Country
Page: 190
Taylor Swift has her Swifties and Jelly Roll has his Bad Apples.
Jelly’s life story is told by the tattoos that cover his body, including a crudely drawn apple core on the rapper-turned-country artist’s left cheek.
Given his prison past, it’s easy to imagine it could be a symbol for “rotten to the core,” or, considering his religious upbringing, a reference to the concept of Original Sin and Eve and then Adam biting the apple in the Garden of Eden. But the truth is much less complicated: The ink is an homage to some of his hardcore fans, an unofficial group who refer to themselves as “the bad apples.”
Jelly’s fans took the name from his 2014 song, “Bad Apple,” a catchy, light-hearted tune about a frolicking night out with lyrics including, “Some people call me a bad apple/Yeah, I may be bruised but I still taste sweet/Some people call me a bad apple/But I may be the sweetest apple on the tree.” His fans’ usage of the term happened organically, but Jelly wanted to acknowledge their allegiance to each other with the tattoo.
Jelly Roll, who is on the cover of Billboard’s Country Power Players issue, releases his new album, Whitsitt Chapel, tomorrow (June 2). The album includes his Country Airplay No. 1, “Son of a Sinner” and rising single, “Need A Favor.”
In 2017, the Bad Apples started a private fan page on Facebook devoted to Jelly Roll that now has more than 55,000 members and with members sharing stories about Jelly and his music.
More recently, Jelly also named his new cannabis line Bad Apple; he launched the product during a late May visit to the marijuana dispensary Greenhouse of Walled Lake in Michigan. “Frankly, Michigan’s got some of the best weed in the United States. There’s no other way to say it. And trust me, I’ve smoked everywhere,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “The Michigan weed is grown with love, it’s tender, it’s all greenhouse weed. You never have to worry about getting no mountain weed on this side of the country.”
Jelly Roll will perform at Billboard‘s inaugural Billboard Country Live in Concert event in Nashville on June 6.
In January 1999, one month after he turned 14, Jason DeFord was baptized by full immersion at Whitsitt Chapel Baptist Church in Antioch, Tenn. By the end of that year, he was incarcerated for the first, but not the last, time. For the next decade, DeFord cycled in and out of juvenile and then adult correctional facilities for crimes ranging from aggravated robbery to drug dealing.
“I got baptized in here some 20 years ago and have since done nothing but go to prison, treat a bunch of people wrong, make a lot of mistakes in life, turn it around, [then] go on to be a f–king multimillionaire and help as many people as I possibly can,” says DeFord today, a hint of awe in his voice as he sits in a red upholstered pew at Whitsitt Chapel. The 38-year-old — now better known as the inspirational, tattoo-covered artist Jelly Roll — recently returned to the church for the first time in decades. “It’s the f–king wildest story ever to me — maybe because I’m the one f–king in the middle of it — but that sh-t’s crazy.”
Jelly (whose mother christened him with the nickname when he was little) has risen from the streets of Antioch to the upper reaches of Billboard’s rap, rock and now country charts, and even played the revered Grand Ole Opry. But he still struggles to reconcile that hopeless past with his prosperous present and seemingly limitless future. On the gut-wrenchingly raw Whitsitt Chapel, out June 2 on Bailee & Buddy/Stoney Creek Records/BMG, Jelly relives his search for refuge and redemption in a world where sinners outnumber saints and hell often feels closer than heaven. As he sings on “Save Me”: “I’m a lost cause/Baby don’t waste your time on me/I’m so damaged beyond repair/Life has shattered my hopes and dreams.”
“That’s what country is, anyway, right? Three chords and the solid truth,” says Jelly, paraphrasing legendary songwriter Howard Harlan’s oft-quoted description of a good country song.
Much of Jelly’s own truth is written in ink on his face. There’s a heart with a lock, a rose, three crosses and a tear drop. There’s his 7-year-old son Noah’s name. His hair has grown over his 15-year-old daughter Bailee’s name, but it’s there, too. On his left cheek, there’s an apple core, an homage to some of his die-hard fans who called themselves the Bad Apples. Emblazoned across his forehead, Jelly’s latest tattoo describes who he is now: “Music Man.”
Music was his way out — it just took him decades to get here. He wrote his first rap when he was 9 or 10, and by the time he was in eighth grade, he was passing out mixtapes of his music in the high school parking lot. “There was a place in Antioch that would let us cut demos for like 30 bucks an hour,” he says. “We had a dude who had a rolling keyboard and he’d make beats.”
Nahmias jacket, RCSLA t-shirt, Rolex watch.
Eric Ryan Anderson
But his love of music couldn’t keep him out of trouble. Everyone around him had a hustle — even his father, who ran a wholesale meat business, was a bookie on the side — and he wanted one of his own. “As f–ked up as this may sound, there were drug dealers and drug users,” he says. “I wanted to be the guy getting money, not the guy losing it.”
Jelly has three older half-siblings, but he’s the only child from his parents’ union, which he says was his father’s fifth or sixth. His parents divorced when he was 13, and Jelly felt responsible for his mother, who suffered from mental health and substance abuse issues. “I told my dad before he died [in 2019], ‘I wonder, if I’d have moved in with you when you divorced, if I’d have went to Vanderbilt [University] or something.’ But I felt this need to take care of my mother back then. I think that’s what really did it, too,” he adds, in terms of why he turned to crime. “When he left, I was like, ‘Somebody’s got to do what he was doing, at least trying to figure out some money.’ ”
Still, he never abandoned music entirely. Customers who bought quarter ounces of cocaine also got a free mixtape of his raps. “I always knew that the music was my only chance because I knew [from] the way that people in the community responded to it that it could be big,” he says.
