Jelly Roll
Here’s how nostalgic Brad Paisley is: “I find myself before an amazing event is even finished thinking, ‘Oh man, this is really gonna be a bummer when it’s over!’,” he says.
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So it should come as no surprise that the country star decided to look back at a historic chapter in his life and career when creating “Truck Still Works,” his new single that drops today on EMI Music. The song serves as a companion of sorts to 1994’s charming, uplifting “Mud on the Tires,” which became one of his biggest hits.
The catchy, mid-tempo tune, which Paisley premiered on the People’s Choice Country Awards Thursday night (Sept. 26) as a medley with “Mud on the Tires,” questions if he and his female companion can turn a truck that’s been sitting dormant for years into a wayback machine that can transport them back to an earlier, care-free time. As the lyrics ask, they can “see if them miles of corn still got that shade of green” or “find out if that dogwood limb is still there to hang our shirts.” “It’s no more complicated than the nostalgia of it,” Paisley says of the song. “We all want to recapture certain aspects of life.”
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When “Truck Still Works” co-writers Rodney Clawson, Will Bundy and Hunter Phelps first approached Paisley and DuBois, who co-wrote “Mud on the Tires,” about revisiting that song in some manner, the trio expressed apprehension about stepping on the Paisley/DuBois classic. However, Paisley says, “Chris and I were like, ‘Oh no! Lean in!’ This is truly a sequel.”
Brad Paisley ‘Truck Still Works’
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It felt right and good to revisit that time again, Paisley says. “I look back on the Mud on the Tires era as an album and a time period where everything did sort of launch in a bigger way for me. ‘Mud on the Tires’ was a call to action, a metaphor, it felt like a lifestyle.” For Paisley, the title track became his fourth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and the album’s fourth Top 5 hit and further catapulted his career. To this day, Paisley ends his shows with “Mud on the Tires.” “If I don’t do it, people want their money back,” he says. “I can’t imagine my identity as an artist without that, so it’s really fun to kind of lean into this.”
Once they “leaned in,” the five co-writers had a blast planting Easter eggs in “Truck Still Works” that hark back to “Mud on the Tires, ” while still creating a song that felt “entirely new,” Paisley says. In addition to the lyrical references, Paisley even threw in musical reminders, such as using similar guitar patterns and chord inversions.
Those musical cues were enough for ardent fans, including Jelly Roll and Post Malone, to guess the song was a “Mud on the Tires” sequel based on a small snippet Paisley posted on Instagram and X earlier this week. “It’s fun to think back when Jelly was a young’un, he might have even bought ‘Mud on the Tires,’” Paisley says.
The throwbacks extend to the single artwork, which features the truck that Paisley had when “Mud on the Tires” came out and serves as his farm truck now.
The song intentionally doesn’t answer if the truck does, indeed, still work, leaving it up to the listener’s imagination. “That wouldn’t be cool,” he says, to bring the song back to reality. “It’s still the metaphor of it, the idea of can you recapture that thing when everything’s [now] different,” he says.
The song shifts sonic gears for Paisley who last September released Son of the Mountains: The First Four Tracks, an EP of a quartet of songs in part inspired by his growing up in West Virginia. The album tackled such serious subjects as the opioid crisis, which has hit his home state particularly hard, on “The Medicine Will.” It also looked at the ways we are all alike no matter where we’re from with “Same Here,” which featured a spoken word passage by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
That album is now on hold. “I ended up getting really excited about a few of these things that I started to write, and we came up with an entirely new project,” he says.
Given the weightiness of some of the topics on Son of the Mountains, Paisley wanted to take a break. “There’s a lot of it that’s very heavy. A lot of [the album] exists to deal with things and I don’t know if anybody really wants to deal with things right now. I don’t. And if I’m going to put the rest of that album out, I have to be willing to sort of discuss some very heavy things. I don’t know that I would even want to do that right now.”
Instead, he says the lighter fare on Truck Still Works is what “I think people really want to hear right now.”
The new album, which will likely come out in early 2025, will be his first full-length album since 2017 and his first since moving from Sony Nashville’s Arista imprint to Universal Music Group Nashville’s EMI Records. Paisley says “Truck” is a good indicator of the album’s direction.
