Welles, 32, is a genuine phenomenon—an internet-era troubadour clearly in the tradition of Guthrie, Dylan, Prine, and Ochs (and Cobain, too), yet also very much of this moment.
In some ways the Jesse Welles you’ve likely seen online, the shaggy young folksinger with the sandpaper voice picking a Stella guitar in a clearing under power lines, has only existed since 2024.
Before that, Welles had plenty of experience as a musician. Growing up in Ozark, Arkansas, he’d dug deep into ’60s rock and folk, writing songs and making home recordings and carrying his guitar everywhere. He performed under various monikers—Jeh Sea Wells, Dead Indian, Cosmic American—before landing a record deal as Welles and releasing the grungy album Red Trees and White Trashes in 2018. But after a few years of hard touring, disillusioned with the hamster wheel of chasing a big break, he quit—returning to Arkansas to see what his life might be like if he didn’t play music or just kept it to himself.
And then in early 2024, his father had a heart attack, and everything changed.
“I was sitting there next to him in the hospital, and he was hooked up to all this stuff and unconscious,” he recalls. “We didn’t really know what the outcome was going to be. And I thought, he was barely here a minute. He was here a blink of an eye. I didn’t even get to know him but for a little bit. How short is life? I’ve got so much work to do.
“So I started writing like mad. I opened up. Really, from that moment onward, it was just like, I’m going to write and sing tunes until I’m all hooked up on a bed like that. We don’t have much time.”
Since that day Jesse Welles, reborn as a solo artist, has certainly lived up to his own promise, in an astounding burst of creativity that in just over a year has produced four full-length albums and an EP plus countless off-the-cuff song videos. [Since this article went to press, Welles has in fact produced three more full-length albums: Pilgrimfollowed just seven weeks later by the simultaneous release of Devil’s Den, on which Welles played all the instruments, andWith the Devil, on which he performed the same song list as Devil’s Den but with a band. With the Devil is also available as a complete video performance on YouTube.]
Welles initially went viral with fearless takes on such topics as war in Gaza (“War Isn’t Murder”), fentanyl, whistleblowers (“Whistle Boeing”), Ozempic, and the killing of an insurance CEO (“United Health”). At the same time, he sings charming ditties on his favorite things (“Bugs,” “Books,” “Guitars”) and creates poetic, personal folk rock, captured in both homegrown solo recordings like Patchwork and in the full-band studio production Middle. Even more remarkable than the sheer volume of music he’s produced is how great so much of it is—evocative, empathetic, and above all, raw and real.
Welles, 32, is a genuine phenomenon—an internet-era troubadour clearly in the tradition of Guthrie, Dylan, Prine, and Ochs (and Cobain, too), yet also very much of this moment. Eager to learn more about his musical path, I connected with Welles on a video call from a Nashville hotel room, with his Stella close at hand, in the midst of a cross-country tour that completely sold out in two days.
What initially inspired you to pick up the guitar?
I knew that’s what I wanted. All the music I listened to had guitars in it. I was about ten, 11, and I had Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road. I loved that last track on Abbey Road, “The End,” with the three guitar solos. Even “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” had big power chords, this real mean guitar. Though I didn’t know who was playing, it was the beginning of my probably lifelong affinity for Lennon’s playing.
I didn’t have any kind of video, and I hadn’t really seen anybody play guitar, so I thought they were moving their tuning pegs awfully fast. I broke a lot of strings thinking you change the melody around like that. I didn’t realize you needed to fret it.
You really didn’t have a concept of putting your hand on the fretboard?
No. It probably was a year and a half after getting a guitar [a First Act from Walmart], I asked my old man, because your dad’s supposed to know how to do everything, “Do you know how to play this thing?” I was at a loss. He’d never played a guitar in his life. I saw his big finger hit the fretboard, and he changed the note on the low E string. And I went, oh, shoot, that’s probably how you have to do this.
Not long after that, an old guy named Harlen Nichols who lived down the road had me over to his house, and he showed me how to play, like, “Camptown Races.” He drew up his own kind of tab on a little notecard, and he tuned up my guitar, because I didn’t have a tuner. I didn’t know how to tune it. He gave me lessons for really no good reason. He had grandkids, but I guess he thought it was neat that I had a guitar. He had a ’60s [Gibson] Hummingbird, a beautiful guitar.
Did you start making up songs right away?
Yeah, I was always making up little tunes. Making up a tune was easier than learning somebody else’s.
What was some of the music that made you want to do that?
Those Beatles records that my grandpa had given me were really all I listened to for probably five or six years until I was a teenager and found Black Sabbath and Zeppelin and stuff like that. You know, I have an older sister. Looking back, it’s kind of funny, but boy bands were a big deal and Britney Spears was in the charts, but she seemed to have no interest in that sort of thing.
I just loved the music that I got to listen to with Mom in the car on the oldies radio. It was a format that has kind of gone away, but it was British Invasion and Motown, essentially, and some classic country every once a while.
So singer-songwriters like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan came to you later?
A little bit later. I was 13, 14, when I went headfirst into it. I had the Encarta encyclopedia on a CD-ROM. You could look up blues music and folk music. Under the blues one, they had a 20-second clip of Lightnin’ Hopkins playing, and I would play these little bits over and over. They had Huddie Ledbetter, or Lead Belly, maybe Mississippi John Hurt. I heard about John and Alan Lomax, the father/son duo, and I went down to the library to get the songbook. I don’t know how to read music, but it had all the lyrics written out for “Cumberland Gap,” all the stuff they recorded at penitentiaries, and Appalachian songs, too. Anyway, through all that, I got ahold of Woody Guthrie.
And then the library had that first Bob Dylan record. He’s just a baby on the cover, and he has a funny hat, and boy, I wore that record out. I really liked that. I also liked Peter, Paul and Mary, and as a proper preteen/teenager, I loved Simon and Garfunkel. It was so moody and so pretentious. I would listen to “The Sounds of Silence” and “I Am a Rock” and “Scarborough Fair,” and I fancied myself some kind of poet.
Did you always have the urge to share what you were learning or writing?
Yeah. The most important thing was finishing a song, getting some kind of bow on it. It didn’t much matter what it looked like when it got over the line.
When I was 14, my buddy and I were playing guitar together, and his folks got him Sony Acid, the recording program. I borrowed that and put it on my computer, and I would multitrack. I had a washboard, a recorder, and my guitar. I was always recording and making little tunes. I loved to make my friends laugh. I had a guitar with me all the time.
That desire to share your music right away aligns perfectly with social media. When did that click for you?
That wasn’t until February to March of ’24. I just said, well, instead of recording tunes, we’re going to be even less precious about it: we’re just going to perform them to the camera and that’s it—that’s the take. And trial by the internet. They’ll tell you just exactly how they feel about something.
You put out a mix of topical songs and more personal writing. Do you think of those as separate categories?
On the Venn diagram, they have overlaps, but I don’t want to think of those things separately. I do think it’s all one and the same—the music is the music—but I can see how they look separate. One is me making sense of the news, and I suppose the other one is making sense of being alive. But either way, it needs to rhyme, so that’s the fun in it.
In your topical songs, you often use classic folk and country forms. That’s very Guthrie-esque: writing new lyrics over a traditional structure.
Sometimes I’ll have the melody, and the chord structure isn’t sorted out until I put up the take, and that’s the only time I ever played it like that.
Those classic progressions are the vehicle, and also they’re tested with humanity. We all seem compelled and pulled towards those changes, at least in Western culture.
You can’t think about that too hard. I feel like it needs to be catchy, you know? With other tunes, I can stretch out a bit, but it’s fun to sing about wizards and spaceships and feelings and religions and philosophies over I–IV–V too.
So is your writing generally driven more by lyrics?
Yeah. I sit down and write a lot of stanzas, then go through and pick out what’s got the meat, what’s the strongest and the most succinct. You can say something real eloquently and take four stanzas to get the whole idea out. But in this mode, beauty is the simplicity. So you want to get that crunched down to a couplet ideally, or not even a couplet—just one line with some assonance in it, like a couple words that have similar vowel sounds. Something you would say to somebody at the gas station you’ve never met, just real quick and fun. That’s southern wit, southern charm—Twain was so good at that.
So yes, all that to say, I’m preoccupied with the words, and we can worry about the melody and the harmony later. Every once in a while they come together and it makes a good tune. And sometimes it don’t, and you just keep going [laughs].
You’ve recorded several albums on your own, overdubbing tracks. What’s that process like?
I recorded Hells Welles, Patchwork, and All Creatures Great and Small in my room in Arkansas. I would just get the take, vocals and guitar, and then dub. I put it into Logic. The computer is slow so you can’t dub too much, or it would start to have latency. I have a [Shure] SM57 and an SM7B, the radio vocal mic. You just get those two guys humming and put it in the computer.
An album like Middle is a whole different sort of project, working with a band and producer in a studio and, I imagine, tracking live.
Yeah, just tracking it live, going in and listening to the tune, and discussing it a little but not too much. Doing a couple takes but not too many, and finding magic in the take.
Everything has been very fast paced. Hells Welles was recorded in like four days. But I thought Middle took a very long time, being there two weeks. That is a different process—you put things in other people’s hands, and there’s a division of labor which creates an efficiency and allows you to really focus on what you need to do—in my case, sing and play. I don’t think twice about what I would like to hear somebody else play. I just let them play. Their gut is going to tell them. If they are following their gut, the most honest thing will come out of them, and then we’ll have a very honest record.
So is part of that not getting too precious about how you sound?
Absolutely—just let it go. The moment you try clambering for control or you have this notion in your head of something that you want to achieve, aren’t you setting yourself up for some kind of disappointment and desperation? The only reason I know is because I’ve had those records before, and you make yourself miserable. So I really think it’s best to just play the tune, trust your gut, and trust everybody else in the room.
