Category: News

Why Jesse Welles Just Released a 63-Song Album

If you need any further illustration of the creative explosion that Jesse Welles has been the catalyst and accelerant for over the last year or so, appreciate that he just released a 63-song album encapsulating a six month time period between April of 2024 to September of 2024 called Under The Powerlines. The title makes reference to the clearing where Welles recorded many of his now viral videos over that time period.

The album collects the audio from those viral videos that have garnered Jesse Welles 1.1 million followers on Instagram, 1.2 million followers on Tik-Tok, and 370,000 subscribers on YouTube, and counting. It’s difficult to impossible to communicate the incredible level of interest we’re seeing in Welles, which has also translated to the live space where he’s selling out shows left and right. Jesse Welles is one of the hottest names in all of music.

But you might be asking, “A 63 song album? Really?” especially since it feels like music is currently in an arm’s race with acts like Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Beyoncé and others releasing 27 to 40-song monstrosities that already make it difficult to impossible for fans to parse through and digest. How is someone expected to have the time to listen to a 63-song record?

With Jesse Welles, the explanation is much more practical. First, he wants to give fans the ability to stream any one of his viral songs they might fancy, and in their full versions, and at their fingertips. Releasing the audio to the videos gives fans that capability to do so on demand as opposed to having to go to YouTube and search up a video, which is a pain in the keister.

Most importantly though, the bigger issue actually has to do with intellectual property and theft. Welles was already becoming the victim of song thieves uploading the audio to his videos to Digital Service Providers (DSP) like Spotify, and making money off his songs. As Saving Country Music reported in April of 2024, performers are having their songs stolen and uploaded, even sometimes before they can release them themselves. One way to protect yourself is to get your songs up ASAP, even if you delay the release date.

There are other practical reasons for Jesse Welles releasing this album, like the ability to use the Shazam app to identify the songs and the artist, or for people to use snippets of the songs on Tik-Tok and Instagram in a way that Jesse gets credit for. And yes, you can probably expect more album dumps from Welles coming in six month intervals as he continues to churn out tracks commentating on and lampooning current events at an incredible pace.

Some have already criticized Jesse Welles’ output as being too much, and this batch of previously-releases songs won’t help his case. But what Jesse Welles is doing defies all conventional norms. No artist or songwriter has ever been responsible for such a voluminous amount of output that still resonates widely with the public like Welles does. It’s unprecedented territory that calls for extraordinary measures to chronicle it, like releasing a 63-song album.

Who knows how long this will continue or where Jesse Welles goes from here. But cataloging his songs over this incredible period seems imperative, no matter how intimidating trying to dive into his music might be, especially if you’re just starting now. And all indications are that Jesse Welles isn’t slowing down and allowing any of us to come up for air any time soon. If you want to know where to start, chances are Jesse Welles has a new song coming out soon.

If you want to hear a more produced, curated, full band release from Jesse Welles, check out his album Middle. To listen to Under The Powerlines.

Why Jesse Welles Just Released a 63-Song Album, By Kyle Trigger, March 21, 2025
https://savingcountrymusic.com/why-jesse-welles-just-released-a-63-song-album/

Will the Revolution Start at a Jesse Welles Concert?

At a sold-out Bowery Ballroom on Friday night, fans were stressed. They had been reading the news. Drowning in it. They’d made a separate group chat to keep the headlines away from the joy. They were watching Maddow and reading the AP for 20 minutes daily before law school. They were still reading the Times, however sheepishly; a leather-jacketed Hobokenite had the day’s full paper edition under his arm. Or they had traded their subscription to the Grey Lady and the rest of the American “legacy media horseshit” for the BBC and the Guardian. They were trying to take a step back from the updates. They were evangelizing about Heather Cox Richardson and Jamelle Bouie. They were streaming Hasan Piker on their boss’s dime every damn day.

They were still on X, but they were verifying their sources. They were considering running for county committee and getting back into organizing. They were studying all 1,249 pages of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. They were cybersecurity journalists, lawyers defending climate scientists from political censorship (work lately? “a nightmare”), and federal workers wondering about their jobs.

Onstage, just a 30-year-old guy and his acoustic guitar, was Jesse Welles, his shoulder-length Jim Morrison locks about scraggly as his voice. Wearing jeans, a green crewneck, and an enormous grin, he launched into song after song of, well, more news. Hours earlier, about a dozen blocks away, Luigi Mangione had appeared in court, charged with assassinating the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Fingerpickin’ under the lights, Welles sang about the company’s business model — one of his most popular songs: “You paid their salary to deny you what you’re owed / There ain’t no ‘You’ in UnitedHealth.” He warbled about the war in Gaza as an attempt to clear the Strip and turn it into resorts, and the crowd joined in, turning it into a pub anthem. Football-match chants of “Jesse! Jesse! Jesse!” echoed between songs. He ran through tunes about processed foods, whistleblowing at Boeing, fentanyl, Elon Musk. There were titterings of weary laughter and the occasional solidarity fist in the air.

A mix of old-fashioned folkie signifiers and trending-topic populism, delivered in hooky snippets on social media several times weekly, has taken Welles from obscurity to 2 million followers across TikTok and Instagram in under a year. In most of his clips, he croons and strums in front of an Arkansas field or a rural stretch of power lines. (During one number, an attendee shouted, “Why didn’t you film this one in the woods?”) He has churned out dozens of viral songs pegged to current events that deliver clear-eyed opinions in “a concise and consumable way,” as Jessica, a 25-year-old Long Islander, put it. Which is to say that he’s followed the influencer playbook of dropping a steady stream of commentary on what’s already being talked about — but with four chords and Wikipedia-mouthed wit.

It’s probably helped that Bob Dylan has been in the air, in no small part due to last year’s biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Welles gets Dylan comparisons all the time owing to his rough-hewn vocal grain, the harmonica propped up around his face like orthodontic headgear, and a young Bob being the average person’s main reference point for wordy folk music with a bent toward social commentary. More than a dozen concertgoers told me they grew up on Dylan. For a duo of 24-year-old north Brooklyn Matts attending the show together, Dylan had led them to Welles. Ginger-bearded Matt, in a thrifted jacket featuring a map of local TV news stations, was going through “a big Bob Dylan phase,” so Tall Matt recommended Welles. Tall Matt had been on a Bob Dylan kick of his own, “and then I just really got into Jesse. He introduced me to John Prine and got me into a lot of older folk music.” One of Welles’s songs borrows the violin part from Dylan’s protest song “Hurricane,” and the Bowery show featured a speedy cover of his “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” The set also included renditions of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by CCR, but his own songwriting consistently drew the most enthusiastic response.