“The project has some deeper things on it but, like the song itself, is really about creativity and nostalgia and you know the themes that you want to hear right now,” he says. “Sometimes, like in these times, it’s great to give people something they just want to turn up and takes them to a place where they feel good.”
During a recent stop in Salt Lake City for his Beautifully Broken tour, Nashville native Jelly Roll (real name (real name Jason DeFord) turned an ordinary lemonade stand visit into an unforgettable experience for three young vendors.
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Instead of just purchasing a drink from the trio, the country star handed over nearly $700. Wendy Gardunio, the mother of one of the children, shared the experience on Facebook.
“My kid and her cousins wanted to do a lemonade stand. And they had a famous singer come and buy some lemonade. Who would have thought that we would run into Jelly Roll in West Valley? And for him to be so generous with giving them almost $700,” Gardunio wrote alongside photographs of the “Need a Favor” singer.
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This isn’t an isolated event—Jelly Roll frequently supports the communities he visits during his tours.
The rocker announced on Friday (Aug. 23) that Beautifully Broken, the follow-up to his hit album Whitsitt Chapel, is coming Oct. 11. All revenue from pre-sales through his website will go to several charities, including Wounded Warriors Project, Folds of Honor, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and Shatterproof.
Though a tracklist has not been revealed, according to the press release, his latest song, “I Am Not OK” (which he debuted on The Howard Stern Show) as well as “Liar,” “Winning Streak” and “Get By” — which serves as the 2024 college football season’s anthem — will all be included on the upcoming album, which is named after his headlining tour kicking off Aug. 27.
Jelly Roll released Whitsitt Chapel in June 2023. The album peaked at No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200, reached No. 2 on Top Country Albums and took the No. 1 spot on Top Rock Albums.
The star also nabbed 2024 Grammy nominations Best New Artist and Best Country duo/Group Performance for “Save Me,” his collaboration with Lainey Wilson, which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Country music sensation Jelly Roll has released the much-anticipated music video for his latest single, “Liar” after previously sharing a teaser for the clip on social media.
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“Liar” boldly confronts addiction and materialism’s emptiness, with Jelly Roll‘s raw honesty on full display and his vulnerability shining through as he tackles the heavy themes head-on. The visual is as stark as the message of the song, with Jelly standing in the middle of a dilapidated living room while singing to his reflection in a mirror and vowing that the dark voices in his head will not get him down again.
“You ain’t nothin’ but a liar/ Yeah, I walk right out the fire/ Yeah, you try to keep me down/ Try to put me underground/ But I’m only going higher,” he sings as his mirror image stares back ominously, wringing his hands and looking forlorn.
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The singer previously debuted the song on May 16 at the ACM Awards, where he treated audiences at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, to a rousing performance of the at-the-time unreleased rock track.
The release on Aug. 2 marks a change of tune from earlier this year when the Nashville native revealed in an interview with Taste of Country Nights that he was “on the fence” about releasing the track.
“I felt like it was important to start the new era of music at the ACMs because we had done ‘Save Me’ there. We launched me and Lainey there. I think that as we’re celebrating ‘Halfway to Hell’ going No. 1, it’s kind of the end of the Whitsitt Chapel era,” Jelly Roll said in May.
“I don’t even know if we’re going to put ‘Liar’ out. I’m still on the fence about it,” he added.
Jelly Roll, born Jason DeFord, has seen rising success on the Billboard charts over the past few years.
His single “Son of a Sinner” hit No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart in January 2023, marking his crossover from hip-hop to country. His album Whitsitt Chapel, released in June 2023, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, his highest-charting album yet.
The album has also performed well on the Top Country Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, while his “Need a Favor” reached the top 10 on the Rock Airplay chart.
Watch Jelly Roll’s “Liar” below.
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Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll are set to release a new collaborative single, “Lonely Road,” on July 26.
The duo, who have dubbed themselves “KellyRoll,” teased the track on social media on July 19 with a brief video clip that hints at a John Denver-inspired tune.
“Countdown to KellyRoll activated,” the artists wrote on Instagram. “Thanks to John Denver for paving the way.”