On guitar, you have a lot of facility playing lead and also slide. How did you develop that?
You know, I played guitar before I ever sang. My older sister’s the singer, and they always told me I sounded like burnt toast, so I just didn’t sing. My focus was guitar, and I loved everybody’s lead playing. I got the acoustic Zeppelin tab book when I was a kid, and I had to learn “Stairway.” I played a lot of electric guitar. Slide isn’t something I’d really ever played until Hells Welles, but just listening to the songs, I knew that was what they needed. The slide playing isn’t very good, but the melodies needed to be on slide guitar. I liked the idea of it all being on this Stella. This thing is probably better suited for slide than it is anything else I do on it.
My sense is that the earlier phase of your career, when you played in bands and were on a label, left you with a lot of cynicism about the music business. How are you approaching all that differently now?
In general, a lot of life is figuring out what you don’t want to do. Usually it’s by doing the things you don’t want to do that you realize that’s not what you want to do, even though that’s all you ever wanted to do up until that point. All I ever wanted to do was to be on a label and play in a rock ’n’ roll band.
It’s dangerous, thinking of the music industry as this kind of abstract industry. That in itself will make you cynical, and it can make you treat people like a part of a thing, instead of as people. Once you realize that some of these abstractions we’ve gotten comfortable with and even grown fond of railing against, once you realize that they’re made up of individuals and people, then the monster, the boogeyman, the shadow disappears—and the light comes on. And I feel like once that happens, you can find the people that you would like to be around, that you would like to be creative with.
I don’t think that’s a view I had when I was a kid. You don’t have to play the game anymore. It’s the wild west out there.
So you can build your own community around what you do?
It’s an à la carte buffet, man. The bigger you build it, the more people you’ll meet. What music industry? Make your own industry, your own factory. Your factory might just be your house in a subdivision in Arkansas. That’s my industry. I hired my cat.
What’s your experience been like on this sold-out tour, playing for so many people who found you online?
I always get so excited to meet the people that dig it. I can’t contain it, it makes me feel so good. What’s nice is I go out and meet everybody after. I’ll go out to the merch booth and play some more songs, basically do a cover set after the show.
I just like meeting everybody who likes the same things as me. It’s like I went out and found all my friends in every city. We all like to read, and we’re nerds, and we’re into being peaceful, and we’re into being open minded, and it feels like a big family reunion. Sorry, it’s way better than a family reunion—it’s just a fun gathering. They all sing along, which is great. We just have a good time.
It’s almost like you’ve had a long-distance relationship with most of the nation, and then you finally get to meet them.
That must be good for breaking through the sense of isolation that many of us have these days.
It is wild how the web was [created] to connect us, and we found ourselves more isolated and more divided. So I think it can be used for great and good things. I think it’s really important to maintain that hope and the joy of being alive, and just accepting that the internet’s there, and you can be positive through it too.
What He Plays
Jesse Welles bought his Stella parlor guitar for $80, through Facebook Marketplace, on the way home from the hospital after his father’s heart attack. He isn’t sure of the guitar’s age—he believes it is pre-1960s—and he was surprised to learn that the low-budget instrument has had extensive repairs for cracks and such.
Welles plays the Stella in social media videos and used it exclusively on Hells Welles. He also has a Gibson LG-2 heard on the entire Patchwork album. For recording, he says, “I only play one guitar for the whole thing. It’s good to get a guitar and marry it for a while, just say: ‘I don’t care how I feel—I may want to play another guitar, but I’m just playing you, baby.’ You let the guitar teach you about how you play.”
Welles has a Martin 000-15SM that he purchased to play at Farm Aid in 2024, and on recent tours he’s performed with a Rockbridge 000 Smeck, a design inspired by vintage Gibson Smeck models that shifts the soundhole, bracing, and bridge lower on the body to accommodate a 12-fret neck without changing the body profile.
Jesse Welles appears on Episode 2367 of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Their discussion is a wide-ranging conversation between Jesse and Joe Rogan that touches on music, social commentary, the role of art and creativity, and the business-side of the entertainment industry along with many conspiracy theory rants of Rogan.
Jesse reflects on growing up in a family where art was present (mom painting murals, dad welding) though not music-centric. The discussion opens with how music entered Jesse’s life early. There’s a focus on how Jesse writes fast, topical songs (for example about healthcare and corporations) and wraps serious issues into punchlines and melody. Jesse mentions writing a song about a large healthcare company and how they approached the work like research + songwriting.
Jesse discusses the freedom (and burdens) of being an indie artist—being able to release songs quickly, but also dealing with predatory label offers, maintaining authenticity, and resisting encouragement to “sell out.”
They also talk about AI and how it can mimic songwriting, prompting questions about what “authentic” artistry becomes when algorithms can generate music in seconds. The conversation veers into deeper territory—Jesse and Joe talk about war, human nature, entertainment vs. news media, corporations profiting off health and lives, and how culture narrates all of this.
Partial Transcript:
Joe Rogan: First of all, how long have you been doing music?
Jesse Welles: I think most of my life, you know?
JR: Did you grow up in a musical family or is it just something you picked up on your own?
JW: No, everyone worked and made art when they weren’t working. But no music, really. But I liked it. I like music.
JR: Like what kind of art did your family do?
JW: Like my mom would always paint. She put like murals on the walls of the house and stuff. And my old man’s a mechanic. And he would be tinkering around Making all sorts of fun stuff usually with his welder and whatnot. So I there’s I felt like they were artistic folks You know, but they didn’t they didn’t necessarily do music, you know, they’re smarter than that.
JR: I only know of you from the videos that you put up on Instagram Yeah, specifically I think it was the United Healthcare guy was the first one. Yeah, right Which was really good dude. It’s the lyrics you in the timing of it all you captured the moment and That song to me was like yeah, that’s what the fuck is going on, right? That’s what’s really going on they don’t give a shit about you and they’re just trying to make money and That’s why when this guy got shot there was this reaction from people Yeah, which is very rare when someone gets assassinated when people celebrate right when someone’s not like a mass murder or something it was bizarre it was business it’s it’s i mean it must mean something is if people are celebrating yes somebody’s death yes something is wrong and all kind across both sides of the aisle it’s not a political thing it is a human thing they’re like these people they take your fucking money you pay them and then when something comes up you don’t get covered. And there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions and to fight it you have to go to court…
JW: The system would have to be revolutionized. I mean, you can’t have health for profit at that point. You’d have to socialize the medicine at that point.
JR: Yeah, which I agree with. Up until a point…
JW: All I mean is that you just don’t want to have to go to an urgent care and it costs $500 to get a pack of antibiotics.
JR: 100%. Well, that’s a giant scam.
JW: So, and, but that’s, that’s a scam that so many folks are stuck in, you know.
JR: That’s only part of the scam. You know, the healthcare scam, it goes so deep. There’s so many different layers to this fucking horrible den of vampires. Right. You know, cause it’s… Whenever you can make profit off of people and you’re involved in a corporation and then the corporation has an interest for its stockholders want more money every year. They want more money every quarter. So that’s what they try to do. That’s their focus. And when you’re doing that with people’s lives and people’s health like that, that should be illegal. That’s where it gets fucked.
JW: I suppose that’s why folks were, you know, it was upsetting to see. You know, I felt like I actually had kind of an unpopular opinion about it. And that, you know, why are we celebrating somebody’s death? Like, that seems far out. To celebrate the murder of somebody with a gun?
JR: Not only that, I believe unrelated to him and his case.
JW: Like, I mean, how far out is that? And so I didn’t want, you know, I’d… I make these tunes, but that one in particular, I was like, how do I even, how do I address this? What do you even say?
JR: So how do you approach something like that? Do you sit down with a pad and pen or do you start writing? Like, how do you start singing?
JW: Step one is avoid the work. So I went for, you know, some long jogs. I wrote a song about… Amazon instead and put up like Amazon is Santa Claus and I kept sitting there and it kept getting you know the situation was snowballing with the United Healthcare thing and I was like okay you gotta write and at that point it’s it’s a research project you know let’s write let’s write 2,000 words so that we can have 300 to sing and boil down the essence of the issue and make it rhyme and and put a jolly tune behind it that’s really that’s that’s kind of how that that goes about that sounds like super similar stand-up comedy yeah you boil it down yeah yeah yeah get every and i and you don’t it’s just punch lines so find the punch line of everything find the punch line of everything i never had the attention span to tell too much of a story or anything like that so i like i i like just keeping it in punchlines so i always like you know Mitch Hedberg and and Stephen Wright we’re so good at we’re so good at that just come out and lay out a bunch of punchlines yeah if.
JR: I don’t know of anyone else I’m sure there probably is a few people out there that I missed but I don’t know of anybody else who takes Things that are in the zeitgeist these big stories that come up Yeah And turns them into a catchy tune and does it in a way where you’re you laid out? You know really the problem and the whole thing like you said in punchlines.