A 26-year-old named Sierra told me they listen to a lot of folk music, “but I think a lot of folk that talks about more political stuff is older, like from the ’60s,” they said. “This feels like the start of something new again in this genre, and hopefully further out past the genre.” Their friend Shomari, a 31-year-old in a beanie and glasses, noted how much more common it has been for rappers to deal in specifics about the things happening in the present: “Kendrick, a lot of those guys — they’re all talking about the same stuff. This is just kind of a different font.”

“Jesse’s music has an absurdism of the American people who, since the end of ‘the End of History’ in 2020, have realized, Oh my God, the state of things is so obviously not anything that anyone would want,” Johana, a 26-year-old from Bellerose, told me. “It captures the futility of the moment.” In the 2024 general election, she wrote Joe Biden in as a fuck-you vote. “That’s what they deserve.”

Deborah, a 70-year-old who had flown in from a suburb of Rochester, spoke about Welles as if spellbound: “He’s the light in the darkness.” She had been surprised with tickets by her son-in-law, Ben. As they rested on a couch in the bar below the venue after the show, she was still in a daze. “I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone because I love him. I had a bad year in some ways with my health” — she had broken her hip — “and my mom died last year. But every morning and every night I would listen to his songs. He’s on my feed and I just suck it up.”

Many of Welles’s fans told me they are into other artists they see as political, citing Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, riot grrrl, punk, and other folk. But a few said they typically stay away from music they view this way. “It works for me in this context because I find his lyrics to be really clever” — it’s hard not to smile at lines like “Monsanto Claus delivered all the cancer in your ass” — “and you can still enjoy the music without hearing the political side of it,” Megan, a 24-year-old journalist, told me. “Although I do tend to agree with a lot of his politics.” (She places herself “on the left.”) Marin, a 37-year-old with socialist views, attending with her boyfriend, said that unlike most political music, Welles’s gets a pass because “it seems a lot more authentic. It’s just one guy singing from the heart.”

When seemingly organic virality turned the unknown Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” into an overnight Billboard No. 1 in 2023, it was a premonition of Jesse Welles: a tree-backed video of a red-hued man from the rural South strumming an acoustic guitar and singing about elites’ depredations on the poor and working class. But where Oliver’s ire extended to regular people — “the obese milkin’ welfare,” for example — Welles tends to keep his sights trained on corporations and the rich and powerful. And while he hasn’t shied away from political lyrics (including anti-Trump ones), his songs usually live in the realm of complaint or implication, allowing people with disparate party allegiances to embrace his music. On Welles’s Instagram, you can find Glenn Beck simping in the comments and avowed fans claiming to be Trump voters.

Nonetheless, this was a mostly white room full of Kamala voters with a few Gaza-motivated abstainers mixed in. The most surprising thing about the crowd was the number of middle-aged people there to see their favorite TikToker alongside all the 20- and 30-somethings. They were lovers of NPR and The Daily or the Marxist Rev Left Radio. Nobody mentioned America’s most popular podcast, despite Welles’s songs including many Joe Rogan Experience–core topics: Lyme disease as a government-concocted bioweapon, New Jersey drone sightings, Ozempic skepticism, whistleblower deaths at Boeing. (Rogan himself is a Welles fan.) “He writes a lot of songs,” said Allegra, who was there celebrating her 33rd birthday. “I haven’t listened to every single one.”

In fact, he had released an album of another dozen songs that day, Middle. It is more produced and less newsy than the music that had brought most of the people to the Bowery to see him — subjects tend toward spiritual seeking, insecurity, nature, and the passage of time — and often features a full band. About an hour into the set, Welles brought out a drummer and an electric bassist to run through the new material. Nobody called out “Judas!” “The only filter placed on it was I wasn’t doing topical songs for this project,” he told the Times. “These are ones that are self-indulgent, or at least I feel like they are at times. I like to do both. They’re two different mediums.” With Middle, the medium he’s shooting for might be Spotify rather than the ephemerality of TikTok, the kind of traditional music career he aimed for in his former life as a major-label-signed hard rocker. Will his topical songs still find listeners in a year or three? Or will they feel like novelties, old memes that don’t hit like they did when Luigi was still at large? “The singles he posts are more relevant to stuff that works on social media,” a Long Island preschool teacher named Becky told me. “But with this album, I sat down and actually looked through the lyrics as it was playing, because I wanted to make sure that I heard it.”

Dylan famously chafed at the expectation that he would continue writing “finger-pointing songs,” and Kendrick has objected to the perception of him as an activist. At the Bowery, at least, Welles himself seemed at times a little overwhelmed by the crowd’s relentless earnestness. Mid-show, an audience member was overcome with radical inspiration. “The revolution will not be televised!” she screamed between songs. Welles tried to defuse it with a wry joke: “That’s because there ain’t a whole lot of TV.” She repeated her political prophecy louder a second time. All Welles could do was smile. “Faaar out,” he said, starting once again to play.

Will the Revolution Start at a Jesse Welles Concert? By Jack Denton February 26, 2025
https://www.vulture.com/article/jesse-welles-fans-protest-music-bob-dylan.html

We are thrilled to announce that our 2025 John Prine Songwriter Fellowship recipient will be Jesse Welles.

Founded in partnership with John’s family, the Fellowship celebrates the legacy and impact that John had, and continues to have, on the Newport Folk community. Each year, one songwriter who embodies John’s spirit is chosen as the recipient. Congratulations, Jesse!

https://www.facebook.com/newportfolkfest/posts/we-are-thrilled-to-announce-that-our-2025-john-prine-songwriter-fellowship-recip/1173863677435112/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGQ34D5Pq7g/

Jesse Welles, a Folk Musician Who ‘Sings the News,’ Is Turning the Page

The 30-year-old known for strumming his guitar to tunes about hot topics is releasing a new album, “Middle,” that avoids current events.

In a small home recording studio on a Monday afternoon in January, Jesse Welles sat with a guitar on his lap, dressed head-to-toe in black.