Jelly says when he was 16, he was arrested for aggravated robbery and charged as an adult. “I never want to overlook the fact that it was a heinous crime,” he says, his voice still filled with remorse. “This is a grown man looking back at a 16-year-old kid that made the worst decision that he could have made in life and people could have got hurt and, by the grace of God, thankfully, nobody did.”
But he’s also bitter that at such a young age the judicial system offered him little chance at rehabilitation. “They were talking about giving me more time than I’d been alive,” he says of a potential 20-year sentence. (He ultimately served over a year for the charge, followed by more than seven years’ probation.) “I hadn’t hit my last growth spurt. I was charged as an adult years before I could buy a beer, lease an apartment, get a pack of cigarettes … I feel like the justice system at that point kind of parked me on my only set path.”
Tennessee has a zero-tolerance policy for violent offenders, so that one charge is still on his record — and has very real repercussions. Jelly, an avid golfer, tried to buy a house in a community with its own course not long ago and was rejected. “Imagine changing your life in such a way that you can afford the kind of house in this community I was looking at,” he says. “My money was welcome, but I wasn’t, all because of something I did [almost] 24 years ago.”
Jelly can’t vote, or volunteer at most nonprofits, or own a firearm. Until recently, he couldn’t get a passport, which limited his ability to tour abroad. “The trick is when America finally says, ‘We’ll let you leave,’ the amount of countries that won’t let you come in … We had to cancel my London debut show.”
That cancellation is one of the few roadblocks that Jelly has faced recently. But after years of struggling, he’s finally knocking down the doors that once seemed closed. He’s writing with Miranda Lambert and Ashley McBryde, the latter of whom will open for him in select cities on his 44-date North American arena tour later this summer. Drake responds to his Instagram posts, and Garth Brooks, the artist he has seen most in concert, greeted him with a massive bear hug when they met in May at the Academy of Country Music Awards. In May 2022, he topped Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with “Dead Man Walking,” only to reach the summit of the Country Airplay chart seven months later with “Son of a Sinner.” Starting in 2022, he spent a record-setting 28 weeks at No. 1 on the Emerging Artists chart, which ranks the most popular developing acts in all genres.
But a difficult truth follows him: As he sings on “Unlive,” a Whitsitt Chapel track featuring rapper Yelawolf and co-written with McBryde, “you can’t unlive where you’re from.”
It’s April 20 — the widely recognized day of celebration for cannabis enthusiasts — and by the smell of it, Jelly Roll has already partaken by the time he arrives at the Grand Ole Opry, where Billboard first meets him. “As I walked in here, my publicist was a little worried about it, and I said, ‘Let me tell you something: I’m as high as I can be every time you’ve ever seen me,’ ” Jelly admits with a shrug. “The day doesn’t change that.”
As it is for so many country artists, the Grand Ole Opry was “holy ground” to Jelly even before he made his debut there in November 2021. After being released from jail in 2009 — while still wearing an ankle bracelet — he scraped together the money to see Craig Morgan there; while in jail, Jelly would play his 2002 hit “Almost Home” endlessly. He cried as Morgan played the song at the Opry, thinking, “’That’s what I want to do. I want to make people feel the way this makes me feel.’”
Several times during the day, Jelly steps outside to smoke a joint. He says it’s “better than Xanax” for his mental health and anxiety (he’s launched his own cannabis line, Bad Apple). He has cut down somewhat on his drinking and stopped taking the other harmful drugs “that really had a hold of my life,” including cocaine, pain pills and codeine. But those substances still have a hold on people from his past. “Unfortunately, my friends in Antioch haven’t quit dying from fentanyl or are getting locked up or still doing time. I’m still accepting collect calls to this day.” He estimates he has been to funerals for 30 friends who have died, mainly from drugs.
At April’s CMT Awards, Jelly won all three categories for which he was nominated. But the week was bittersweet. “I’d just had a friend overdose on fentanyl. I missed his funeral because I was camera blocking [for the awards telecast],” he says.
That’s Jelly’s life now. Though he lives on the other side of Nashville from where he grew up, part of him remains firmly planted in Antioch, while another part has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on speed dial, sits courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers playoff game in the same row as Adele and proudly shows off his latest chain, with a pendant that reads “Son of a Sinner” in diamonds. After Jelly’s song of the same title became his first No. 1 on Country Airplay, he went to the Icebox in Atlanta — “Where all the rappers like Lil Baby go,” he says — and had identical chains made for him and his co-writers ERNEST and David Ray Stevens.
“New playground, new playmates,” he says of his life today. “I live in a totally different space. But I’m always conscious of keeping in touch with where I’m from. My heart is to help,” he says of his old Antioch connections, even as he admits he has had to cut off old buddies still living what he calls “a certain life. They know I love them, but I can’t afford to risk being on the phone with you and [it] sounds like I’m involved in something I’m not involved with. I might not talk to you, but I’m still bonding you out.” To make a clean break, Jelly recently got rid of his cellphone for several months. Only a handful of people have his new number.
At 23, while incarcerated for drug dealing, Jelly “all but gave up,” he says. “I was like, ‘I’m going to die in prison or young.’ ” Then he experienced what he calls his “road to Damascus” moment. “May 22, 2008. A guard knocks on my cell door midafternoon during lockdown,” Jelly recalls. “He goes, ‘You had a kid today.’ I’ve never had nothing in life that urged me in the moment to know that I had to do something different. I have to figure this out right now.”
Jelly knew when he went to jail that a woman he had been seeing was pregnant, but he says impending fatherhood had just felt like another mistake in a litany of bad decisions. “I was just irritated by it,” he says. “Like, ‘I’ve really f–ked up now.’ ” But Bailee’s birth inspired him to change. He was granted a transfer from the violent offenders unit to the education unit and started studying for his GED — which, much to his surprise, he passed on his first try. “I spent less than 60 to 70 days in high school. I thought I was a real dumbass. I thought I was learning disabled,” he says. “I walked in there and smacked that b-tch out of the park.”