JW: Yeah, I you know There’s a lot. There’s a lot of folks doing it right now and and more every day but there was i mean there’s a precedent for that kind of work especially as far as like Woody Woody Guthrie was really the i was reading i was reading a Woody Guthrie biography And, my old man was in the hospital. He had just had a heart attack, and we didn’t know, like, what way it was gonna go or whatever. Anyway, I don’t know, just seeing him all hooked up to that stuff and thinking, if he were, if he died, I’ve hardly had any time to even know him. He’s hardly had any time to know anything. We don’t get very long down here, and I’m reading this… This Woody Guthrie biography, and I was just like, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do this, I’m, you know, I’m gonna sing the, sing the news, because that’s really what, what Woody was kind of, was kind of doing in his day, because there was, there’s folk music around him, and he’d team up with Pete Seeger, and he was on radio programs, and he could have played, he had the, he had the choice, he could have played standards, he could have played country western music and stuff like that but he liked Making folks laugh and he liked telling it how it was…
JW: I mean, maybe he was riding on trains and boxcars and stuff. There’s no telling what they were hauling around and that sort of thing. But he, you know, he played the political tunes. He, he, I don’t, and maybe he’s a continuation of, of a longstanding human tradition of like bards going from town to town and singing the news. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some medieval dude going around singing about the king, you know, and I don’t know, but maybe, maybe. Maybe they’re white or just because I don’t like I don’t know if it’s a uniquely American tradition. But when I do it, I like to I get romantic about it and kind of think of it as uniquely American tradition because you got the freedom to do it. Right. And no one’s gunning me down in the field there or anything for anything I say, you know. So I get to, you know.
JW: Religions get weirder and weirder. I don’t, like, in America, they get weirder and weirder kind of the more West we went, the more we manifest destiny out. Because, like, you have, like, Puritan pilgrims land in, you know, in New England, and the weirdest of them move a little bit more West, or they just go to, the Quakers just go to, like, Nantucket, you know. To be on an island and be isolated. But, you know, eventually, in about 100 years, you’ve got Mormons. Yep. You know? And then give it another 100-something years, then you’ve got Scientology out in California. Right?
JR: Have you seen American Primeval? The Netflix series? No. It’s really good. Really good. And it’s about, you know, the settling of the West, but a big part of it is the Mormons. Right. And how fucking Gangster the more we think of Mormons as being like it’s really sweet people like uh-uh no not back then no no no no.
JW: No nothing nothing was in the West man yeah it was it was death and car like i don’t know i i imagine it like blood meridian like like McCarthy’s book where basically you know like follows a story like this kid who goes on a scalping mission you know where their their job is to go down into Guadalajara and then come up in through the States and they just they scalp pretty much everyone they meet indiscriminately and then take those scalps back for dough it’s you know for a bounty which is crazy… Like in McCarthy’s book, at least, which follows the Glanton gang, I’m pretty sure at times they kill some of their own gang, just because they were dark-haired… Which is essentially what the wild West was yeah and then you you offer up eight thousand dollars every time you kill a person yeah oh you can get rid of people people quick and you’re gonna have the wildest of the wild are gonna go out there and tame that land man the craziest of the crazy yeah and that’s essentially calls them calls them out… I wonder if things are you know, probably seem a lot cleaner as far as chaos and bloodshed Now in the continental US and the Union and stuff but who is sending Folks to go do that abroad, you know to protect the homeland, you know under the under the auspices of Protecting the homeland doing the exact same thing. I really think we we we stay this as much as has changed and and we can measure that We could totally camp. I think also we stay the same, you know.
JR: Well until we’re forced to change and that until something or until we recognize the need to change collectively Yeah, but there has to be a discussion of it. It’s not something that just organically happens You know.
JW: I think of like Do you ever see, This is Hollywood, but Apocalypse Now? There’s Francis Ford Coppola. It’s got like Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall and all those cool cats and dope movie But it’s written on this premise of a of a book that was written in like 1899 by Joseph Conrad like heart of darkness. Heart of darkness was talking about a conquest of i believe the Dutch i’m not sure into the congo and some atrocities and stuff that were happening there treating people as subhuman and i don’t know if there was i don’t know if there was scalping or anything but i think that there was slavery and that sort of thing but coppola was able to adapt that and then put the Vietnam War as the new premise Going into, I think they, I think Sheen’s mission in the movie at least was to go upriver into Cambodia or Laos, I’m not sure which, and take out a rogue U.S. General who had basically enslaved a population of indigenous there. All that to say, I wonder if, like in Vietnam, if the folks fighting out there felt like in that moment, in that moment where you’re killing somebody, if you realize at that point that nothing has ever changed and that there’s something primeval in man. With this violence that this violence is innate or you know is this violence innate is it is this how? Folks are and there’s no helping it and there’s nothing that’s ever gonna change it because you can get kind of cynical that way or And I and I kind of tend on this more idealistic and at times it seems naive or stupid to have an ideal that folks can Could live in harmony and peace without taking one another’s lives, you know?
JR: The problem is they’ve never done it before.
JW: That’s mind-boggling. Because it is in all, I think it’s in a lot of us, deep down.
JR: Well, it has to be. Because that’s the only way we survived. That’s the only way we got to where we are today. Right. Because we existed before language. We existed before. Empathy before we understood each other before we communicate Yeah Any being that you didn’t know from somewhere else wanted what you had and they would try to take it by force So the bigger stronger one survived and that’s why the best genetics kept going and going and going I mean it was survival of the fittest that exists in nature and exists with humans and that’s the basis of our DNA Unfortunately, like that’s how we started right and so that the way it manifests itself today is fucking drone warfare, right? …
JR: And most war today is about resources. Most war today is about controlling parts of the world where there’s an infinite amount of money in the ground, whether it’s oil or now it’s rare earth minerals and stuff they need for batteries. And that’s what a lot of it is. I mean, that’s what a lot of conflict is in this world. And that’s gross. It’s scary. It’s scary. But. If you ask the average person, like, what are the odds that there will be no more war in your lifetime? And they’ll say 0%.
JW: It’s so far out. It’s just, like, I think, you know, the folks that go to war, like, if you signed up and went to Iraq and, you know, and like, oh, oh, three, oh, six, you know, and you’re securing. Or maybe not Iraq, but you’re going to
Afghanistan and you’re securing opium fields and stuff. And you’re out there, you’re risking your life. You got the gun on. You are prepared to take somebody’s life. But for what? And like… What are you asking? We’ll fight. It seems like for the sake of, just for the sake of the hunt or something like that.
JR: Well, if you ask the soldiers when they’re signing up, hey, do you want to go to
Afghanistan and guard Poppyfield? They’ll be like, what? No, I want to fight terrorism, motherfucker. I want to stop the people that did 9-11 from doing it again. That’s why a lot of people signed up. But then the reality kicks in once you’re standing around Poppyfields with a machine gun. And you’re like, oh. Yeah. Oh, this is a scam. You’re right. You know, I don’t know how much Internet access they had while they were over there, but if they did and they ever Googled what percentage of all heroin comes from Afghanistan, the answer they would have got is 94%. Yeah. They would have been like, wait. What is this?
JW: But then it takes a larger, it takes essentially a PSYOP in order to get men to fight for the interests of the people who are performing the PSYOP.
JR: Yes. You have to create a PSYOP. That puts a narrative out there that makes it noble for us to be doing what we’re doing.
JW: Noble. We’re such suckers. Yeah. It’s a noble cause. What’s more noble than letting somebody live?
JR: You know, everybody has their own little thing, their little realm they’re trying to conquer.
JW: Right. And it feels great.
JR: No, I don’t think it does.
JW: You don’t think it feels great to kick ass at something? Well. I mean, you want, like, I think. The pursuit of excellence. Yeah. Like, the most joy-rendering thing that there is.
JR: That aspect of it. You know? The aspect of crushing your enemies. I wonder how much.
JW: Well, you don’t have to, Like, I don’t. This thing is like. Playing guitar or something, I don’t have an enemy.
JR: But you’re an artist. You’re not a corporation. Are you an LLC yet? Did you sign up for the devil’s deal? What is, oh. Limited liability corporation. A lot of people do, so.
JW: I don’t have a record deal, if that’s what you’re saying.
JR: No, no, no, no. When you start making money, they tell you to form an LLC.
JW: What is it going to do?
JR: You become like a little corporation. And that way you pay yourself from the corporation. You can lease a car from the corporation.
JW: That’d be kind of cool.
JR: You’ll probably have to do that someday, eventually.
JW: I’ll be in a corporation.
JR: Maybe after this podcast, you’ll have to do that. I’ll be. Call it bottomless wells.
JW: I, I, that’s the most fun, and it does seem like it is what, anytime you’re in a hard place or anything like that mentally, yeah, like, the best way out is, like, find something to try to get good at, or try some, you know, and then try your best at it. Yeah. And it just seems innate.
JR: I think so.
JW: Like, no matter what it is.
JR: Right, but. The problem is if that thing is making money, then it gets weird, right? Like if your whole thing you’re good at and you try to get better at is just making money, that’s when things get really early. Because the same thing that makes you really good at writing songs could make another person look really good at being a psychopath. Because the best way to make money is to be completely feelingless and not give a shit about who this is going to impact. Ship all those jobs Overseas. Look how much money we’re going to make. Do this to that. Fuck all the And if we don’t. Take care of this in environmental pollutant and we just like let it leak out. We save X amount of money Right do that right then that’s that’s where things get weird You figure out the best way to make money like you’re really good at making money and that becomes your creativity You get really creative about moving around the law in order to make money you get really creative about how you Establish relationships with people how you can you know, make sure that laws are passed that favor what you’re doing And that’s a strange art very weird art
JW: That’s a dark art…
[Philantropic]
JR: You nailed it. That’s, that’s philanthropic capitalism right there. Dude. In a song.
JW: It’s far out.
JR: That’s a great song.
JW: It shouldn’t be allowed.
JR: It shouldn’t be allowed. Well, it shouldn’t be that easy to trick people.
JW: Who believes it? That’s why I’m just… I’m like, who in the hell would… think that this is… Good things happen because of it, but more bad things happen than good a lot of the time. And you’re holding an entire nation hostage or an entire group of people hostage by lending them money. Well, that’s not freedom.
JR: No, no.
JW: You gotta be free.