Welles, a singer-songwriter with a shaggy, dirty-blond mane and a sandpapery voice, has risen to recent prominence posting videos to social media of himself alone in the woods near his home in northwest Arkansas, performing wryly funny, politically engaged folk songs. He’s managed to turn subjects like the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight-loss drug Ozempic and the rapaciousness of United Healthcare’s business model into viral hits on TikTok and Instagram, building an audience of more than 2 million followers on those platforms. But the song he was recording in that basement in East Nashville, “Simple Gifts,” is a different beast.

As he delicately plucked his acoustic guitar, he sang its earnest opening lines — “Slouching towards the sky’s extent from the edges of a waste / Was something darker than a hope, something brighter still than fate” — sketching out an imagistic tableau untouched by current events. Welles’s new album, “Middle,” due Feb. 21, is similarly minded.

“The only filter placed on it was I wasn’t doing topical songs for this project,” he said. “These are ones that are self-indulgent, or at least I feel like they are at times. I like to do both. They’re two different mediums.”

The producer, Eddie Spear, rose from behind a mixing board and adjusted the microphone in front of Welles. Most of the songs on “Middle” are recorded with a full band, but for “Simple Gifts” and the album’s title track, the setup was pared down to a solitary microphone. “I’m trying to honor what people are enjoying about Jesse,” said Spear, who has also worked with Zach Bryan and Sierra Ferrell. “We thought getting a really simple capture in this way might tie in where he’s come from and honor this particular period of his career.”

At 30, Welles has already lived a full life in the music industry. Growing up in Ozark, Ark., he latched onto music, devouring homemade cassettes of Beatles albums his grandfather recorded for him from his collection, and listening to an oldies radio station that spun classic rock, Motown and old country songs. “If the South is 10 or 15 years behind the times, Ozark was about 30 years,” he said.

At 11, he used money he’d saved to buy a guitar at Walmart that became his near-constant companion: “I brought it to school, to the library.” At the public library in nearby Fayetteville, he discovered Smithsonian Folkways’ “Anthology of American Folk Music” and Bob Dylan’s 1962 self-titled debut. Welles had been told his voice sounded like “burnt toast,” but after a classmate on the school bus introduced him to Nirvana, he had an epiphany about his own singing: “I’m listening, going, ‘I could do something like that.’ I can’t do Robert Plant, but maybe I could do Cobain.”

As a teenager, Welles played in bands, learning his favorite songs and writing his own. On holiday breaks, he borrowed a drum kit from the school’s band director and set up a home recording studio in his mother’s garage, then burned his songs onto CDs he’d sell at school. “I’d end up with seasonal albums,” he said.

After high school, he kept churning out tracks, some under the name Jeh Sea Wells, others with the bands Dead Indian and Cosmic American. The music from this period included acoustic folk songs and loud, psychedelic garage-rock. The ever-growing catalog suggested a musical aesthetic more about the process than the product. “You can’t get precious about it,” Welles said. “It takes some serious hubris to think you’re going to write a masterpiece.” For him, the goal was always “just make a body of work.”

At 22, Welles moved to Nashville, formed a band simply called Welles and signed with 300 Entertainment, making him label mates with Young Thug and Fetty Wap. The band released an album of angsty grunge titled “Red Trees and White Trashes” in 2018 and toured relentlessly, opening for Greta Van Fleet and Highly Suspect and playing festivals including Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits.

Being on a label meant “jumping through the same hoops as everybody before you,” he said, like playing 500 shows in two years and building from there. “Then, there you are 500 shows later, and nothing to show for it. When you’ve got that many folks involved, it’s an investment. They want something to pop off. When it doesn’t, and you’ve done all the festivals, the music video, the tours, and they’ve moved on to something else, there’s no one left for them to blame but you, and there’s no one for me to blame but me.”

Dejected, he returned to Arkansas, intent on putting his rock ’n’ roll dreams to bed. “I was reading a lot and got really big into running,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to imagine my life without playing music at all.’”

It didn’t take. In late 2023, he installed TikTok on his phone and noticed a profusion of musicians playing cover songs in his feed. He started doing the same: the Blaze Foley song “Clay Pigeons,” popularized by John Prine; Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”; Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” They gained traction, so he kept it up.

“Then my old man had a heart attack, and something just snapped in me,” Welles said. “I started singing the news. It’s a way to make sense of what’s going on around me.”

Welles’s topical folk songs deftly blend the slightly whimsical with the deadly serious. The jaunty “Walmart” opens with the narrator watching “a toddler eat a cigarette on a cart of Keystone beer,” but the song evolves into a subtly searing indictment of predatory big-box capitalism. “War Isn’t Murder” is an angry protest anthem filled with sardonic lyrics that challenge conventional wisdom: “War isn’t murder, that’s what they say / When you’re fighting the devil, murder’s OK.”

“He doesn’t play as a Hollywood elite making Hollywood elite statements,” said Matt Quinn, the lead singer of the band Mt. Joy, who collaborated with Welles on a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” that was released in October. “It’s not easy to make topical songs in this political environment and not come off as partisan. He’s done a really good job finding the humanity in tricky issues and bringing everybody to the table.”

“Singing the news,” as Welles calls it, created a genuine buzz. Welles was invited to play Farm Aid in September, where Dave Matthews introduced him as “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard in my life.” His current tour of mid-sized clubs, running through April 10, sold out within two days of going on sale. Despite all indications that this upturn has been driven by songs he’d ripped from the headlines, he’s shrugged off any pressure to lean on them for the new album. Consequences be damned.

“I’ve been failing at this my entire life,” he said. “I’m familiar with the feeling. I’m OK with it.”

The songs on “Middle” aren’t completely walled off from the world. The exuberant, tightly crafted “Horses” references U.S. foreign policy but does so in service of a broader meditation on love and hate. The galloping “War Is a God” feels like an ominous, biblical parable that’s drenched in the daily stream of bloody images out of Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti and elsewhere, without ever mentioning them.

Much of the rest of the album surfs between surrealistic fantasy worlds and Welles’s own inner life. His dexterous writing and the tough, bare-bones arrangements can’t help but recall many of those classic rockers he grew up listening to — Dylan, Petty, Neil Young. If it turns out this isn’t what his growing fan base wants to hear, that’s fine. He continues to post a steady churn of all manner of songs on social media.