Once released, he met his daughter on her second birthday. “I grilled hamburgers and hot dogs,” he says. Bailee now lives with him and his wife, Bunnie, whom he married in 2016, and he frequently sees Noah (nicknamed Buddy), who is from another relationship. He calls Bunnie, a former sex worker who now hosts the popular Dumb Blonde podcast, “a beacon of change in my life. You’re talking about a woman that came in and took a child that was soon to be born and a child that [we were] soon to have full custody of,” he says. “I would have never got custody of my daughter without her. I wouldn’t have had the stability or the money.”
After his release, Jelly turned to making rap music his career, independently releasing albums, posting music on YouTube and taking any gig he could. From 2010 to 2015, he lived in an old van, driving wherever there was work. “I’d go to Columbus [Ohio] and do $50 features; I’d sell rap verses for 50 bucks,” he says. “I was so petrified of sitting idle because I was afraid I would resort back to what I felt like I knew.”
Jelly Roll photographed on April 21, 2023 at Warren Studios in Nashville.
Eric Ryan Anderson
Though Jelly’s breakthrough on the country charts is recent, he first appeared on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in 2011 with the independently released Strictly Business, a collaborative album with Nashville rapper Haystak. It peaked at No. 67 — which is news to him today: “That makes me want to call my distributor and get an audit on the money,” he says with a laugh.
Over the next five years, Jelly — who taught himself the ins and outs of the music business through various partnerships with artists and both local and national distributors — charted several more albums, including 2013’s No Filter with Lil Wyte, which reached No. 17 on Top Rap Albums. He collaborated with friend Struggle Jennings on the Waylon & Willie series of four rap albums, released between 2017 and 2020, and named after Jennings’ step-grandfather Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The volumes addressed bleak topics including substance abuse and the inescapable weight of a troubled past (even in the pursuit of love, as on the RIAA gold-certified single “Fall in the Fall”).
On such efforts, Jelly would occasionally sing, though he says he was “petrified” to do so for an entire track. But some liquid courage, karaoke and Bob Seger helped him find his voice. He bursts into “Old Time Rock & Roll”: “Risky Business, baby,” he says, name-checking the 1983 movie that gave Seger’s tune a new life. “Any time that song comes on, I’m single for three minutes. I’m Elvis Presley. I’m singing to women. It just brings it out of me.”
“There are not many artists out there that can rap like he does and then switch over to a soulful, melodic voice that’s instantly recognizable,” says fellow country artist and longtime friend Brantley Gilbert, who co-wrote and sings with Jelly on Whitsitt Chapel’s “Behind Bars.” “He is one of the most genuine people you’ll ever meet. He’s consistently himself and never changes who he is to fit a certain mold. He has had some experiences that not many artists in this genre can say they’ve had, so he’s able to open up a whole new world to folks while making those experiences relatable to everyone.”
“Save Me” — which initially appeared on Jelly’s 2020 independent album, Self-Medicated, and which he remade with Lainey Wilson for Whitsitt Chapel — was one of the first songs Jelly released as a singer with no rapping. “We were all in the darkest place we’d been in a long time when I wrote that song in May 2020. They were still spraying boxes with Lysol,” he says. “We were all living with our own thoughts a little more than we’re used to.”
His ability to capture the truth of the moment earned Wilson’s respect. “Jelly goes against the grain and is 100% himself 100% of the time,” she says. “I love that about him as a human and an artist.” After “Save Me” came out, labels started calling. “My heart was to do country music and be respected on these streets that I grew up on,” says Jelly, who is now managed by John Meneilly. (Jonathan Craig serves as his day-to-day manager.) “And [BMG Nashville president Jon] Loba got it. But he also knew that I wasn’t willing to give up control of my masters or my creativity, so he was open to us working out a deal that could reflect that. It’s a fair partnership.”
After Stoney Creek vp of promotion Adrian Michaels heard Jelly, he brought him to the attention of Loba, who Googled the video for “Save Me” and was sold. “I saw that pain, vulnerability, that tenderness,” Loba says. “I loved his vocal. I just said, ‘That’s a country song.’ I was convinced his storytelling, his heart and his brand would be accepted by our genre.”
Though Whitsitt Chapel, produced primarily by Grammy nominee Zach Crowell, bears the name and likeness of its namesake rural, red brick church, Jelly made the project for people like himself who may not find salvation on Sunday morning. As he professes on current single “Need a Prayer,” “I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer.”
“You’ll never see a man pray harder than as soon as sh-t gets tight,” he says. “I was like, ‘What if worship music is honest? What would my worship song sound like to God?’ ”
History has a funny way of repeating itself. Just as Jelly’s friends took him to church when he was 14, last year, Bailee started attending a small church with her friends and asked Jelly to accompany her — an experience that started him on his path back to Whitsitt Chapel.
“That little back-road church reminded me so much of this little church, and it was just so nostalgic because Bailee’s getting in trouble [and] smoking weed,” he says. “She’s going through what 15-year-olds go through. I went through all that. I know that’s whenever my life turned all the way worse. It started bringing up all these emotions of me being right there on that fence.”
Nahmias jacket, RCSLA t-shirt, Jason of Beverly Hills necklace, Icebox necklace.
Eric Ryan Anderson
After going to church with Bailee, Jelly ditched all but two of the 70 songs he had written for a new project and started on what would become Whitsitt Chapel, which also addresses the hypocrisy he has witnessed from so-called Christians questioning his faith (particularly on songs like “Nail Me”).