JR: Yeah, it’s real weird. Because there’s certain people that are like genuine philanthropists, but even them, when you’re donating money to specific organizations and you find out that most of their money goes to overhead, most of their money goes to employee salaries, which are ridiculously high, and you go, oh, this is a scam.
___
JW: Do you know Tom Hanks?
JR: Tom Hanks, the actor? Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know him personally.
JW: Oh, okay. I just wonder if every once in a while, when the government needs to explain something… To the public in a way that puts us in the best light if they commission a movie through Hollywood and stick Tom Hanks in it man he’s just explained so much to us over the years with Charlie Wilson’s war it’s like here’s how the saving private house how this this goes you know forrest gump is kind of a nostalgia fest about the you know Vietnam War. It kind of makes light of it.
JR: Well, my friend Sam was telling me, my friend Sam Tripoli was telling me that, and I had heard this, that during World War I, they had a problem that soldiers were not shooting at the enemy. They didn’t want to kill them. They didn’t want to be there. And so they were firing their guns but not even aiming them at the enemy. Right. So to combat this, they started making movies. And then in the movies, these war movies, the soldiers would shoot the enemy and they were like really heroes. And so then in World War II, people were much more willing to shoot the enemy. isn’t that crazy? Yeah, like so the intelligence communities have been deeply involved in moviemaking from the very beginning Because back then movies were the most powerful narrative in all of society Right and there was no counter narrative not not to speak of nothing that went glow and nothing with global or even that was like Publicly mass distributed there was nothing you might have people in coffee shops Saying hey man, I read this and this and that right there were small groups of people Most people were in the dark
JW: Even if you had a counter-narrative You’d be like Pete Seeger and get like blacklisted in the 50, you know musician you be
JR: or Smedley Butler, you’re right, who was in a the end of his career?
JW: Yeah It’s a wonder he survived his own his own tell-all there with war is a racket. Yeah, so It is. It didn’t seem to do a whole lot. Whatever.
___
JW: What, the politicians really controlled by like three main things, like special interests, donor class, and multinational corporations. So anybody who looks like they’re disentangled from any of those things is looking pretty appealing… Polls are just made so that news people have something to talk about. Well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the ones. Well, they probably are. They probably go to the poll center and they say, run this poll because I got to have something to talk about on Wednesday… I think the news is an incredibly lucrative business. It’s an entertainment business. There’s not news every day. There’s nothing. And they got to run 24 hours… They’re making up news. They should call it the old. Because it’s always the same shit happening, man. Like, it’s not even… I feel like the public has to understand that at the end of the day, these guys are, whether they believe it or not, this is entertainment. These guys are entertainers. Yeah. Like, this isn’t the new, they’re telling you stuff, they’re feeding it to you, and you gotta take things with a big-ass grain of salt because this stuff is, these are entertainers.
___
JR: This one that you did on philanthropy that affects the narrative is there’s everyone’s like throwing their coins into this big pile and trying to figure this out and it more so now than i think has ever happened at any time in human history there’s more discussion it’s just yeah we’re so upset that it’s not fixed and It it’s on its way in the right direction.
JW: I think it’s just not Satisfying the pace that would in which progress is happening Everybody can get on now, too I mean like that’s it’s just like I’d prop up my iPhone and like play a tune Everyone can just like get and yep phone in front of their face and like get it out there, you know Yeah.
JR: Yeah, anyone can now Which is great. I mean, this allows guys like you to just all of a sudden have a following. You know, all you have to do is have some talent, some talent, some creativity, some hard work. Bam. There you go. It’s kind of cool. I mean, that’s the beautiful side of social media.
JW: That’s good. There’s no rules as far as, especially in the music industry and stuff, there’s no rules anymore. Anyone who tells you that they know what to do or that they know what they’re doing, they’re so full of shit, dog. Nobody knows what they’re doing.
JR: Yeah.
JW: And like we want people to know because we want to ask like what could I do to, you know, to be successful or whatever. Then nobody knows. No. Nobody knows and there’s no gatekeepers or anything like that. All you have to do is want to play music.
JR: Yeah.
JW: And then go and do it on your phone and see if anyone likes you. And if they like you, you know, that’s good. Yeah. Then everybody will come to you and say, I know how to make this bigger. And they don’t know what they’re talking about either.
JR: No, generally they’re vampires, and they’re trying to take a piece. Yeah. They’re trying to clamp on to you.
JW: Oh, they come out of the woodwork.
JR: Have you had people offer you a bunch of money?
JW: Not a bunch, but they’ll offer you a little for a lot.
JR: Yeah, a little for a lot. They want your future, right?
JW: Yeah. They’ll go, you know, there are all sorts of folks in the early days. Coming through labels and stuff going, here’s, we’ll give you 10 grand for like 30 songs or something like that. And it’s like, this is insulting. Yeah. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want any, I don’t need any of this.
JR: Oliver Anthony was going through that right after Rich Men from Richmond. Right. Richmond, North of Richmond, a song came out. Like they just came after him with all this money.
JW: Oh, they will.
JR: All this fucking promises.
JW: They will. It’s me. They give you so much up front and you don’t even like if you don’t know it’s just a big-ass loan that you’re never gonna Recoup and then you’re not even you’re not living off your own dough at that point You know living off of borrowed money like everybody else in the States and you’re attached to them forever Yeah, you’re attached to them for I just they own your masters. You’ll never see it back I mean, I assigned to a label when I was like 22. I’ve been through that all that
JR: How old are you now?
JW: I’m 47
JR: Are you really?
JW: No, I’m going to be 33 this year.
JR: I believed you. I was like, man, kid’s living good. No.
JW: No, I’m just joshing you.
JR: But, you know, this is a new time where you really can become hugely successful and get a gigantic following with no one attached to you.
JW: Yeah.
JR: You don’t have to have all those people. They’re not going to help you.
JW: No, they don’t. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Way too many people wanting to find out.
JR: And too many people eating at the dinner plate.
JW: And, dude, whenever anybody gives you money, like if the label comes in, let’s say Chris took, let’s say he took the deal, you know, or whatever. If Oliver Anthony took the big deal. Then he’s got all these people up there in the office with tax write-off MacBooks telling him what to do with his music because they opened their wallet. Yeah. And they’re going to have to give you notes. Yeah. They’re entitled. Give you their opinion at that point and you wouldn’t be able to just do whatever the hell he wants to do Yeah You know and I think it’s so important for artists to be able to do whatever the hell they want to do because that’s the Only way that can be themselves exact and then that’s the only way you can be successful is to completely be yourself at all times 100%.
JR: Nothing but yourself and you see that one thing that does happen when people do take the money is that part goes away Because even though you think you’re kind of sort of being yourself. Everybody knows You’re not.
JW: Totally you’re not totally being yourself anymore and dough will change your life in a in a in a way that that you might not like be ready for something it’s gonna you’re gonna think i got this dough now i can i can leave this town i don’t like or i can get the house that i was wanting when it was really it was being in that town and kind of having things difficult pressures around you and stuff that was creating these diamonds. That was putting you in this situation to make good art and stuff like that. Yeah. And you take away all your discomfort and then realize you can’t make art and you’re not happy. And then you start getting nostalgic about the good old days when you were broke and shit like that. It’s better to just take only what you need.
JR: Well, then there’s also the problem once you become successful of worrying about not being successful anymore. About maintaining it.
JW: That’s terrifying. Sure.
JR: I’ve got to keep this going. I can’t fall off. I can’t be less successful. I used to be poor, and now I’ve got money. I’ve got to make sure this doesn’t go away. It’s how you measure. You temper your thoughts, and you’re measured in what you say.
JW: No, your measure of success is how much can I be myself and be happy. Be happy that way if you can still be 100% yourself all the way to the end of the line, then that’s your success Yeah, like that’s but that’s a smart way of looking at things Most people look at things in terms of like what is the way that’s the most profitable, you know, so they’ll avoid certain Controversy, but we know that like we know even from talking about like people whose business whose art is money It creates misery to be chasing the bank account to constantly have the dough, you know? Like, you create a wake of… You create bad art, all right? Your albums start to suck. You might be getting in bigger, bigger places and stuff like that, but yeah, it’s gonna fall off, and when it does, you know, then you have, like, some existential problems to deal with at that point.
___
JW: It’s always it’s fun to think back on that like when I was When I was 18, I did a radio program for KDYN, Real Country Radio, every Saturday morning. It was called Dial-A-Deal, where people call in. It was basically like an on-air Craigslist, you know. But I was alone at the station after football games. You know, football game would be like Friday night. Go to bed all beat up. Wake up at like 5 a.m. Go into the station, record the obituaries real quick, because those are going to run on. On Saturday and then and then do like a you know an on-air Craigslist radio program and you’re just like 17 years old with the entire radio station to yourself you know wow I was a total dumbass too I could have been like anyway here’s Grand Funk Railroad you know but did you have a specific list of things you’re supposed to play the list was like programmed in and then you had to record weather, so you would Pull up the National Weather Service on the screen and then you would record yourself doing the weather saying, you know, winds are going to be southeast, south, southeast, northwest, out at 15 miles an hour or whatever. You do the obituaries. But, no, you didn’t actually DJ. It was just like, you would hit the space bar, music would start playing and be like, Okay, folks, if you can’t tell by the music, I’ll go ahead and tell you myself it’s time for Dial-A-Deal. Remember, our numbers up here are 667-4567 or… Toll free at 888-325-KDYN. That’s 888-325-KDYN. Remember, no commercial real estate advertisement.
Please limit your calls to once per program. And keep in mind, I can’t always keep track of these numbers up here myself. So if you remember them on your end, you’re doing me and you a favor. Let’s get back to the dialing and a dealing. And then people would call in and they’d be like, I’m looking for my dog. And I’d be like, somebody find that dog. And then, you know, list off their number. Or, uh…
JR: Did you ever play any of your songs?
