Jesse Welles turns anxiety into catharsis

REVIEW: Jesse Welles turns anxiety into catharsis at Crystal Ballroom in Portland

Who knew an extended anxiety attack could be so danceable? For 1 hour and 40 minutes, Arkansas singer-songwriter (and minted TikTok star) Jesse Welles channeled his barbed-wire-ensnared songs about injustice in politics, health care and public welfare like a fork firmly jammed into a light socket.

On his Under the Powerlines Tour, like in much of the music Welles posts online in response to whatever the horrific actualités du jour, he plays a traveling orator. So when he kicked off his show at a sold-out Crystal Ballroom with “Sometimes You Bomb Iran,” which he wrote in 2025, it felt timely. But so did most of the roughly 25 songs he performed, sometimes alone on stage and sometimes with a band that quickly ratcheted up the mood and the tempo.

The performance was broken into three parts, with Welles alone on stage for the first and most of the last, and the rock portion with the band wedged in the middle. The first act consisted of many of his viral news nuggets that cut through bureaucratic jargon using plainspoken language, sometimes tongue in cheek.

“Same old story as 2003,” he quipped during “Iran,” and in the middle of “The Great Caucasian God, “Now Portland, let me talk to you about death…”

Then he strapped on a harmonica for “Join ICE” (“If you’re lackin’ control and authority/ Come with me and hunt down minorities”) and something unusual began to take shape by the time he reached “The List” and “United Health” — the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder, was letting out hoots and hollers while some clearly attempted to dance to these humorous songs of woe.

Did Woody Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan or Joan Baez — who made an appearance with Welles last fall when the tour passed through the Fillmore in San Francisco — ever get such reactions?

Anyway, the mood turned with the appearance of the band, which joined toward the end of “The Poor,” on a kick drum hit perfectly timed to the thematic gut punch in that song — “If you worked a little harder/ Then you’d have a lot more/ So, the blame and the shame’s on you/ For being so damn poor.”

The stage lit up at this point, revealing a large United States flag — which sometimes incited earnest appreciation and at others hot-blooded shame.

This run of songs ranged the gamut from Petty-esque Southern rockers (“Domestic Error,” “Philanthropist,” a cover of CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”) to sludgy heavy rock like “Masks Off,” with Welles delivering a killer distorted solo on an acoustic guitar. There was also “Red,” which is equally critical of both big political parties, a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” a poppy and melodic “War is a God” and psychedelic “God, Abraham, & Xanax.” During the latter, which included an extended jam and a guitar freakout, Welles briefly paused to lead a protest — “One, two, three, four/ We don’t want your fuckin’ war!”

Midtempo Southern rocker “Malaise” went right into frolicking show highlight “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Horses,” the lead single from Welles’ 2025 album, Middle.

The entire band left the stage and Welles returned alone for the a six-song encore, during which the mood finally dropped a bit, but not for a lack of material that included a couple of kid-focused songs, “Bugs” (“Don’t kill a bug ‘just because!’”) and “Turtles” (“They need clean water/ And clean air/ About the same things as we need up here.”) See, these songs aren’t just stories, they are lessons, too.

There were covers of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” performed with opener S.G. Goodman — their voices different shades of hoarse and gravelly — and a popular rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Welles included a clearly personal “See Arkansaw” and finally concluded with his poignant “War Isn’t Murder.”

While the tour moves on, Jesse Welles will return to Portland on Aug. 12, performing in Pioneer Courthouse Square with Ratboys.

Kentuckian S.G. Goodman was an intriguing opening act on Friday, opening with sad alt-country waltz “Space and Time.” But she and her backing band quickly pivoted to sleek groove-led blues-rock tune “The Way I Talk” and droning rocker “Old Time Feeling.” The latter, like most of her songs, was highlighted by organ strains that danced around the rhythm section.

Goodman introduced her latest album, 2025’s Planting by the Signs, with meditative tune “I Can See the Devil.”

“There’s not a lot of Southerners who believe in astrology, but I know you have rock shops and shit,” she said, explaining that the album is about the phases of the moon.

But the most memorable part of her set was a cover of Butthole Surfers’ mainstream hit “Pepper.” The song began at a simmer before exploding into full-throated singing and melodic Texas swing.

Roman Gokhman and Leah Flores
https://riffmagazine.com/reviews/jesse-welles-20260320/