“I never thought that I would do something in life that would make people care to hear my story. So equally, I never thought that my story would ever be judged,” he says. “It just hurt my spirit. It was all happening while I’m cooking this album. I had Christian people that were judging my faith based on my use of language or marijuana or drinking references. I just felt really cornered, and it felt really judgy.”
Loba has a message for any Christians who question Jelly’s faith: “I say to them, ‘He will bring more people to God than 95% of the pastors.’ He is touching an audience that has felt invisible [and] dismissed. On the album, there’s hope that you can be redeemed.”
So for Jelly, Whitsitt Chapel is a starting point, not a destination. “Whitsitt Chapel planted the seed of a higher power. We were a very Southern family, so [we did] a lot of praying before dinner and stuff, but it was the first time I feel like I separated from the house and found God by myself,” he says. “So if I was going to make an album that felt so faith-based, I wanted it to reflect where I felt like it started. I think we’re all trying to wash away something.”
Jelly Roll loves Winnie the Pooh. He also loves Jim Croce and James Taylor. And he especially loves the 1993 Disney movie Cool Runnings, loosely based on the story of the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. “Because 98% of every problem in my life I caused, but one or two times in my life the most heartbreaking things I dealt with was the stuff I didn’t cause,” he explains. “Cool Runnings made me understand that sometimes you can do everything right and the sled still breaks. I needed that for the sh-t I went through in life.”
To sort through the wreckage of his past, he’s in intensive therapy, including “timelining” his life. He’s up to age 12. Therapy “is one of the first things I splurged real resources on,” he says. “I found [trauma] to be like one of the roots of probably my obesity, right? This isn’t a lack of discipline. I run a multimillion-dollar business. I work 12, 15, 18 hours a day. I’m a disciplined man. It’s got to be something else.”
As he fights to “overcome some of these demons that I’ve had to deal with,” he’s also taking Bailee to therapy. “Her father was in jail when she was born. Her mother ended up hooked on heroin and disappeared,” he says. “I’m watching the cycle still continue. That’s another reason it’s so easy to draw inspiration from my songs: I’m still watching it in real time.”
He looks at his life in two acts now: Act 1 is the Jelly who used to do bad things; Act 2 is the Jelly of today. “I was a less-than-desirable human in that era,” he says of the time before Bailee was born. “I like to separate myself from that guy like two different people now because it’s the way I’ve made peace with that. And that dude wasn’t a good dude, man.”
Asked if he believes God has forgiven him, Jelly goes silent and tears up. After a long pause, he says, “I think God forgave me way faster than I forgave myself.” As for what it will take for him to forgive himself? “Being a man of service. Trying to care about people.”
Nahmias jacket and pants, RCSLA t-shirt, Icebox chain and bracelet, Rolex watch, Kaws x Air Jordan sneakers.
Eric Ryan Anderson
In December, Jelly sold out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena — an astonishing feat not just because he’s still a developing artist, but because the venue is just a little over a mile from where he turned 15, 16 and 17 as inmate No. 00364950 in Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center. (The run-up to the concert and Jelly’s compelling backstory are captured in the Hulu documentary Jelly Roll: Save Me, which premiered May 30.)
Jelly, who is booked by CAA’s Hunter Williams, donated all his money from the Bridgestone concert (over $400,000) to Impact Youth Outreach and other organizations to, among other things, build studios in that same juvenile detention center, and he has already pledged to help fund a studio in a new building opening at the center in five years.
“More than anything, I just want to try to help these kids” who are now incarcerated, says Jelly. He wants them to understand that he believes in them in the way he wishes someone, anyone, had believed in him when he was younger. He funds programs at the facility to teach kids Pro Tools and offer them classes with visiting producers and engineers. “Who knows where I’d be if they had a real education unit in juvenile at the time,” he says. “If they’d had a studio, if they’d had trade work and I was being inspired every day instead of being reprimanded.”
And his plans go far beyond the detention center. The day before this interview, he bid on a $4 million building in North Nashville that he wants to turn into a community center. Beyond music, helping at-risk kids may be Jelly’s true calling. “Whenever I’m done doing the circus of the music business and I want to leave the carnival and be a normal human, that’s what I’ll do,” he says.
For now, his own honesty and search for redemption are resonating with fans, who comment on his social media that his songs have saved their lives. “Who in life can say they really helped somebody in the darkest moment of their life that was fixing to kill themselves?” he says. “I look at that as something that inspires me to do more.”
He hears the same praise face-to-face. As he leaves Billboard’s photo shoot at an old paint factory, a worker rushes out to tell him that because of Jelly’s music, he’s approaching 18 months of sobriety. Jelly asks the exact date, not once but twice, and tells him he will be thinking of him on that day.
Fans also recognize him and want to party with him — an offer he happily accepts. During a video shoot the day before at Tin Roof, a bar he and his father used to frequent on Lower Broadway, some bros from Pennsylvania recognize him, and filming halts while Jelly joyously glad-hands and buys a round of tequila shots.
Bunnie calls the public smile that hides the pain so evident in Jelly’s songwriting “the Robin Williams effect,” referring to how the late comedian’s outward exuberance masked inner turmoil. “My wife is like, ‘[People] would never think that this lifetime of pain and carrying caskets and death and drug addiction and all this dark sh-t would come out of you if [they] just met you at a bar,’ ” he says.
But those who have listened to his music already feel a certain kinship with Jelly — and he has a message for them: “I want to be a guidepost of hope for people to know that losers can win. That who you were isn’t who you are.”
It’s a message he still tells himself. And as he moves forward, he wouldn’t mind if his good works brought him a pardon from Tennessee’s governor. “A pardon would change my whole life,” he says, then quickly adds that he would only accept it if it came with a change of policy for currently incarcerated youth. “Maybe we’re disciplining an age group that should be rehabilitated. I just want to have that conversation, and if it can end in a pardon, f–king let’s go.”