JW: No. No, it was a classic country radio station. So I’m up there listening to, like, Willie, Waylon, Hank Sr., Hank Jr.
And then, also, they were playing, they were playing, like, some modern, like, I remember Brad Paisley was being played on there, and he just shredded. But, no, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was in a grunge band at the time. I couldn’t play. Wait, really? Yeah. I think that, yeah.
I couldn’t put… Once I printed out the track listing for the record that I had made, I would make CD records and sell them at school, like five bucks a pop. I made more money selling records in high school than I ever did as an adult.
I printed out all the song listings. Anyway, the album was called Mom, I’m Gay. And I left a bunch of them at the radio station.
I remember the guy who was running it, he came to me and he was like, did you print these out are these yours and it’s just kind of awkward after that but a small town in Arkansas kind of far out that’s funny but i you know folks folks will let a let a young person do all kinds of stuff i guess they see an aptitude in you they trust you so they let you drive a limo you know they just needed a job they needed someone to do the job.
JR: It’s that simple and most people would only temporarily keep that job and they would leave right?
JW: Yeah, hi turnover Yeah, yeah, there’s high turnover at the radio station because we were making a dough right, you know the do here was this this was in 1927 2010 I knew a lot of radio when I was young and doing the road.
JR: So I’d do like morning radio shows in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And it was the only way to promote things. Like say if you’re going to do some gig in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, like you get on local radio. You tell everybody drive time radio. So you’re on the air. It’s like 630 in the morning. Yeah. And let everybody know you’re gone. Radio was a weird thing, man, because it was like a local connection. And all that stuff is kind of gone now. You know, local connection used to be fun. There was something about listening to the local radio in the morning when you’re on your way to work. It was kind of cool. It was great. And you knew that most of your friends were listening too. Right.
___
JW: Tomorrow i’ll announce a tour and i think it’s like 20 something dates and then i’ll go out for two months and and play you know.
JR: You just play solo?
JW: No, I bring a band.
JR: Oh, that’s cool. I got a whole band.
JW: And then right now I’ve just been in festival season, so I just played the Newport Folk Fest. Shout out, Newport.
JR: Do you do any of these songs, like United Health?
JW: Oh, yeah.
JR: You do all of them?
JW: Yeah.
JR: Nice.
JW: Because I’m just always putting out albums. Yeah, like on Friday I’ll put out another record, too.
JR: How many albums do you have so far?
JW: Like five or six. I wrote like… 100 songs in ’24 and just like put them all out and that’s what’s great about being indie is like you can just put out music as soon as you make it right. So there’s but there’s a lot of tunes to choose from right usually You know on the set I’ll play a lot of these topical ones and then bring the band up and then we’ll play the other records that I got. But, it’s just that, Newport and then we did Edmonton Folk Fest and here in a little bit I’ll do Farm Aid And Healing Appalachia. Farm Aid was like last year around this time John Cougar Mellencamp sent me an email and was like Jesse I would like you to play at Farm Aid, but it was from a weird email address and I didn’t believe it was him but it it was totally him just like emailing through his like girlfriend’s email or something hilarious and so i like i showed it to to one of the like one of my friends he has managed and he’s like i’ll vet this out we’ll see if this is legit and sure enough it was anyway go down to Farm Aid and that’s like one of the first gigs that I play as this iteration of myself. But I got to meet a lot of cool people and get to be friends with a lot of them too. Lucas Nelson, it was very cool to meet him last year, and now I think we’ll be doing a tune together here before too long.
JR: Nice.
JW: Him I got to meet Charlie over there at Farm Aid, Charlie Crockett….
JR: I’m gonna send this to Jamie because you you you hear it and you’re like, oh my god This could be a fucking giant hit and the crazy thing is that AI makes this in seconds, right? I mean in literal seconds like you watch this guy put in the prompts you watch it Make this song and then you listen to the song and you’re like, right Oh my god, and it’s better than most of these songs like listen to this, Create a square avatar of a fictitious female alternative slash indie singer and a name for her. Wow. Sadie Winters. Sadie Winters. Okay. The song is about walking away from someone who never really saw her worth. She was going to create the song lyrics. Look at that. Wait, how many seconds was that?
JW: That was like about four seconds.
JR: Look at that.
JW: That’s got a bridge.
JR: Did you even read any of these? You don’t care. I don’t care. Put my lyrics in. The lyrics that happen in four seconds. Yes.
JW: And then hit create let’s listen this is the world premiere she’s a good singer good fan that’s nice pretty good where are we Rick where have we found ourselves.
JR: How crazy is that? Look at that. Jewel even says, Jewel goes, wow, it’s a great melody.
JW: Listen, artists, everything that can be replaced will be replaced. Okay? And pop music was already AI. Patrick has a great point there. I don’t think artists, what you’re making, I don’t think you got nothing to worry about.
JR: Well, it’s not a worry. It’s… I mean, for some people, I’m sorry to worry, but it also is just a concern that there’s a new element of society, that there’s creativity is being replaced in at least a form in front of our eyes. Like, regardless of what you think about pop music, there are some people that are making pop music as a creative endeavor. And that just did it way better than they do and did it like that.
JW: They’ll have to find something else to do.
JR: They’ll have to find something else to do.
JR: All things that can be replaced will be replaced…
Midway through Jesse Welles’ recent show at a sold-out Atlantis in D.C., a fan shouted out, “Tell ‘em Jesse!” “Tell ‘em what?” he asked back. “Tell ‘em what they need to hear.” He waited for a beat and cracked a sly smile: “No one asked for this.” The thing is, millions of people have.
The 30-year-old Arkansas native, who has taken to singing the news in wry folk songs he posts to social media— where he has nearly 2.5 million followers between Instagram and TikTok—has become a voice of his generation, whether he meant to or not. At shows, fans sing along to his simple-but-sophisticated numbers, which touch on topics as divisive as United Healthcare and Gaza and as common as Walmart and bugs. For Welles, who has been playing guitar since he was 11 and releasing music since 2012, it’s been a welcome reassurance. “It’s like meeting a pen pal or something,” Welles says. “I always knew everyone was out there. There were moments I did think I was crazy and now I know I ain’t.”
Often filmed outdoors in Arkansas, Welles’ songs and social media clips arrive at a dizzying speed. Since 2024, he’s put out multiple studio albums—the topical Helles Welles, the more personal Patchwork and this year’s Middle, a polished, rock-band effort devoid of current events. Late March brought Under the Powerlines, compiling 63 of his social media clips—raw takes, one-offs, Bob Dylan and John Prine covers—captured live. Pilgrim, which was released on July 4, incorporates the sounds of electric guitar, fiddle, pedal steel, along with collaborators Billy Strings and Sierra Ferrell.
In early March, Welles posted the satirical “SpaceXplosion” less than 90 minutes after first hearing about the titular explosion on the news one morning. “You’re running with an egg in a spoon and trying to get it over the finish line without dropping it,” he says.
Of his songwriting ethos, a pace inspired by a revelation he had after his dad had a heart attack and nearly died, Welles says, “You can’t get precious with it. At that point, I had quit making any music and I was looking at him and all the tubes and stuff, thinking, ‘We don’t have long here at all.’ I said, ‘I’m gonna make tunes like mad, until they got me hooked up to a bunch of tubes.’”
TikTok folk hero Jesse Welles: “I’m trying to find a through-line that’s honest”
NME meets the Arkansas singer-songwriter who’s become a viral sensation by “singing the news”, delivering songs about Gaza, capitalism, tariffs and United Healthcare in bite-sized videos on social media
Jesse Welles looks into his phone, fiddling with it for a moment as blue skies and early spring sunshine fight to be seen over his shoulder. Once he’s settled, a green expanse comes into view behind him, the light clipping the surface of a body of water. Anyone who’s kept track of his rise to viral fame as a folk firebrand for the TikTok crowd might expect his guitar to swoop into the frame next, followed by a short, sharp song that dissects the grim realities of modern America.
But on this day in April, he’s not wandering the woodland around his Arkansas home with something to get off his chest. Instead of an acoustic, he’s clutching a gas station coffee cup, standing on the side of the road during a long drive between Fort Collins, Colorado and Dallas, Texas. Welles is on a North American tour, having spent a couple of weeks transposing those star-making tracks from wilderness musings into the sort of polemics that can unite a packed room in real time. What’s it been like, putting faces to the thousands of names littering the comments sections beneath videos of him “singing the news”? “It’s like meeting a pen pal or something,” he tells NME.
Welles, a shaggy-haired 30-year-old out of Ozark (population 3,000 and change), has logged enough hours in the music biz to take this latest twist in his stride. Since the world first heard his weatherbeaten voice more than a decade ago, he’s been a few different things: a prolific solo artist under the name Jeh Sea Welles, the frontman of groups called Dead Indian and Cosmic-American, and a major label prospect as simply Welles, whose 2018 album ‘Red Trees and White Trashes’ first threatened to get him over. That it didn’t was almost a mortal blow.
But second, third and fourth chances can be found in unusual places. Burned out on touring and feeling like he’d swung hard and missed, Welles installed TikTok on his phone on a whim in late 2023. Keeping things low stakes at first, he fooled around by uploading snippets of original writing alongside covers of formative songs by Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Grateful Dead. But after his father had a heart attack, it all shifted.
His process became more deliberate as he began fashioning the events of the day, in all their dispiriting glory, into prickly folk numbers. Welles was working through the emotions of seeing a parent in need, and used these songs as a complementary means to think over the madness and anxiety of a society clinging, white-knuckled, onto the precipice. “It really is just me making sense of it,” he says.