“The cool thing about putting them up immediately is knowing even if I thought it was a daggum masterpiece, you put it up and nobody’s keen on it, there’s your sign,” he said. “Move on to the next one.”

Jesse Welles, a Folk Musician Who ‘Sings the News,’ Is Turning the Page
By David Peisner, February 12, 2025
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 15, 2025, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Singer Of the News Is Turning The Page.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/arts/music/jesse-welles-middle.html

Jesse Welles, the Viral Protest Singer, Announces New Album ‘Middle’

The songwriter, who has lambasted topics ranging from American healthcare to capitalism, previews the upcoming LP with the “pro-love song” “Horses”

Jesse Welles, the gravelly-voiced songwriter who is reviving protest songs through a series of self-shot videos, will release his new studio album, Middle, next month.

But there’s nothing “middle” about Welles: He’s unflinchingly addressed hot-button topics like the war in Gaza, capitalism, and the U.S. healthcare system in his viral videos with song titles like “War Isn’t Murder,” “Amazon Santa Claus,” and “United Health.” The latter dropped just a week after the high-profile shooting of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York (“Now CEOs come and go and one just went/the ingredients you got bake the cake that you get,” Welles sang).

“Horses,” the first single from Middle, however, is sonically different from Welles’ acoustic ditties. The song opens with an electric guitar line, a propulsive drum beat, and some textured fiddle. Welles calls it a “pro-love song.” “Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to atrocities. You build up walls,” he says in a statement. “If you love everyone, it’s a lot easier on you — and everybody else too.”

Welles, whose videos have mostly been filmed beneath a power line in his native Arkansas, will release Middle, produced by Eddie Spear, on Feb. 21 and embark on a headlining tour on Feb. 15. Dubbed the “Fear Is the Mind Killer” tour after a song on Middle, its 25 dates are all sold out. Hopeful fans can sign up for a ticket waitlist.

Middle track list:
1. “Horses”
2. “Certain”
3. “I’m Sorry”
4. “Fear Is the Mind Killer”
5. “Wheel”
6. “Anything But Me”
7. “Every Grain of Sand”
8. “Simple Gifts”
9. “Why Don’t You Love Me”
10. “Rocket Man”
11. “War Is a God”
12. “Middle”

Jesse Welles, the Viral Protest Singer, Announces New Album ‘Middle’, By Joseph Hudak, January 31, 2025
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/jesse-welles-protest-songs-horses-1235252971/

It’s rare to find a storyteller with the potency of the greats — the Springsteens, Dylans and Prines of the world — but when you hear it, it’s something you recognize immediately. Arkansas singer-songwriter Jesse Welles’ “Patchwork” boasts this authority from the first strum. His refined folk styling blends pop culture, current events and autobiographical trimmings with a commanding force, weaving a tapestry of teetering spirituality, hope, community and decay as he sees it across The Natural State and the world at large. Between the contemplative vulnerability of tracks like “Fear is the Mind Killer” and “Let It Be Me” and the blunt observations of “See Arkansaw” and “Walmart,” it’s hard to imagine that you won’t find a cutting hook — lyrically or melodically — that grabs you and refuses to let go. A viral sensation on Instagram and TikTok, 2024 was a big year for Welles. He shared a bill with legends at Willie Nelson’s annual Farm Aid festival, collaborated with Mt. Joy’s Matt Quinn and even found the time to put out a second full-length album (“Hells Welles”) and an EP (“All Creatures Great and Small.)”

Our favorite Arkansas albums of 2024 by Jonah Thornton, January 3, 2025
https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2025/01/03/our-favorite-arkansas-albums-of-2024

Jesse Welles: A Musical Vessel Like No Other

“I feel like a vessel for the marijuana,” he said.

We’d just roasted a few dabs of hash oil and were hanging out on our second-floor balcony at the Hill Place apartments in Fayetteville, Arkansas. For those unfamiliar, hash oil is a highly concentrated form of THC, likened in many ways to the “everclear” of weed. Put lightly, it’s potent.

Such an astute and apt description of this substance was one of the very first things I ever heard from Jesse Wells’ mouth. For a guy who’d hardly smoked much pot before, it was a moment of brilliance – or at least to us it was.

Meeting Jesse

At the time, circa 2015, I was a student at the University of Arkansas, playing on the school’s rugby team. Born and raised in Austin, TX to a pair of UT grads, I naturally grew up a Longhorns fan; these of course are few and far between in the state of Arkansas. Fortunately, I made quick friends with one of my rugby teammates, Dan, who like me was a Horns fanatic. If you’re wondering why I didn’t go to UT… well, it’s not a particularly easy school to get into. I leave it at that! 

Dan, meanwhile, found himself in Northwest Arkansas by virtue of parental punishment stemming from his senior year of high school. 

After being “busted” by his parents for smoking pot, he was forced to enroll at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, a small town nestled in the upper left-hand corner of Arkansas just along the Oklahoma border. John Brown is a private Christian school with strict policies in place; it’s a school for the religiously inclined in northern Arkansas to attend higher education. 

At John Brown, Dan joined the rugby club in an effort to find a community that liked sports and wasn’t overly bound and chained by “the rules”. It was on this team where he met Jesse Wells.

Jesse went to a private Christian school? Yes, he did.  Unlike Dan, however, Jesse was there on a scholarship to study and play music within the institution.

Fast forward a year to 2014, and Dan had transferred out of John Brown to the University of Arkansas, where he and I became good pals and subsequently roommates.

One night in 2015, Dan mentioned his buddy from John Brown was playing a show at one of the bars on Dickson Street with his band, Cosmic American. Dan confided that although the band wasn’t entirely his style of music, his friend Jesse was a badass performer so it would be fun. 

Under 21, with class in the morning, and probably some Thursday night football on the TV, I declined to join them for the show. What a dumb mistake that turned out to be. I still kick myself for it. 

Candidly, a part of me also didn’t want to go because I carried a ridiculous notion that the Northwest Arkansas music scene would pale in comparison with Austin, TX, where I used to frequent shows with my music-obsessed mother and my dad. What a close minded way to go through life; frankly, this is an example of the unwarranted snobbery you occasionally get from Austin folks. In this instance, I’m guilty as charged. 