A pardon would mean having many of his rights restored — and should it happen, he may have to take a little joyride around a certain ritzy neighborhood that didn’t believe in second chances. “I’d love to move back to that neighborhood and ride around in my golf cart blaring gangster rap music, flipping people off,” he says with a wry chuckle. “I’m joking, but I’m not.”
This story will appear in the June 3, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Jelly Roll will perform at Billboard‘s inaugural Billboard Country Live in Concert event in Nashville on June 6. In January 1999, one month after he turned 14, Jason DeFord was baptized by full immersion at Whitsitt Chapel Baptist Church in Antioch, Tenn. By the end of that year, he was incarcerated for the first, but […]
Over the past 56 years since Country Music Hall of Fame member Dolly Parton issued her debut album, she has become one of the world’s most beloved — and awarded — artists. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Parton now adds to her immense accolades with three […]
Welcome to the jungle! Carrie Underwood is set to join rock band Guns N’ Roses for three shows on the North American leg of the group’s 2023 Global Tour. Alice in Chains, The Pretenders, The Warning and Dirty Honey are also joining the trek.
The country star will open for the rockers during two shows in Canada (Aug. 5 in Moncton, New Brunswick, and Aug. 8 in Montreal, Quebec), followed by a show on Aug. 26 in Nashville at GEODIS Park.
“SO ready for this!” the American Idol season four champ gushed in an Instagram post announcing her addition to the tour. “I CANNOT WAIT!!”
Underwood has long incorporated songs from Guns N’ Roses’ classic rock catalog — such as “Welcome to the Jungle” — into her own concert setlists, and welcomed lead singer Axl Rose as her surprise guest during her headlining set at the Stagecoach music festival in 2022, where the two performed “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City.”
Later that year, Guns N’ Roses later welcomed Underwood to reprise those same songs during Guns N’ Roses’ London concert.
This marks the first time Guns N’ Roses has toured North America since their We’re F’N Back! Tour in 2021. The tour launches overseas on June 5 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and continues through Europe through July 22, wrapping in Athens, Greece. The band then continues on to North America, starting Aug. 5 for the Moncton, NB show at Medavie Blue Cross Stadium. The tour traverses several U.S. states and wraps on Oct. 16 at BC Place in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Underwood previously told Jimmy Fallon about meeting Guns N’ Roses for the first time, during one of the band’s concerts in Las Vegas.
“I might have, like, hung out with Axl after the show a little bit!” she joked. “I do always say that it’s hard when you meet your heroes, because I do consider him to be somebody who taught me how to sing, because I loved how he could just do different things with his voice. I was like, ‘I don’t know! If I meet him, and he’s not everything I want him to be…’ But he was. It was great. He was super cool and nice, and we talked — we’re best friends.”
See her post announcing her dates on the Guns N’ Roses tour below:
Two Sony Music Nashville artists have announced their exits from the label, according to recent social media posts.
Rachel Wammack, who signed to the label in 2018 and released songs including “Enough” and “My Boyfriend Doesn’t Speak for Me Anymore,” revealed via a series of Instagram videos that she parted ways with the label late last year.
“I’m really thankful for the time that I had there, and all the opportunities that I got, It’s amazing really,” she said in one of the videos. “I’m really thankful for that time. Now I am an independent artist. There’s so much to unpack, but I’m very excited for this new chapter and all the blessings that really come with being an independent artist.”
Wammack also unveiled an unnamed new song about not giving up and staying committed to your dreams, with the singer saying, “It’s really cool to share a sound with y’all that I’ve wanted to share for a really long time.”
Meanwhile, Australian duo Seaforth, who signed with Sony Music Nashville’s RCA Nashville imprint in 2018 before shifting to the Arista Nashville imprint in 2021, relayed the news to fans this week that they have exited the label after the Arista Nashville imprint shuttered in March. During their time with Sony, Seaforth — comprised of Tom Jordan and Mitch Thompson — issued music including the single “Love That,” the Mitchell Tenpenny collaboration “Anything She Says” and the Jordan Davis collaboration “Good Beer.”
Jordan and Thompson shared the news of their departure on social media, saying, “As of today, we have amicably parted ways with Sony Nashville and are officially a fully independent artist. Sony was great to us, supported us when times were tough, and we owe a lot to them for what we have achieved thus far.”
The duo added, “Over time, it just honestly became a very emotional challenge for us to persevere through certain things behind the scenes. Although it ultimately took us a while to get here, anyone who knows us knows it’s the best decision for all parties involved, Sony included…we truly believe that a big change like this will inspire a whole new life for Seaforth, and it honestly already has.”
Seaforth also revealed that their upcoming independent single, “Get the Girl,” will release on June 16.
Sony Music Nashville did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment by press time.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
After walking away from the 2023 CMT Awards with three trophies and the most awards of the night, the rap-country music star Jelly Roll is now giving up an inside look into his life with a raw and emotional documentary.
Jelly Roll: Save Me is a new ABC News documentary that will provide an in-depth look at how the “Son of a Sinner” singer went from struggling with addiction and his mental health to country stardom. You’ll be able to catch his life story when it premieres Tuesday (May 30) on Hulu right before his new album Whitsitt Chapel drops on Friday.
The documentary announcement described the film as a highlight reel leading up to his hometown show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Before then, it’ll be showing us his life before including his incarcerations as an adolescent and adult, becoming a breakout star in 2022 and how the singer grapples with his sudden rise to fame. In the midst of it all, we’ll get a peek at how he balances philanthropic work at a juvenile delinquent center (the same one he was in and out of as a adolescent) where he shares his story and attempts to help at-risk youth.