Often standing amid rippling leaves and snaking power lines in a manner that suggested grounding – not only in a tradition, but on soil that will outlive any headline – Welles has delivered verses about Gaza, about the ghoulish nature of corporate healthcare, about Signal leaks. “If players in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s had to rely on a 45 in order to get their record out,” Welles says, “my 45 was the 90-second reel.”
Welles’ new approach struck a chord in a big way. As his likes and follower numbers climbed into the millions at a dizzying clip, he was held up by listeners as a protest singer in the vein of Dylan, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. “I suppose folks will compare you to what they are familiar with,” he says, downplaying that sort of talk. “The only way any artist is ever going to make it is to be completely themselves,” he considers. “It was a road to Damascus moment, a bright light that hit. I realised I don’t need to be anybody but what I want to be.”
From the outside, though, the process of “singing the news” seems like hard graft: doom-scrolling fashioned into a creative pursuit and, eventually, a living that requires Welles stay switched on. But he doesn’t see it that way. “I’ve always paid attention to the news,” he says. “It was always on when I was a kid. Really, what you’re looking at is me trying to get to the root of what is going on. There’s a lot of pretense, a lot of performance and manipulation, that goes into broadcasting what we call the news. So, I’m trying to find a through-line that’s honest.”
The opening song on Welles’ latest record ‘Middle’ takes this philosophy and spins it into three minutes of chiming folk-rock. ‘Horses’ dates back to one of Welles’ earliest TikTok experiments; he played it in his late-night television debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March. Its chorus finds him “singing this song about loving all the people that you’ve come to hate”. Locating a sting in the tail of some boilerplate hippie talk, he draws attention to the chasm that exists between left and right on every topic of consequence. It’s in that empty space that Welles has set out his stall.
“Most likely the path is down the middle,” he says. “When you do decide that’s going to be the way through living, then it poses the question, ‘Well, how will I alleviate the discomfort that comes with riding down the middle?’ If I’ve decided that that is the path that’s the most honest, well, the salve or the balm that you’re going to have to apply is love, in order to not lose your mind there, or not be tempted to join a tribe.”
‘Horses’, though, is one of relatively few songs with a political bent on ‘Middle’. Instead, the record serves up material that is more personal, even esoteric, and founded upon collaboration with a band. That the album was dropped in tandem with ‘Under The Powerlines’ – a monster project containing 60 examples of his backwoods writing, their titles accompanied by recording dates for maximum context – only seemed to highlight the difference in approach.
“I’m always writing both [kinds of songs],” Welles observes. “I’ve got my tunes that are near to me, that are me exploring what it means to be alive, and then there are the tunes of me trying to make sense of the news, or at least trying to make it rhyme. ‘Middle’ is a collection of tunes that I was working on for myself. It’s my jazz, you know?”
Taking in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Dublin, Welles’ ongoing European tour is a chance to see how his jazz reverberates a few thousand miles from home. The tour has been sold out since February, underlining the universal desire to see their confusion and anger channelled into song. “Dylan was probably more liked over there than he was at home,” Welles says with a laugh. “And that’s just the way life goes – you’ll never be cool in your hometown.”
But he can also admit there’s more to it than that. The American lineage that the comments section sees him in is mirrored by protest music of equal and greater potency in every country where six strings have been pulled tight across a couple of planks of wood. “Globally and historically, that’s where I become intrigued,” Welles says. “More than an American tradition, I think it’s a human tradition: writing and finding the truth, teasing it out of the wool.”
In the academy award winning Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, Timothèe Chalamet, (portraying Bob Dylan) suggests that to truly create something new, you have to destroy the past. The British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch referred to this as “killing your darlings.” David Lowery of the band Cracker sings, in Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) “What the world needs now is another folk-singer like I need a hole in my head.” The idea is that to create truly original art, literature, music, or cultural movements, you must forget the past.
Enter Jesse Welles. The 30-year-old, originally from Arkansas who has been making music for the last 15 years just released Middle, an album currently climbing the Americana charts. He lists what he calls “American Wordsmiths” like Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Mark Twain as influences for his lyrics. But instead of killing his darlings, he has used folk music to raise awareness for social change and express himself much like his 20th century counterparts. His voice has a Bob Dylan quality to it. His work is a bit like what you’d get if Woody Guthrie had a social media presence. Welles’ songs are intriguing, a call to action and anti-establishment but he’s using the tools of his day to send his message.
Prior to learning about Middle I had seen him on social media singing protest songs addressing 21st century problems. Oddly, other than some names and dates, his subjects aren’t a lot different from the folk music popularized by his darlings — poverty, excess, corporate greed, war, inequality, corrupt politicians and religious leaders among others. Though his songs would be perfect for outside of a Bernie Sanders rally, his Arkansas roots give him a perspective that transcends regions and the binary nature of politics.
In 2024 Welles released two full-length records and an EP as well as numerous singles and a collaboration with Mt. Joy covering the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic “Have You Ever Seen the Rain”? In February he received the 2025 John Prine Songwriter Fellowship at the Newport Folk Festival. He also released a 63-song album of his previous singles. If what you know about Jesse Welles is from his videos, you may expect him to be belting out protest tunes and playing acoustic guitar. While the folk spirit remains alive, Middle incorporates a full band for more highly produced, country-rock vibe. It was produced by Eddie Spear who has worked recently with Sierra Ferrell and Zach Bryan. In another parallel to Bob Dylan, Welles’ loyal fans aren’t particularly happy about this evolution. Some even called him a sellout.
From a political perspective, Middle, as the title suggests, has Welles trying to find some common ground. The title track which includes verses referencing Star Wars, Heart of Darkness, and the recent fires in California, revolves around the chorus “when the devil plays his fiddle, I’m gonna meet you in the middle, friend.”
He strikes a similar chord in the breakout single “Horses”. It could be compared sonically to Bob Dylan’s Hurricane. The gist however is that in spite of all that is tearing us apart we need to remember we’re all in it together. His hope is in the chorus “So I’m singing this song about loving, all the people that you’ve come to hate. It’s true that they say I’m gonna die someday. Why am I holding on to all this weight?”
Welles isn’t covering new ground here. He, like so many other great troubadours writes what he sees and speaks truth to power. But maybe what we need isn’t necessarily a new format. Maybe we do need another folk singer, maybe our darlings are still valid and, what musicians and writers and poets have been doing for centuries still works. It’s just that we sometimes need a fresh face to carry the message. At Farm-Aid in the early ‘90s, Arlo Guthrie introduced Tracy Chapman. He suggested that for every generation, someone needed to “hold the flashlight” and guide us. He said Tracy Chapman was the holder of the flashlight at that time. Jesse Welles seems well-positioned to hold the flashlight as we navigate the 21st century.
A buzzy protest song about the definition of war, timed perfectly to public protests against the Israel–Hamas War, shows that there’s room for social media and protest singers to coexist.
Last year, we saw the unlikeliest of pop stars emerge from the backwoods of Virginia with an acoustic-folk turn—a protest song that seemed to highlight the plight of the working man.
That song, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” played into a number of political talking points, found support from the right-leaning political establishment, and even appeared in a Republican presidential debate. (Its singer, Oliver Anthony, demurred from being on the right or left, but his song included a base-level commentary on welfare that made the song controversial with progressives.)
It topped the charts (partly with the help of a well-known iTunes gaming scheme), but within a few months, it had faded from memory. Oliver Anthony released an album recently, produced by Dave Cobb, the guy who has made albums by Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, and Brandi Carlile sparkle. It was not a mega-hit when it came out (very few newly released albums are), but he’s still in the conversation.
I bring this up because there is now a musician strongly on the left who is drawing attention for a similar formula. Over the weekend, a guitarist named Jesse Welles, using a similar model to Anthony’s singing-outside-in-nature field-recording tactic, emerged from the murky waters of YouTube with an extremely timely critique of the Israel-Hamas War: [War Isn’t Murder]
The song’s message is direct and harsh, as highlighted by its title, “War Isn’t Murder.” However, it’s full of lyrical wordplay of the kind that someone who has been doing this a while usually comes up with. The whole idea of the song is to needle at the semantics that people use to discuss and paper over the nature of combat. (One look at Reddit suggests that at least some people did not understand that was the point of the song.)
Coming during a week when social media is loaded with stories about major U.S. universities trying to manage anti-war encampments on their campuses, often with police assistance, it feels like the song emerged at the very second something like it needed to come up. Putting aside whether you agree with the song, it feels like it emerged almost on the very day something like this was bound to enter the conversation.
On the surface, his song is very reminiscent of another famed (and controversial for its time) anti-war song, the 1965 hit “Eve Of Destruction,” which its singer, Barry McGuire, didn’t write, but infuses with a similar gravel-voiced directness.
Now, Jesse Welles (apparent birth name Jesse Wells, no additional e) seems like he came from nowhere to drop the timeliest of protest songs, but he really didn’t. Welles, who hails from Northwest Arkansas, has flowed through the waves of indie rock for roughly a decade, and has been featured by NPR in the past for his more rock-oriented sound. Over the years, he’s opened for big-name bands like Greta Van Fleet. Unlike Anthony, music was obviously his career before he made this song.
Artists like Welles often try out a few sounds, or launch new bands, until they find something that fits them. Welles’ new sound feels like John Prine more than Bob Dylan, but he’s talking about things that are of its moment, like he’s Phil Ochs. (Ochs, famously, sold himself as a “singing journalist” who sang songs directly inspired by stories in newspapers and magazines.) Welles is singing about fentanyl and microplastics, not Vietnam and the civil rights movement.
Since his sudden breakout, Anthony has carried himself like someone who tripped into this. By contrast, Welles feels like someone who has embraced this as a strategy, based on the fact that he has a TikTok full of songs like this.
