explained it this way. I grew up in the nineties. So, the same time that I was listening to “Time Marches On”, I mean, or I was listening to “Paint Me at Birmingham”, we were also listening to “Gin and Juice” by Snoop Dogg, like that wasn’t a far fetched thing in my house that somebody would know a Tracy Lawrence song and a Snoop Dogg song. So, it’s kind of just, I feel like making the music I make it’s just chasing the music I’ve listened to my whole life.
And then gravitating towards the influences you started performing as Jelly Roll. So, what precisely occurred during your first live performance, and how did that show challenge you to keep doing your very best?
It was the Playing Field in Antioch, Tennessee. And I was a teenager, and it was hilarious. It was like the most Antioch shit ever. It was so Antioch. And I’ll never forget it though. My brothers were there, my sister was there. Whole family was there. They still come to the shows now, which is cool. But I feel like it’s kind of weird talking about [it]. I never think about it, that I just so early in my life I knew music’s what I wanted to do. You know what I mean?
Few months back. I was helping an elderly women plug in a radio at a thrift store and like I turned on the radio and your single “Son of a Sinner” was playing on some random country station. Can we dive into that song’s influence?
Well, the song was about my father in essence, to a degree. I mean, it was the idea of— My father was a man of duality. He was the same guy that went to happy hour every day at five and booked bets when he had to, who was the same guy who would lead and take charge of the homeless program at his church, right? So, he just kind of taught me that we’re all somewhere between right and wrong. The way the song got wrote is cooler than even that story though. We’re in the studio, I’ve had the studio booked for like 14 days straight, where it sounded for him in Nashville. And we’re just in there smoking one afternoon, Saturday or Sunday afternoon I rec, and Ernest calls me and he’s at the barbecue pit next door. And Ernest goes, “Hey man, are you still just housed up over here?” I said, “yeah” and he said, “I’m going to swing through, I’m grabbing something for Delaney.” And I was like, “all right, cool, whatever.” He comes in, and I just figured we’d smoked one, you know?
And we did, and somewhere in the middle of smoking one he just seen a guitar. And Ernest is like a kid, I don’t know if you’ve ever met Ernest Smith or talked to him, but the way I describe Ernest is like a little just creative, fun, loving hippie kid, but he is an adult, you know what I mean? But he just looks over, sees the guitar, he just grabs it and he just starts kind of piddling around and messing with something. And I don’t know, I mean, I don’t know how else to say, I feel like the song wrote itself, you know? I think Ernie came in with a really just kind God given idea about how that hook should go, you know? So, it was just, it was interesting, man. It was a really fun night. It was just probably the most unexpected writing session of my career to say the least.
I mean, you just want to make sure that when you’re trying to write a song that’s special, man, you want to make sure that there’s somebody else in the room to you don’t allow yourself to get so selfish with it and consumed with it that it doesn’t give the message to the people that the people deserve to hear. And guys like Ernest have wrote a lot of hits. But the cool thing was we hadn’t wrote a lot together, we were just, we’re like, that’s my boy, you know what I mean? You know, part of our friendship agreement from day one was I don’t never want to write or work with you on a schedule, you know what I mean? I don’t want publishers to call each other and set up one of them old music row shindigs, they fucking suck, you know?
Yeah. You want it to be organic and more of a personal level.
Yeah, because it’s like, this is my boy, like that’s my dude, dude. You know, I’d almost rather not write a song with him and just smoke a joint and talk about how the road’s been kicking his ass.
Do you have any advice towards the troubled youth on how to keep aiming for goals?
Well, first and foremost, it’s deeper than a message for those kids, It’s a message for our system in general and how do we create avenues and trades and stuff that these kids can get behind and things that they can figure out and things that we can Institute in these communities, those alternative options to the only lifestyle that they know, which is the one they see that’s popular, that’s popularized. And I don’t— It’s just presenting it in a different way and trying to give these kids options, I think is what’s so important in working on rehabilitation instead of re-incarceration.
I agree with the rehabilitation thing. That’s where America fails in regards to helping the troubled youth. Instead of giving kids an opportunity to actually clean up, they just lock them up and then think that the cold turkey technique will work, but it doesn’t.
It’s so hard to get in rehab and it’s so easy to go to jail.
Do you have any advice on how to keep pursuing your dreams even though you’re in the system?
Well, I just never let that stuff get in the way of what I was trying to do. You know, once I changed my life, I knew what it was. It was music or bust for me. And thank God it appears it looks like it’s going to work out, but I will say that there’s nothing in life that you can put the amount of time that I put into music that you wouldn’t succeed at if you genuinely put effort into it. And it doesn’t have to be music, that can be anything for anybody. It’s kind of my deepest philosophy, you know what I mean? It could be if I’d have spent that same time learning how to, IT work, right? Do tech work and computer work and you know, stuff like that, I mean I could probably run a successful tech business, right?
Right. You’re more saying, go for any goal, no matter what?
Yeah. That’s it. And double down on it. If you’re really applying yourself, you know.
Last question: Can you define the art of music in your own words?
Define the art of music? I think music is the expression of the soul to some degree. And it’s either what our— It’s what our soul needs or what our soul desires. And I think that it’s more of a vibration than it is anything, it’s more of an actual energy that exchanges through people, you know what I mean? And I think to me, that’s what music is. That’s the definition of music. And that’s definitely the perspective in which I write it from.
This interview was originally published in Invisible Airwaves Magazine.