How to Watch Jelly Roll: Save Me
The country star’s documentary is considered a Hulu Original, which means it’s exclusive to the streamer and you won’t find it anywhere else. If you’re already a subscriber, then you can watch it for free for no additional charge.
For anyone looking for the best streaming platforms, Hulu is one of the most popular options due to its wallet-friendly pricing and library of shows and movies.
Hulu $Starting at $7.99/month after 30 days
Hulu offers different pricing plans that you can customize based on your needs. Currently, eligible subscribers can get 30 days free on Hulu’s standard, ad-supported package which is $7.99/month (or $79.99/year) to stream thousands of episodes of TV and movies in the Hulu library like Only Murders in the Building, The Beautiful Things, The Kardashians, How I Met Your Father, Dollface, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Handmaid’s Tale, Dopesick and other Hulu originals; along with most new episodes from network TV and cable shows the day after they air.
Hulu’s ad-free plan is $14.99/month ($139.99/year) for everything in the cheaper package but you also get to download programs and stream them offline. There’s a bundle plan with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ for $13.99/month. You can even customize your channels by adding premium options like Starz for an additional cost.
And if you enjoy watching live television, Hulu + Live TV ($69.99/month) lets you access over 75 live channels in addition to the Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ streaming libraries. Hulu lets users create up to six profiles under one account. Stream from up to two different screens at once from any device including a smart TV or laptop.
Check below to watch the trailer for Jelly Roll: Save Me premiering Tuesday (May 30) on Hulu.
One of the tenets of life on planet Earth is that no one knows how much time they have here — although society generally expects that most people should probably live somewhere between, say, 55 to 90 years. It’s tragic when kids don’t make it to double digits, but amazing when people reach triple digits. Perspectives about all that change as age accrues.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Thus, when Kimberly Perry wrote “If I Die Young” for The Band Perry around age 25, she masterfully delved into a touchy, fragile topic with a character who imagines her own premature death and the devastating effect “the sharp knife of a short life” might have on her mother.
Perry was not necessarily anticipating that outcome for herself, though a lot went into that song that she didn’t fully understand until she decided to write a sequel last year. She even went to therapy to gain more insight into the emotional genesis of the piece, which brought her song of the year honors from the Country Music Association in 2011.
“Psychologically, there was a bit of hedging of my bets with my dreams,” she explains. “I had such huge ideals, and dreams at that moment for a family, and for all the things that I did not see present in my life. I was quite a daydreamer, and I think for whatever reason, death — and a young death — almost felt more romantic than those dreams not coming true.”
The message of “If I Die Young” was enhanced by the deft marriage of an artfully mysterious storyline and a melancholy musical foundation, and its singalong chorus became a point of reference for an entire generation. When AMR Songs acquired select pieces from Perry’s songwriting catalog, CEO/partner Tamara Conniff queried her about the origins of “If I Die Young” over coffee, then casually asked if Perry had ever considered writing a follow-up about its protagonist, assuming the premature death never came.
“It was like this lightning-bolt moment for me,” remembers Perry. “But it was equally terrifying, so I procrastinated for a solid four months before even beginning to think about what that might look like.”
She also decided not to address it alone, knowing she could not be subjective about messing with a modern standard. Perry was writing fairly regularly with Jimmy Robbins (“The Bones,” “Half of my Hometown”) and Nicolle Galyon (“Tequila,” “Automatic”), and she had several conversations with Robbins about a sequel. It was the last songwriting idea they addressed before she was to record Aug. 27-28, 2022. Galyon didn’t know anything about it until they dropped the idea on her during the writing session at Robbins’ studio.
“I think had I had more time to think about it, I would have been pretty intimidated by the concept,” Galyon says. “But I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’ It honestly just kind of felt like another day of writing a song.”They had some obvious parameters. For starters, “If I Die Young Pt. 2” needed to retain most of the original’s iconic chorus. The melody remains the same, and the only line they changed in that section was the finale: “Well, I’ve had just enough time” became “Now I know there’s no such thing as enough time.”
And where the original opens with that chorus, they needed to start “Pt. 2” with a verse, which would give the singer an opportunity to reframe the current moment and cast the chorus as a song from the past. They did that with the last line of the pre-chorus: “I’m changing my tune since I said …”
And Perry literally changed her tune. She altered the melody in the verses, introduced a new chord progression in the bridge and took on the viewpoint of a woman no longer thinking about how her own death would affect everyone else, instead contemplating how her mother’s passing would affect her. Her own real-life changes informed their approach. “She had just gotten married, and so everything was very forward-thinking,” recalls Galyon. “It just kind of breathed new life into how to write that narrative.”
The new opening verse reflected the wedding — she eloped with husband Johnny Costello, driving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles in a black convertible, Perry thrusting her hands in the air in jubilation for much of the trip. In verse two, the singer grapples with issues that accompany aging: She increasingly resembles her mother, thinks about her mom’s passing and takes note of the casket in the first iteration of “If I Die Young.”
“If it was somebody else, the word ‘casket’ would have maybe thrown me off.” Galyon says, “But what has connected for Kimberly in the past, commercially, has been those kinds of blunt and quirky adjectives and words. There’s something about that that works for her that doesn’t work for other people.”
The new version retains the same final words — “So put on your best, boys/ And I’ll wear my pearls” — but the clothing is celebratory instead of funereal.
“Instead of ending with a period, it’s ending with an ellipsis or an exclamation point,” says Robbins.Robbins produced the demo, then worked with Perry to assemble an appropriate band for the final session, centered on guitarist Bryan Sutton, who played on the first “If I Die Young.” They recorded it at Backstage in a higher key than the original and at a quicker pace, reflecting the singalong status the song has attained in concert. Drummer Evan Hutchings played in a way that emphasized key moments in the melody, and Jenee Fleenor came in later to overdub fiddle.