But even if it’s strategic, it nonetheless feels like a conversation worth having.
Back in 2017, a Washington Post story, riffing off the fact that Lady Gaga (!) performed one of his songs, suggested that we needed a Phil Ochs, singing protest songs about what’s happening in the culture in real time.
At a time when a guy sounding like the second coming of John Prine can write up-to-the-minute protest songs and post them on YouTube and TikTok, I feel like there’s a chance we might be getting that.
Protest singers have long had the tools to respond to the culture in real time. With songs like “War Isn’t Murder,” they’re starting to use them.
Modern protest singer Jesse Welles blows Dallas away at sold-out Kessler show
Jesse Welles is something like a time-traveler. From his 70s-style hair to his poignant songwriting, to his poetic spirit that seems to be timeless—he is connecting people from all walks of life and at every age.
Last week, Welles completed his Fear is the Mind Killer Tour in the US, with his second-to-last stop being a sold-out show, “An Evening with Jesse Welles,” in Dallas at The Kessler Theater.
Welles is known for his confrontational and empathetic folk music, coupled with his mastery of guitar, rustic voice and bravery to tackle social issues. Beyond his polarizing political satire songs that has made him famous through social media, there is a deep well of soul-quenching lyricism throughout his discography.
In the past 12 months, the prolific songwriter has released 128 recorded songs, including three full-length studio albums, an EP, and a collection of 63 songs called Under The Powerlines (April 24 – September 24), from his social media videos.
At The Kessler, a notable detail that was a bit surprising to see upon arriving was the beefed up security at the venue, where a security guard had a metal detector to check for weapons. Immediately, it was a stark reminder that the nature of Welles’ work can come with consequences. But that hasn’t stopped the rising folk hero from using his voice.
His set in Dallas bobbed and weaved through his catalogue, kicking the crowd off hard with “Fat” straight into “Walmart,” both becoming the first of many sing-a-longs of the night. The cheers from the crowd at times were deafening, as Welles pulled Dallas into a pocket universe of his creation. The front row pressed up at the front of the stage looked to be mostly 20-somethings, though the crowd was littered with people of all ages–as his music penetrates multiple generations.
After some topical fan favorites like “Whistle Boeing,” “United Health,” and “Cancer,” Welles transitioned into some of his more personal tracks like “See Arkansaw” and “New Moon” from his sophomore album Patchwork. As he sang “Saint Steve Irwin,” there was a reverence in the air, as every eye and ear in the room was fixated on the stage. Lyrics like “I can see a light at the end of the tunnel / Then again it could be the train / I can work this out / Nothing’s holding me back / There’s hope on the horizon / Or maybe the Earth’s just flat” exemplifies Welles’ knack for taking words of olde and giving them new perspective.
There is a magic in the way Welles can play an uplifting cooing melody like “Turtles,” then perform a heart-wrenching rendition of his redemption song “Let It Be Me,” like someone who has weathered the worst of storms and is now laying their soul bare for a room full of familiar strangers.
An hour into the show, Welles ended the solo part of the set with fan-favorite “Bugs,” and then got his band on stage to perform for another whole hour. They kicked it off with “God, Abraham, and Xanax,” a song that juxtaposes biblical references with the modern human experience from his debut album Hells Welles. His provocative songwriting tackles many issues including religion and violence with songs like “War is a God,” which feels like a pacifist’s war-cry.
The band got the crowd dancing with “Domestic Error,” with a studio recording set to release this Wednesday, as a dual single release alongside “Red.” KXT fans may have recognized “Horses” at the show, which is currently in rotation at the station from Welles’ new album Middle.
The rocking title track for the tour, “Fear is the Mind Killer,” was the band’s last song before encore chants of “JESSE! JESSE! JESSE!” beckoned the artist back on stage to end with a couple solo songs, including “Middle.”
After the show, Welles popped up in the lobby to meet with fans and sign merch, emanating a quiet confidence with a humble demeanor & offering his time to people that connect with his frequency.
Jesse Welles feels like a breath of fresh air for a world choking on toxicity. His sold-out US and European tours affirm that there is something special to be found in his live performance. You can catch him on tour this festival season at May 17 at FreshGrass (Bentonville, AR), June 1 at Railbird Music Festival (Lexington, KY) and July 26 at Newport Folk Festival (Newport, RI).
The stunning success of American folksinger Jesse Welles testifies to the rich afterlife of authenticity.
Rather than hammering the last nail into its coffins, as many pundits feared, AI opened the lid.
Evidence of this increasingly forceful haunting abounds.
Despite the fact that social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok are full of professionally made and AI-generated content, relentlessly pushed at us by algorithms designed to reinforce mindless passive consumption, the posts people are most excited about sharing, the ones that go viral, disproportionately feature content that foregrounds what makes us human.
Cue the work of Jesse Welles.
The term “troubadour” has been thrown around far too often in relation to modern popular musicians. But he fits it better than most, especially now that he is touring to sold-out crowds, finding ways to make the most threadbare conventions feel fresh.
A talented rock musician who moved from Arkansas to the music-industry hotbed of Nashville, Tennessee, in the mid-2010s, Welles eventually returned home without having made it big.
In 2023, he decided on a different tack, recording short videos of himself playing cover songs on an acoustic guitar in natural settings around his home, such as the middle of the forest or the overgrown meadow made by a corridor of power lines. Then he began adding his own compositions to the mix.
The short clips Welles made from these solo sessions started blowing up on TikTok, driving traffic to his YouTube channel.
He is now popular enough to appear with a band on the ABC late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live, promoting his new album Middle.
Welles appeals to a wide range of people, building on the recent surge of interest in Bob Dylan’s work inspired by the Timothée Chalamet biopic, A Complete Unknown. Baby Boomers and surviving members of the folk music-loving generation that preceded them find his stripped-down aesthetic comforting. But a surprisingly large number of teens and twenty-somethings are also drawn to it.
It helps that he regularly shares songs that critique the rich and powerful, devoting particular attention in recent months to the second Trump Administration’s assault on American institutions and Elon Musk’s break-things-before-you-make-things mindset.
“Signal Leak” is a humorous send-up of National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s use of the popular messaging app to plan for a “secret” strike on Yemen.
One of Welles’ signature moves is to lure listeners in with lyrics so simple they sound like something appropriate for pre-schoolers, only to slip in double meanings with a savage edge.
His recent song “Red” is a particularly good example, highlighting Musk’s transformation from a visionary beloved of well-off liberals into a reactionary firebrand:
I got me a red house and a red car Runs on big red batteries They used to be blue Fifteen minutes ago But they turned red just for me
As the song unfolds, Welles keeps finding new ways to make the colour signify. He conjures the spectre of a bloody outcome to the current political crisis. Then he invokes the popular 1999 science-fiction film The Matrix to lampoon the concept of “red-pilling”, which reactionary conspiracy theorists derived from it, right after suggesting that Musk’s use of a Roman salute might have something to do with his love of “white powder”:
I got me some red pills And a bottle I got black and blue ones too All the pills are all the same The illusion is you choose
There are clear parallels between the viral explosion of Jesse Welles and that of Oliver Anthony, whose 2023 folk song “Rich Men North of Richmond” rode a wave of populist resistance to the apparent expansion of government reach in the wake of the pandemic.
Despite being celebrated by conservatives, Anthony insisted that he didn’t mean for the song to seem partisan. But the stereotypes he invokes suggest that they understood “Rich Men North of Richmond” better than he did.
Although Welles may be tapping into the same reservoir of populist sentiment that Oliver Anthony did, songs like “Red” make it abundantly clear that the rich men in his sights don’t just live north of Richmond or vote for Democrats, even if some of the people praising him mistake his homespun vibe for a message from the bygone America they dream of restoring.
A cynical person might point out that Jesse Welles is deceiving us.
After all, the solitude and sense of immediacy his clips communicate are illusions since he is connecting with thousands of people through them, using the technological mediation of deeply problematic platforms.
His rough-hewn performances can feel a bit like watching one of those mountaineering documentaries in which you marvel at the in-your-face spectacle of climbers defying death, only to remember that somebody had to lug a camera up to 8,000 metres and position it just so in order to capture them.
As the brutal satire of Elia Kazan’s brutal 1957 film A Face in the Crowd already communicated, the yearning to have a true man or woman of the people become a star is so deeply engrained within the American culture industry that we should be wary of anyone who finds favour with the insiders who program content for shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live.
But Welles has great answers for the sceptics.
Although he obviously isn’t composing his songs on the spot, the fact that so many of them are topical, in sync with the narrowing gyre of the news cycle, demonstrates his dedication.
The way he ends most videos, walking up to the camera to stop the recording instead of editing that part out, reinforces the ethos of his DIY approach.
Most importantly, Welles incorporates enough self-reflexivity into his songs to confirm awareness of its paradoxes.
He confronts it directly in “Will the Computer Love the Sunset?”, which he recently recorded in a parking garage. The lyrics worry that we will “midwife our demise” by giving machines too much power over us.
“Can it calculate my love? Will it know how to be kind? You can’t just rewind.” That last line does a wonderful job of distilling the way Welles confronts a world going mad.
He may be recording himself out in the middle of nowhere on a beat-up guitar. But he knows perfectly well that there is no going back.
Although the past may inspire us in our struggle to move forward, as the example of Bob Dylan clearly does for Jesse Welles, making real progress requires that we stop believing in the magic of repetition.
Jesse Welles Brings Country-Tinged ‘Horses’ To ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’
See the prolific singer-songwriter offer the opener off his new album, Middle.
Jesse Welles was the musical guest on Thursday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Welles performed “Horses” from his new album, Middle, which arrived on February 21.