I’ll never forget how, shortly after Dan left for the show, I found some Cosmic American tunes on Facebook and gave them a listen, just to affirm I made a good call staying home. Pretty quickly, though, I realized the show was probably going to rock hard. 

Dan got home later, buzzing about how awesome it was. Of course. 

I hadn’t met Jesse yet, but from there on I made a commitment to myself I wouldn’t miss his next show.

A month or two later, Dan said Jesse was coming over to chill, and I said to myself “I want to meet this dude”.

He showed up in black high-top combat boots, with black jeans and a pretty worn t shirt. His scraggly, dirty-blonde hair fell below the shoulders, emulating Kurt Cobain’s flow but with a fair bit more volume and a frizzy, Arkansas’d-out look to it, if that makes any sense. If you didn’t know any better, you’d figure he was a musician, but not one  trying to look like a musician. 

My other pal, Jack, was over as well that evening. Jack in his own right is an impressive person – he was one of the best rugby players I’ve shared a field with, as well as a 4.0, award-winning student at the Walton College of Business, and soon after a high-level consultant with Accenture. 

I put this in context to say that even impressive-guy Jack and I felt a similar aura around Jesse; one that said this guy was different. We also found it refreshing how he didn’t seem to think he was all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips; on the contrary, he simply carried himself as a regular guy doing regular things in Fayetteville.

Where Jesse Came From

We learned more about Jesse that night – I am a curious person and love to learn about people’s stories, so I tend to ask a lot of questions. I believe that if you’re alive and breathing, you have a story as to how you got there! Digging into Jesse’s story was outright fascinating, in a way you may read about in a fictional telling. 

He was born and raised in Ozark, Arkansas, which is a teeny, little town right in the middle of the state, not particularly close to Little Rock and not particularly close to Northwest Arkansas, the only “hubs” in the state.

To help illustrate in small part the backdrop of Arkansas, allow me to share a quick aside:

Much of Arkansas is gorgeous, and as such I used to go on hours-long drives with no destination in mind to explore the hilly back roads while I listened to music. On these drives I gathered new perspective into what life is like for most Americans outside the urban areas – I believe they call this portion of the population “the silent majority”. 

Nestled within the hills, far removed from grocery stores and restaurants and libraries and shopping malls, are trailer parks at the beds of rivers, and small two-room houses buried in the woods. You also run into the occasional large farm with rolling pastures of land, headed by a big, pretty house. I always found this juxtaposition to the surrounding “poverty” fascinating. 

As for most of these inhabitants, we don’t hear much about them because their voices aren’t there to be heard; they don’t scroll on social media and broadcast their opinions; they don’t tweet out what they did over the weekend, or post Instagram pictures of what and where they’re eating for breakfast. They are more-or-less off the grid. They aren’t as “connected” to the rest of the world, and that comes with its own sets of positives and negatives.

While I’ve never been to Ozark, Arkansas specifically, what I’ve gathered through Jesse and through my own findings is this aforementioned environment is essentially the same as where he grew up. I remember we once went to a Wendy’s, and Jesse had said it was the first time he’d ever had fast food. Facetious or not, I felt that said a good bit about life in his hometown. 

Arkansas may not carry a glowing reputation around the country, but it’s not for lack of beauty or natural resources. In fact, the state of Arkansas is home to the highest concentration of minable diamonds in North America, and one of the highest in the world. If we think about “finding diamonds in the rough”, Jesse Wells is no exception. He is a true gem from an unlikely source, which breeds a raw authenticity in his music, his voice, and his lyrics. 

Showing Us New Tunes

So as we smoked that hash oil and Jesse got to talking about feeling like a vessel for the marijuana, we could do little more than chuckle and agree.

We came inside shortly afterwards, and Jesse asked if we’d mind if he showed us a new song he made that day, clearly proud of his work but curious for some feedback. With no hesitation, I said yes and he hooked his phone up to my sound system and hit play.

The song he played was a tune called “should i be in pain”, and it instantly captured my attention. 

Where Cosmic American was a purer rock and roll sound, Jesse’s solo work on this track infused a Beatles-esque songwriting quality with appropriately heavy-hitting rock elements. The song had a wonderfully psychedelic nature to it, though without any “laser-like” sounds or other synth components you normally associate with psych-rock. He also surprises the listener with a killer guitar solo which comes across like a Southern Americana love-child of Rod Stewart and T.Rex. It’s wonderful. 

When Jesse played that for us, my perception of him began morphing from “I want to hear this guy’s tunes” to “I  need to hear this guy’s tunes.”

I asked him if he had any others he could show and he chose to play one more; understandably, he didn’t want to make the night all about himself so he said this was the last one he was gonna show us. I most certainly wouldn’t have minded listening to his music all night, but I understood.

Before he played his next song, named “it’s alright”, he said, “This song’s about smoking weed.” 

This was a far more bluesy track, yet it still commanded a level of psychedelia that belied the blues genre. Again, it was another killer jam with catchy, witty lyrics, and exceptional guitar work. Worth noting as well was the outstanding work on the bass and the drums, prompting me to ask, “Who’s the drummer and who’s the bass player?”

“Both me bud.” Of course it was. I was beginning to think this guy might have a prodigious nature to him. 

Jesse went home that night, back to “Space Mountain”, which we learned was an abandoned art compound where he used to live, write, and record all his music. Pretty damn cool. 

Getting Hooked

I simply  had to get Jesse’s music into my starting lineup, one way or another. Fortunately, he soon thereafter released an album called “pall mall church” on Bandcamp, which was free to stream and available to download if you paid any price. You could literally pay $1 and download it to your phone. 

“pall mall church” is a 14-track LP that contained each of the two songs Jesse had shown us at our apartment weeks before. I was chuffed to have access to his record and started listening to it non-stop on repeat. It was sensational, start to finish. I had to text my mom and tell her she needs to listen to it. 

My mom is a hard-core music head, and a particularly hard rocker at that; she knows good music, and she knows it well. Her flavor of the season at that time was Brian Jonestown Massacre (who are incredible btw), and we’d been listening to the hell out of BJM in those days. I told her I didn’t mean to overhype this new artist I’d met, but I felt like Jesse’s album “pall mall church” was like a blend of Brian Jonestown, T.Rex, and a handful of other great artists. 