“It’s just wild how much space it takes up and how much the track is carried by fiddle,” Robbins says. “It kind of shifted everything for us.”
While writing the sequel presented a challenge, singing it did not. “This was a piece of cake for me,” says Perry. “My body, and my muscles, my voice knows this song so well that I just walked out of the vocal booth, maybe in a half hour, like, ‘Guys, I think we killed this.’ I like my original version, but my voice has matured and changed so much since then, too. So it was really a cool opportunity to get to document my growth in that way as well.”
Perry had several options for a first single with RECORDS Nashville, but ultimately the team settled on “If I Die Young Pt. 2,” since it helped tell the story of her transition from lead singer of The Band Perry to solo artist. Her brothers, Neil and Reid Perry, reportedly gave their approval to her revision, and RECORDS released “Pt. 2” to country radio on May 4 via PlayMPE. In its third charted week, it ranks at No. 52 on the Country Airplay list dated June 3.
She says she’s already feeling a reconnection with the country audience: “I’m finding that people, while they love the original version, they really are coming with me on the journey of ‘Hey, I’m so glad we have this version. Like, this is healing all the things for me and healing my inner child.’ ”
Tommy Prine continues etching his own legacy as a singer-songwriter in his latest outing, while Melonie Cannon and Cody Jinks pay tribute to the late Vern Gosdin, and Hannah Dasher offers a gospel-flavored song of grace. Meanwhile, ERNEST and 49 Winchester team for a deliciously bluesy cover of a Willie Nelson classic.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Tommy Prine, “Cash Carter Hill”
A few nights spent at the Carter Family home offered creative rebirth for Prine; this song originated as a poem he wrote after hiking up a hill behind the home — a poem he later turned into song. “Paint not the picture of another man’s steps,” he sings, as Prine’s new song encapsulates his journey in crafting his own artistic perspective and sound apart from his own famous father’s — the late singer-songwriter John Prine. The track steadily builds from stark acoustics to a full-bodied, gleeful blend of rhythms and electric guitar, led by elegant lyricism. “Cash Carter Hill” will appear on Prine’s debut album, This Far South, out June 23 via Thirty Tigers.
Melonie Cannon and Cody Jinks, “Set ‘Em Up Joe”
On her new album, Cannon pays homage to one of her mentors, the late Vern Gosdin–and she welcomes a slew of collaborators to join in, including Willie Nelson, Vince Gill and Alison Krauss.
Cody Jinks joins on a version of Gosdin’s “Set ‘Em Up Joe,” which served as the second single from Gosdin’s 1988 classic project Chiseled in Stone (and became a No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Country Songs chart). Cannon’s voice is warm, endearing and nuanced, and pairs nicely with Jinks’s grizzled vocal rendering on this enduring hit that itself pays tribute to another country music luminary, the late Ernest Tubb.
Over the course of her career, Cannon has provided harmonies on recordings by George Jones, Reba McEntire and others, and has vocalized on demo sessions for writers including Dean Dillon and Hank Cochran; this album follows her previous solo outings, a self-titled 2004 project and 2008’s And The Wheels Turn.
Hot Country Knights With Darla McFarland (a.k.a. Dierks Bentley and Lainey Wilson), “Herassmeant”
Mullets, flannel, and aviator glasses are back as Dierks Bentley’s wise-tracking “’90s country group” side project Hot Country Knights returns, fronted by “Doug Douglason” (a.k.a. Bentley). They team up with “’90s country star,” Darla McFarland (a.k.a. recent ACM Awards victor Lainey Wilson) for a hilarious track that simultaneously nods to the current social climate, with lyrics including “I backed up my dump truck, packed all my junk up,” that signal to Wilson’s recent social media viral moments that have focused on Wilson’s physical assets in recent months. The track is one of a pair of new songs from Hot Country Knights, alongside the intentionally Garth Brooks-esque “Midknight Rodeo.”
Hannah Dasher, “Ugly Houses”
As an artist, Dasher is known for her megawatt personality and for crafting zesty tracks. But here, Dasher teams with Robert Arthur to craft this ballad filled with gospel underpinnings, as she sings about finding a faith that involves embracing imperfection and eccentricities. “Well I ain’t no fancy castle/ Got too much junk inside,” she sings, pledging that if a higher power will take a chance on a fixer-upper, she’ll take down the for sale sign. “Ugly Houses” is part of Dasher’s upcoming album The Other D**n Half, out Aug. 4.
Grace Tyler, “Sound of You Gone”
This pensive piano ballad finds Tyler in the depths of grief, desperately seeking ways to bring back a loved one as she catalogs the myriad of little ways that absence is acutely felt — from a leaky faucet that’s not yet fixed to a phone that now is silent. By the song’s bridge, she’s conjuring up any bargain to bring her loved one home. Tyler wrote this stately, atmospheric track with Emily Kroll, Jesse Labelle and Liz Hengber and it intently captures the emotional hallmarks of loss — a timely message for this recent Memorial Day weekend. A superbly resonant outing.
ERNEST and 49 Winchester, “Night Life”
“Flower Shops” hitmaker ERNEST teams with soaring group 49 Winchester for this Spotify Singles release, a cover of the 1960 Willie Nelson hit “Night Life,” which has been covered by everyone from Ray Price and George Jones to Aretha Franklin and B.B. King. This iteration is soaked in tinkling, jazzy piano and tumbling with bluesy guitar melodies and swaggering vocals, as they ponder the road they chose on the key line, “The night life ain’t no good life/ But it’s my life.” The song wraps as they swap ad libs about drinking and doobies on this sterling showcase of freewheeling, homage-paying musicality.