A prolific songwriter, Jesse Welles has performed and released music under various names such as Jeh Sea Wells and simply Welles along with the groups Dead Indian and Comsic-American. Jesse Welles released two studio albums in 2024, Hells Welles and Patchwork, and now follows with Middle.
Welles selected Middle opener “Horses” to perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The song showcases Jesse’s signature songsmithery. Dave Matthews introduced him at Farm Aid 2024 as “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard in my life.” Known for his topical songs, “Horses” is a more macro, existential rumination.
Kyle Smith: We are live and direct today with Jesse Welles, and I’m joined by a whole roof of WYEP members. They’re here on a cloudy, rainy day, and we’re excited because Jesse Welles is here, and we’re going to talk about his new album, middle, and, uh, Jesse, would you like to start us off with the song?
Jesse Welles: Yeah, absolutely. It’s called horses.
~Horses~
Kyle: Well, that’s quite an introduction to Jesse Welles. Jesse, Welcome to Pittsburgh, I guess. Welcome back to Pittsburgh. You’ve been here before.
Jesse: Yeah, I love it here.
Kyle: You’ve toured before. And, uh, it didn’t all just start with this song that I heard for the very first time about three weeks ago and had to listen to that over and over again, Horses is on your new album called the Middle. Would you like to give us a little background about, uh, where you’ve grown up, because I know you grew up in Arkansas, and uh, give us a little bit of? Uh, the road of of how you got here.
Jesse: Yeah. I grew up in Ozark, Arkansas. And I just I did everything that you do in a town like that. Had a couple jobs. Like the grocery store, the Chinese restaurant, a radio station, and cut down trees for a guy, too. And I played football and I was in the school band. And, uh. But, you know, uh, so I listened to a lot of public radio and I went to a lot of a lot of public libraries and stuff and got a hold of some of the music that you wouldn’t typically get a hold of there. So, you know,
Kyle: I would imagine that would include a few of the Troubadours that perhaps
Jesse: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I had encyclopedia and Carter CD that you put into the, you know, CD-ROM? You put it in there, and they had, like, little samples of. Lightning Hopkins, and little samples of Pete Seeger. You could listen to and those samples of Woody, I got, I’d spin. That was, like little 20 second samples over and over again.
Kyle: Well, the song, uh, that you just did. Horses is the first single from the new album called the middle, which is out, and you’re inside. You just decided to put it out on your own, and we’ll talk about the album a little bit, uh, later. But, uh, what do you think, uh, LED you to writing some songs to deal with, uh, society, and maybe even a little bit of foreign policy, but that’s not really about, uh, about love, really?
Jesse: Why tune about about the love? Yeah. You, this probably about the only the only thing that’s going to bring anybody together. You can’t really. You can’t take out hate with hate or anything like that and? I don’t know, I reckon. When you deal in so much, politically, you know, political notions and stuff like that you start looking for for a cure or a way out or whatever you find pretty quick, can’t like, Stamp Out hate with hate, or uh, or anything like that. So, it’s, you know, it’s just a love tune, you know?
Kyle: I think you also referenced that in a couple of other songs on the album, including Certain, uh, there’s a there’s a few lines in that song as well, but could you give us a little bit of insight into your career so far because this just didn’t happen overnight? We’ll talk about the viral nature of social media and your presence there in a little bit and how you built the following. But, you’ve toured a lot in the past, and you’ve been writing songs for, uh, well over, uh, 15 years. Since you were very young, but can you give us a little insight on you? The background from from going to Arkansas because you toured in a band for quite a while, yeah.
Jesse: I just think some people have like a motorcycle, or a Doberman or a tattoo, and I just I always had a rock band. And I thought that that was a cool thing to have. And um? You know, I just I wanted to play rock and roll music and, so I did and I saw folks where other folks were out in the woods playing songs. I thought, I can do that. And this is a little less overhead so.
Kyle: Yes, it was, yeah. Did you return to Arkansas after touring then in the? Is that what he decided to, uh, kind of, hone your craft with, uh, some uh little pointed songs I had Society.
Jesse: Yeah, I came home in ’21, I had been gone since, like ’15 or something or something like that. I was going to- I was gonna stop playing music. And I was just going to, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do, but I was gonna quit playing music because I was kind of burnt out on it. Honestly, I wasn’t really honing anything, but just running and reading a lot and I think holding it down for about two years, and then my old man had a heart attack, and I thought well, you know, life is pretty short, and then all the tunes just kind of started coming. You know, around February of ’24, I just started writing tunes all the time, you know. And now, we’re here. Now, we’re up to this, you know?
Kyle: Okay, so, so a lot of the songs have been written in this last year, and you just put this record out last Friday. It came out for the first time. It’s called the middle, and um. Why don’t we hear a couple more songs from it? Then we’ll talk a little bit about your social media presence and a little bit more about the record. Okay, but uh, Jesse Welles is here. He’s in town for a sold out show tonight. In fact, his tour one on sale, and it sold out within a day of 25 dates, and so he’s playing the Thunderbird tonight. He’s doing solo stuff. He also has a band here tonight, and, we’re lucky to have you here. Jesse, so if you play a couple more songs for us. I’d rather everybody be pretty happy.
Jesse: Yeah.
~ Wheel ~
Kyle: We are live and direct with Jesse Welles in our WYEP Studios.
~ Middle ~
Kyle: 91.3 WYEP, We are live and direct with Jesse Welles first time with Jesse Welles in our Studios, and that was the title track to Middle, which has just come out. As of this last Friday and also heard the song Wheel. Jesse, thanks a lot for, uh, for being here today again, and this is really a treat. I didn’t really realize until hearing that song horses. I didn’t really realize, the background that you built in your followers that you had built over the last year by making some. He referenced it a while ago, basically singing songs in nature. But, uh, kind of ripping things from the headlines. What gave you the idea to get up nature and sing about, uh, Hot Topics, uh, like healthcare and United Health, and Walmart and war isn’t murder?
Jesse: Um. I’m kind of about people not dying. If we can help it. So, as far as reasons, that’s my reason.
With regards to the woods, I was out there already, so, it was just a matter of putting a camera up, and doing it there. Yeah.
Kyle: But did you have any idea about, um, the positivity you’d feel and the followers that? Would that would happen?
Jesse: No, you can’t know. I figured. Nothing brings people together like making fun of someone. And I figured, that’s what would be, you know, best case scenario you get made fun of? But something else has happened. No, you can’t know. You can’t know what’s gonna pop off?
Kyle: Well, now you’ve got an album that is, is flushed out and produced. You’ve got, uh, band members on it, and some and some guests and things. Let’s talk a little bit about Middle, and it’s the first album for you under your own name. So, I guess your proper debut? You started to write these songs back into February, but you know, there aren’t a lot of references direct references to headlines on the new album, um, I mean, there are some mentions of things, but, was that a conscious choice?
Jesse: I usually I have a few songs going at once and. Kind of like having a few things on on the burners of a stove or whatever you know, and I would always. Go by and and drop the line into one, or drop something into another and as. As they get done, start a new one and then finish the one that was next up in line. But I like to have them all, you know, some of them will be topical tunes and then some of them are a bit more self-indulgent. What you’re, you know, these Tunes? These are the songs that I like to write, myself, and and people who, I reckon, who crave who crave the same, the same sorts of things, Lyrically and and harmonically. So, these are a big risk tunes, you know?
Kyle: Yeah, I had heard. The cover that you did with the members of Mount Joy? Of the CCR tune, who will stop the rain? That’s where I first heard your voice, and that was a unique voice. So I hadn’t really gotten. Viral moments and and the stuff that’s happened, uh, in social media and stuff before, but um. Imagine you made some of those connections while touring and making musical friends on the road before, but you worked at the pretty Top Line producer right now, who’s worked with Sierra Farrell and Zach Bryan, and how did that flush out your sound or bring out the sound of the album, Middle?
Jesse: Ed. I met Ed about a hundred years ago. He was Engineering for Cobb when I did my first rock and roll record. That was with Welles, and he and I have just been real good pals ever since, and he’s very much a producer in his own right, right? As you, as you noted. I would send him a big list of tunes, and he listened to them, and he would tell me the ones that he was excited about. And I would say, okay, we’re not doing any of those. And, uh, then, really, it’s a matter of- He helped me put a band together for the studio, and then we go in and we play the tracks live. We would take the best takes and and go ahead and roll with that. He offers a lot harmonically, and arrangement wise and melodically, too. He is very much a real producer, you know of music, and and he could take something and say, well, this has 20 verses and no one’s going to listen to it. But we like the melodies, um, so can we pick your three favorite, you know, and stick with those. So, he helps me organize my thoughts to something to some extent.
Kyle: Well, you’re just getting started on the road. You’ve got a, but another 20 shows or so ahead of you. You’ve gotten accolades from Dave Matthews is saying he’s you’re the best songwriter he’s ever heard, which is pretty amazing.
Jesse: Love Dave, yeah.
Kyle: And we like him, too. He’s been around a long time. And, uh, and from what I understand, you’re gonna be playing Newport Folk Festival, uh, this year as well. Congratulations.
Jesse: Thanks.
Kyle: Well, uh, we would love it if you would share another song with us before we send you off into the dark cold afternoon here in Pittsburgh before your show here at the Thunderbird tonight in Pittsburgh. And we get more songs from you. Absolutely!
Jesse: This is called fear is a mind killer.
~Fear is a Mind Killer~
Jesse: Thanks again for coming folks.
Kyle: Fear is a mind killer. That’s the song from Middle from Jesse Welles who is here in our studio today. Live and direct for the very first time, Jesse. Congratulations on everything so far, and best of luck with the 25-city-tour and at the show tonight. The sold-out show happening at the Thunderbird Cafe this evening, but uh, hope to see you down the road.