My mother quickly became hooked on Jesse too. Like me, she dove in headfirst. But unlike my frugal college ass, my mom was responsible and actually paid $30 or something for the album on Bandcamp in an effort to support Jesse. I never paid for it – again, stupid. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Moving to Nashville

Jesse came back over to our apartment again at some point, told us he was getting signed to a record label, and would be moving out to Nashville. I won’t disclose what he said the offer from the label was, but at the time it seemed like a huge amount of money, especially to a young guy from Ozark, Arkansas. This was exciting, but it meant Jesse wouldn’t be around to play in Fayetteville anymore. It appeared I had missed my chance to see one of his shows. That sucked. 

What came with the move to the record label was also a painful reality: all of Jesse’s music from Bandcamp was scrubbed, and since I hadn’t paid for and downloaded the album, I officially lost access to the masterpiece of work that was “pall mall church”. What a punch in the gut. I’d surely listened to it no less than 75 times at that point. 

Thankfully, however, my responsible mother had paid for it, and I was able to log into her Bandcamp account and retain access to the tunes. Phew. 

Another reality then set in as well: big label bullshit. Big wig record producers began insisting they knew better than Jesse how to publish his music and make it “better”.

When Jesse moved to Nashville, he linked up with a famous(ish) producer named Dave Cobb, and the label also paired him up with two other musicians to form the band “Welles”. For marketing purposes, they changed his last name from Wells to Welles, which I’ll admit does look a little better. Look is one thing, sound is another.

Instead of permitting Jesse to produce all his own music as he’d done in the past, the record company took greater ownership over production and composition. They had a narrow vision of who they wanted Jesse to be, which was a stadium-rocking, Axel Rose, Brett Michaels kind of performer. Alright, Brett Michaels is a stretch because Poison was crap, but they wanted him to be the sort of musician that “embodies the rock and roll image”, as if he was a front man for Def Leppard in the 80s.

Don’t get me wrong, Jesse was still writing the songs, and the album he recorded, “Red Trees and White Trashes”, is really good. But where “pall mall church” had such a unique sound and style to it, “Red Trees and White Trashes” was closer to the garden variety “big rock” sound you hear from groups like a Greta Van Fleet or a Highly Suspect. The sound is fun, but it lacks that level of intimate authenticity you may hear from a Tyler Childers, or a Courtney Barnett. 

Going on Tour

In the Nashville days, Jesse might’ve been handcuffed to the label, but with that came some pretty sweet touring opportunities. He opened for Greta Van Fleet and Highly Suspect, as well as Royal Blood and the Regrettes, the latter two of which I’ve become extremely fond of myself. 

Jesse also came back and did some shows in Fayetteville, so I got to see him perform after all. As you could’ve guessed, these shows were exceptional. 

I remember one time in 2018 just before Christmas, I went to his show at Antone’s in Austin and brought along two of my buddies. The show was killer, then afterwards Jesse brought us upstairs while the Regrettes played (who at 17 years old were already great in their own right).

During the show before his, Jesse had decided to write and record a song in one of the venue’s little studio rooms upstairs. It only took him an hour! He offered to show us what he was working on, so we took turns putting on the big over-ear headphones and were all blown away. How on earth did he just slap together something so good in a matter of 60 min? Again, I thought this guy must be prodigious. 

Diving Deeper Into the Catalog

Around this same time, Jesse gave me a private Soundcloud link to another album he’d written and recorded by himself, called “space camp summer 18”. I suppose it was some kind of  thanks for supporting him and for being an early super-fan – I certainly wasn’t the first big fan, but at the time there weren’t many of us. 

“space camp” was outstanding, just like “pall mall church” before that. 

Where “pall mall church” had more of a  gritty   psychedelic flavor to it, “space camp” was a rock and roll record in nature, full of splendid songwriting and the typically cutting wit that characterizes Jesse’s lyrics.

By now, I’d started getting more people hooked on Jesse. Not as many as I’d have liked, but the people who “got it”, got it, like my buddy Kyle. I must have played Jesse’s tunes for 75 different people at least, and while most agreed he was very good, they weren’t hooked in the way I was. Whatever, I didn’t mind.

I badly wanted Jesse to make it big, but as long as he was still making music and doing what he loved, I was happy enough to be alive and able to catch his tunes while he was still making them.

Breaking Free, but Nearly Broke

In his time at the record label and in Nashville, Jesse never did “make it” commercially. From my point of view, they tried turning him into something he wasn’t, they crippled his ability to record the way he wanted to record, and they robbed the public of a genuine diamond in the rough. 

At some point, right around the start of covid, Jesse freed himself from the shackles of the record industry and returned to doing it all himself. As liberating as that must’ve been, it did mean he was forced into the grind. It was challenging and would’ve been easy for a lot of people to throw in the towel and give up on music. 

Thankfully, Jesse isn’t a lot of people.

During this period, Jesse got a job packing meat and started a Patreon account on the side as a medium to continue releasing music to dedicated fans. You could imagine this wasn’t a wildly lucrative time, but folks with a real passion for something never seem to abandon what they love over a few extra bucks. 

The Patreon & Bandcamp (Part II) Era

So Patreon it was.

Here he shared recorded tracks, live performances, and even podcasting content. My word, there was some brilliant stuff on there. Vowing to never repeat the mistake of  not paying for the rights to hear his music, I committed to paying $30 a month for full access to his Patreon. That was an excellent decision.

Jesse also started releasing EPs every 6 months or so to Bandcamp, and once again I paid for and downloaded those in earnest. I can only say that if you’re a music fan, you simply have to listen to these EPs and gain a real appreciation for Jesse’s musical ability, his versatility, and his astoundingly prolific songwriting prowess.

The first EP during covid was an Americana record named “Q2”. This bad boy has excellent guitar work, really poignant lyrics, and a “soul” which was so needed during the sad and confusing early days of Covid.

The next EP was a jazz record by the name of “non essential business”, and while it’s super well done, jazz is just not my style so I never really listened to it. 

After that was a magnificent heavy rock EP that even Black Sabbath would be proud of, dubbed “Joe Dirt Cobain”. This was my personal favorite of the three. 

He also released a sweet cover of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down” for good measure, and recorded a smattering of singles in collaboration with other artists. 

After three strong EPs, Jesse then graced the Apple Music / Spotify airways with a surprise second LP called “Arkancide”. I could draft a full album review, and maybe I will eventually, but take my word for it when I say it’s excellent and should be listened to over and over again. Oddly enough, this LP was taken down from Apple Music, but you can find it on Bandcamp, along with those other three EPs. Don’t forget to pay!