Matt Castillo, “Corazon” (Video)
Castillo’s song “Corazon” is at No. 2 on this week’s Texas Regional Radio Report, and the south Texas native just released an accompanying video clip for the track. Housed on his 2022 project The River Continues, “Corazon” is a dancefloor-ready track, bolstered by surging guitars and flashes of accordion. The lighthearted music belies lyrics that depicting a guy who knows his relationship is ending, but his heart refuses to accept the relationship has fizzled. The music video highlights not only Castillo’s energetic live show, but the growth of his audience as he continues carrying a torch for more traditional-minded country music.
Brian Kelley, “See You Next Summer”
Kelley continues the beach vibes on his latest release. This time around, he offers an extra shot of twang, rippling over lyrics about a summer romance as hot as the beach sand under a blazing sun — and the inevitable moment as two lovers wrestle with clinging to the last few moments of their summer love. Written by David Garcia, Michael Hardy (HARDY) and Hillary Lindsey, this track seems ready-made for both country radio and the coming hazy, laid-back weeks.
When Lainey Wilson played Nashville’s weekly Song Suffragettes show for the first time in December 2014, the experience was enlightening.
She had moved to Nashville over three years prior, just in time to watch country music shift into the bro-country age, when guys singing about beer parties and bonfires in rural fields made it even more difficult for women to find a place on country radio. Song Suffragettes, a songwriter round specifically for female writer-artists, helped Wilson find a sense of community in a heartbreak town.
“For me, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone in Nashville, and it made me feel like there’s an army of women who all want the same thing,” she recalls. “It’s important for us to hold hands and run to the finish line together. That’s what it’s about. It’s about lifting each other up and encouraging each other and telling each other the truth.”
The truth is times are still tough for women in music now that bro country is no longer the genre’s hot trend. Song Suffragettes, however, is in expansion mode as it celebrates its 10th year as a focused Music City talent showcase. The show launched a monthly London edition in November and will also open a monthly New York version on June 13 at City Winery.
“There has been very little movement in the artistic progress of women in this genre,” says Suffragettes president/founder Todd Cassetty. “But you just keep getting up and fighting the fight. I’m always looking for other avenues to expand or to provide opportunities. It’s like, can we just grow this so that there are more opportunities [for women], even if the industry is not going to provide them itself?”
It’s not like the opportunities are undeserved. Nashville is a magnet for musical talent, and the latest installment — May 22 at The Listening Room, which recently added a second Suffragettes show every Monday night — demonstrated the depth of quality. Six women conveyed their artistic individuality when they performed, with most playing three songs apiece. Grace Tyler led with a knife-like tone on “Jesus in a Bar,” Ash Ruder consistently served up original songs with craftsman-like vulnerability — particularly her smart treatment of hand-me-down traits, “Blue Genes” — and first-timer Audra McLaughlin impressed even her fellow performers with her Trisha Yearwood-like power.
To date, the show has featured over 400 women from among 3,000 applicants. Cassetty says 34 Suffragettes alumna have received recording contracts — including Carly Pearce, Megan Moroney, Kelsea Ballerini and pop artist GAYLE — while over 60 have secured publishing deals. Those numbers demonstrate the Suffragettes’ value as a launching pad for women.
“It was one of the first things that I did when I came to town,” Tenille Arts notes. “It kind of opened up some doors for me to be able to play. It was really awesome.”
Cassetty’s motivations for starting the Suffragettes are personal. Growing up with ’90s country, he was drawn to the viewpoints expressed by country’s female acts, including Patty Loveless, The Chicks and Martina McBride, and through his production company, HiFi Fusion, he has worked with the likes of Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire. Additionally, he has two daughters and wishes country had a larger swath of feminine role models.
“I don’t feel like they get the same country music female perspective that they would have had and that I enjoyed from the ’90s,” he says. “That’s always been a point of frustration — to see it evolve from songs with real substance to too many beers and trucks.”
Nashville’s music business has taken the issue seriously. CMT celebrates female acts through its Next Women of Country program, and songwriter Nicolle Galyon (“Thought You Should Know,” “Beers on Me”) established the female-focused Songs & Daughters label in partnership with Big Loud. Galyon actually signed the first writer to her publishing company, Tiera Kennedy, after checking out her performance at Song Suffragettes.
But some old tropes — including the suggestion that female fans don’t want to hear female artists — continue to dog the discussion, even though women were at least as prevalent as men in the Suffragettes audience.
“That’s what the Song Suffragettes are still are trying to prove, is that women want to hear women,” says Arts. “I know that they do. I see it at concerts. I see it in my fans. I see it everywhere. We love it. I mean, men can’t talk about the things that women want to hear about.”
But radio stations still give women short shrift. A new study of 29 country stations by Jan Diehm, of The Pudding, and Dr. Jada Watson, found that women were played back-to-back a mere 0.5% of the time.
“I naively thought that if we could curate the best and brightest female singer-songwriters in Nashville that that would bring enough awareness to the level of talent that we have in this town that is female and call the labels, radio and streamers to all embrace more women and do better at the disparity that exists,” Cassetty says.
That leaves an underappreciated talent pool available for other avenues. It’s why Cassetty has established the satellite Suffragettes shows in London and New York, and why he has been in talks to possibly bring the show to cable. There’s a steady current of accomplished songwriters with strong voices ready for a marketplace that simply doesn’t know they exist. And it can be argued that Suffragettes has enabled some of those women to become even stronger at their craft by simply experiencing their competition.
“Song Suffragettes has been a really good metric for girls to get up and go, ‘OK, where do I fit in all of this? How do I see my artistry or my writing sensibilities fitting within all my peers?’ ” Galyon says. “Getting up onstage and playing a round is a really good way to learn.”
Subscribe to Billboard Country Update, the industry’s must-have source for news, charts, analysis and features. Sign up for free delivery every weekend.