After Arkancide, Jesse dropped Arkancide 2 and Arkancide 3, each of which are top drawer as well.

Small Town Return, Big Time Success

To this point in the story, Jesse’s musical talents remained mysteriously unheralded, but as a great friend of mine likes to say, “Consistent, quality work can’t be denied.” Jesse continued to publish consistent, quality work, and it was only a matter of time before people would one day discover and marvel at his catalog of music. 

Then, all of a sudden, it happened. For hundreds of thousands of new fans out there, the rest is well-documented history. At long last, Jesse has broken through to the masses and is in many circles being dubbed as 2024’s breakout artist; even Dave Matthews introduced him at the Farm Aid music festival as “one of the greatest songwriters I’ve heard in my life.”

Ironically, after all that travel, all the touring, the record labeling, the self-recording and producing, the radio play, the music videos, and the corporate promotion, Jesse’s breakthrough came in the simplest form: solo-performing dozens of songs from his catalog in the backwoods of his hometown, equipped with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, a harp, and a camera. 

Through extraordinary talent, wit, creativity, and authenticity, Jesse Wells is beginning to inspire an entire generation of people to remember there is still hope for greatness, hope for change, and hope for something “real” in a society which grows increasingly artificial by the year.

He may be a vessel for the marijuana, but he’s also a vessel for God’s gift of music.

Jesse Welles: A Musical Vessel Like No Other, By Alex Rees, December 13, 2024
https://www.thepitchmedia.net/jesse-wells-a-musical-vessel-like-no-other

Jesse Welles Eviscerates UnitedHealthcare in New Protest Song

The buzzy songwriter tells the story of corporate healthcare in a John Prine-like ballad

Songwriter Jesse Welles has been turning heads with his solo acoustic protest songs about the war in Gaza (“War Isn’t Murder”) and capitalism (“Amazon Santa Claus”), earning a devoted following online and at his sold-out concerts, including the upcoming leg of his Fear Is the Mind Killer Tour. This week, Welles recounted the history of America’s healthcare industry in a new acoustic video and song, “United Health.”

With a melody reminiscent of John Prine’s “Fish and Whistle,” Welles cuts down UnitedHealthcare specifically — just a week after the shooting death of the company’s CEO in New York. (A suspect, Luigi Mangione, was charged with murder on Monday in connection with the assassination.) “Way back in 70 and 7, Mister Richard T. Burke started buying HMOs putting federal grants to work/made 50 billion buckaroos last year/the Warren Buffett of health the Jeff Bezod of fear,” Welles sings, detailing the origins of the healthcare giant and its founder, before dropping a wickedly sharp line about last week’s murder: “Now CEOs come and go and one just went/the ingredients you got bake the cake that you get.”

Welles, an Arkansas native, offers a cynical view of not just the U.S.’s healthcare system but the siloed state of the country in general. “There ain’t no ‘you’ in United Health, there ain’t no ‘me’ in the company/there ain’t no ‘us in the private trust/there’s hardly humans in ‘humanity,’” he sings.

The singer-songwriter, who previously fronted the Fayetteville, Arkansas, rock band Dead Indian — a group that recalls the sonics and social message of Nineties alt-metal greats Warrior Soul — will kick off his new tour in February, which hits venues like Bowery Ballroom in New York, Terminal West in Atlanta, and the Basement East in Nashville. All shows through April are sold out.

Jesse Welles Eviscerates UnitedHealthcare in New Protest Song By Joseph Hudak
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/unitedhealthcare-song-jesse-welles-protest-song-1235202103/

Welle’s ‘Joe Dirt Cobain’ EP is a Heavy, Guitar-Powered Trip

The catchy EPs that Welles has been building solo at home and quietly releasing for free (three now since April) have been major bright spots this year. Carefully constructed yet raw, each one explores a different genre, dishing out surprises that seem designed to put a smile under your mask. Following the “surreal jazz funk” of Non-Essential Business and the “country folk americana whatever” of Q2, the creative mind of Jesse Wells has most recently delivered “some heavy for u” with the release of Joe Dirt Cobain. These “songs from the bedroom” are everything we’d hoped for when he originally started teasing a ‘70s heavy metal-inspired release.

“These are May and June’s rejects while I toil for the next set of Welles tunes,” Jesse Wells told P&W, evidently unaware that his rejects rock so hard. When he put out the EP, he posted, “I am very thankful and thoughtful.” That was not long after his own fake review from Rolling Stoned: “a complete and utter disappointment” he raved – one of those self-deprecating Jesse jokes that sharply contrasts his technical chops and songwriting ability. Joe Dirt Cobain’s comedy/grunge mashup of a title has the same vibe, echoing that seriously-rocking but not-taking-itself-too-seriously quality of his music.

The gnarly riffs of first track “Class War” foreshadow the vicious badassery to come. Welles holds your attention with raging guitar and COVID-era observations that hit on maddening injustices. “Don’t you ever wonder ‘bout cash flow? / Don’t you wonder where it all goes? / People gotta slave while the plague comes and rapes all the people who can’t work from their homes,” Welles sings in his classic and pleasing voice. “All Aboard The Bus To Pineville” starts up faster and features three twists (at 00:58, 1:39, and 2:18). In this addictive song, he seems to make further commentary on class divide. One could interpret a jab at the privileged who are able to relax luxuriously during the pandemic because of their economic status: “Tell me more about the ties that bind / Only death allows you to unwind.”

Next track “Bachelor’s Degree (Ashleigh, Hayleigh, Brittany, Brooke)” has an equally unpredictable pace, topped off with the punk energy of a subversive pep rally – as in lines like “School is shit / I learned one thing / Teach your own self how to sing.” And we can’t help but notice how much the “Cobain” part of the EP’s title shines through on the following song, “Dead Man’s Legs.” With a guitar hook that sounds like an admiring nod to Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” the compelling song includes a treacherously-cool guitar solo and some tough lyrical truths – including “Nothing’s gonna fix the world for me” and “No one’s gonna fix the world for free.”

The longest song on Joe Dirt Cobain is a psychedelic-sounding treat called “The Sun is Like a Holy Apple Pie,” clocking in at 4:10 thanks to its mellow and syrupy melody. Creating the precise mood of laying in the grass and staring up at the clouds, Welles ponders life from the sun’s perspective: “It would be so pleasant to be so grossly incandescent.” EP closer “Step Inside My Nuclear Mind” gives us a final dose of his beastly guitar work and Welles seemingly shifts his focus to the flaws of the music industry. “Step inside my nuclear mind / Dig until you’ve found what you find,” he urges, as well as, “Oh and tell me which direction is north / I swear to god I’ll show you my worth.”

The fact that we already have another gripping batch of Welles tracks to enjoy makes his independent process all the more impressive – “No mac, no protools, nothing over 150 bucks. I am completely alone when I record,” he told us back when he unveiled Q2. It’s such a blast to headbang and groove to Joe Dirt Cobain that we hope he’ll write more in the ‘70s metal realm, but we also can’t expect him to stick with any one style. This is a D.I.Y. hero whose work could land in multiple aisles in a record store and do each genre justice. Here’s hoping Welles’ homemade EPs come out in some special vinyl release in the future, so that physical versions can be displayed side by side like the gems of rock history they are. Until that day, check out his Bandcamp page to hear the sixteen fresh songs that are greatly improving 2020 for us.

Welle’s ‘Joe Dirt Cobain’ EP is a Heavy, Guitar-Powered Trip, By Olivia Isenhart, August 3, 2020
https://www.pancakesandwhiskey.com/2020/08/03/welles-joe-dirt-cobain/

Welles’ Quarantine EP Series Brings Another Twist with ‘Q2’

Just eighteen days after he cured our isolation blues with a surprise jazz funk EP called Non-Essential Business, Jesse Wells casually unveiled his “second quarantine EP.” His self-described “country folk americana whatever” release, entitled Q2, includes five feel-good songs that have repeatedly made us grin – whether over the personality in his lyrics, or his WTF level of technical expertise. It’s awesome to see a classic rocker like Welles show off his genre-surfing abilities as much as he has been lately, and he’s not stopping here. According to a recent social video that showed him at home busting out some Black Sabbath on guitar (one of many fleeting clips that his followers enjoy on a regular basis), his third quarantine EP is coming soon. It will bring us yet another shift in style: 70s heavy metal.

His second quarantine EP showcases a country side that we haven’t yet gotten to know, yet still maintains that special sixties-rock element that has kept us so hooked on the music of Welles. It’s a tie-dyed, grassy, barbecue-ready sound that comes through on Q2; a dazed and jaded kind of country that he delivers like an old pro. Hailing from Ozark, Arkansas – “where there’s beer and molasses,” as he sang on debut album Red Trees and White Trashes – Welles seems to weave nostalgia from his upbringing into the fabric of Q2. Upon its release, Welles shared an interesting tidbit with P&W that further explains his impressive knowledge of country guitar licks. “In high school, I worked at KDYN Real Country Radio (Ozark, AR) as a host and DJ for Dial-A-Deal. I heard a lot of country and love most of it. Daniel Donato made me wanna actually play that way when I moved to Nashville. So I’ve been practicing.” 

While the low-res cowboy hat that comes with it is delightfully crude, don’t let the Microsoft Paint album art fool you. Q2 sounds so polished, we had to ask Jesse how he’s pulling it off. Is he really putting all this together at home? Is anyone else contributing? Replying to our inquiries with two disappearing videos, he walked around a modest room stuffed with guitars, drums, and cords snaking around the floor, finishing the fast tour at the laptop on his desk. Next to it, he zoomed in on the price tag stuck to his M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface: $37.95. It was purchased at McKay’s, a regional chain of used music/book/movie stores with a location in Nashville. “No mac, no protools, nothing over 150 bucks. I am completely alone when I record,” Jesse told us. Knowing his production chops, it was unsurprising to learn he’s doing it all himself, but exciting nonetheless to see him confirm it. In a short homemade video that accompanied Q2’s release, you can catch Welles making breakfast, strumming on his porch, greeting his cat, and drumming in that music room he briefly showed us.

Q2’s opener, “Calamity,” seems like it was designed to stick in your head. Brimming with his honeyed self-harmonization, not only is it catchy – it’s witty as hell. Hearing him peacefully sing, “I want death / I want calamity… I want blood / I want a thousand-year flood / Don’t ask me why I want it / I just want it just because,” we obviously had some questions. Was he portraying a certain character? Or does it come from a real screw-everything kind of mood that hits him? Jesse responded in his signature chill way. “Calamity is just hungover me. I get better as the day goes on.” Second song “Goodbye Sheetrock” builds up to a nimble guitar solo that makes us want to stomp on dusty floorboards in somebody’s barn. Lyrically, he plays on the ol’ country song tradition of listing what you’ve lost in a breakup, with a few clever twists. “Goodbye, good sex / hello, hand!” he sings unashamedly. “You know it’d all feel that much better if I were only in a band / if I owned an acre of land / if I could eat corn out of a can.”

“Runnin’” feels like a golden oldie you forgot about, but it’s not; it’s all fresh stuff from Jesse. Delivered in his husky timbre, it’s like a wild west bad guy theme topped off with an equestrian trot of a beat. “I am a runner / I take my pills / I run ahead of all the people speeding, all the trucks and cars” he sings, later adding, “The Lord did not intend for there to be a man like me.” It’s just the right time for such a socially-distanced jam, and the getaway vibe continues with “Talkin’ People.” Welles describes a desirable escape – via canoe – from a certain type of aggravator we’ve all surely encountered. “And I’ll never have to talk again / to people who pick sides like they’re picking apples / wrapped in identity and ready for battle / They spread awareness like Nutella / and no they don’t all fall underneath that umbrella / but I’ll never have to talk again,” he sings dreamily. If you’re into Welles for that magical 1968ish groove he always seems to be achieving, prepare your soul for Q2’s closing track, “Treat ‘Em Well.” Packed with classic guitar riffs from the beginning, the melody matches the song’s loving message. “Treat ‘em well, treat ‘em well / whoever they are / even if they’re not your friends / go ahead and treat ‘em well.”

Welles’ Quarantine EP Series Brings Another Twist with ‘Q2’ By Olivia Isenhart, April 27, 20202
https://www.pancakesandwhiskey.com/2020/04/27/welles-q2/