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The teaser features MGK and Jelly Roll in black suits at a funeral, with snippets showing MGK being arrested and Jelly Roll kissing his wife, Bunnie XO. The song’s hook, “Lonely road, take me home. Take me home,” clearly nods to Denver’s iconic “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
The collaboration marks MGK’s first release since revisiting his Hotel Diablo album with a deluxe edition earlier this month. For Jelly Roll, it follows his recent appearance on Eminem’s new album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce), where he featured on the emotionally charged track “Somebody Save Me.”
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Interestingly, Jelly Roll’s work with Eminem comes amidst the Detroit rapper’s ongoing feud with MGK. Eminem has taken several shots at MGK over the years, including digs on his latest album.
The collaboration between MGK and Jelly Roll isn’t entirely unexpected. The pair previously shared the stage at CMA Fest’s Spotify House in June, performing duets of Jelly Roll’s hit “Need a Favor” and MGK’s “My Ex’s Best Friend.” During that performance, MGK also covered the Chicks’ “There’s Your Trouble,” hinting at a potential foray into country music.
The upcoming collab could signal another shift in musical direction for MGK, who has already transitioned from rap to pop-punk in recent years. For Jelly Roll, the track follows the release of his song “Dead End Road” from the Twisters soundtrack.
“Lonely Road” is set to drop on July 26 and will be available on all major streaming platforms. You can check out the teaser below.
Jelly Roll knows the value of hard work, and that’s why he helped out some fans while stopping for a meal at Whataburger. In a viral TikTok video, the “Need a Favor” country superstar is seen rolling up into the drive-thru with two friends, when he asks the teenager in the window how many people […]
Jelly Roll reveals five things you didn’t know about him. Jelly RollWhat’s up, y’all? This is Jelly Roll. Here are five things you don’t know about me. No. 1: I used to work at a radio station as an intern when I got out of jail across the street of 106.7, The Blaze. Taz Daddy […]
Singer-songwriter Jelly Roll topped Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with “Dead Man Walking” in May 2022, hit No. 1 on Country Airplay seven months later with “Son of a Sinner,” and went on to spend a record-setting 28 weeks atop the Emerging Artists chart. The Nashville-area native has sold-out shows at both Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and Bridgestone Arena; he also took home multiple honors at the CMT Music Awards in April. Now, he’s on the cover of this year’s Billboard Country Power Players issue. On Friday (June 2), he will release the full-length project, Whitsitt Chapel.
During his cover story interview with Billboard‘s Melinda Newman in Nashville, Jelly Roll opened up about his journey from spending time behind bars to selling out arenas and topping the charts in multiple genres. Jelly Roll spoke of how, at age 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 told Billboard. “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.”
He also expressed a lingering bitterness over how the judicial system offered him such little opportunities for rehabilitation, despite his young age. Jelly Roll was facing a potential 20-year sentence, though he ultimately served over a year for the charge, followed by more than seven years of probation.
“They were talking about giving me more time than I’d been alive,” he told Billboard. “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.”
Given Tennessee’s zero-tolerance policy for violent offenders, the charge is still on Jelly Roll’s record, and thus has lingering repercussions. Jelly Roll cannot vote, volunteer at most nonprofits or own a firearm. Until recently, he also could not get a passport, which impacted his ability to tour internationally. He also told Billboard about his attempt to buy a home in a gated community with its own golf course (Jelly Roll is an avid golfer); he was ultimately 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 told Billboard. “My money was welcome, but I wasn’t, all because of something I did [almost] 24 years ago.”
He recalls the moment he began to turn his life around, after learning of the birth of his daughter, Bailee. When he was 23, Jelly Roll was incarcerated for drug dealing. Then, on May 22, 2008, he learned that his daughter had been born.
“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,” he said.
He was transferred from the violent offenders’ unit to the education unit and began studying for his GED, passing the test on his first attempt. After his release, he met his daughter on her second birthday. Bailee now resides with Jelly Roll and his wife, Bunnie, whom he married in 2016. He calls Bunnie “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.”
Country star Jelly Roll opens up about his journey from his life in prison to becoming one of the most exciting and interesting rising stars in country music. “I want to make people feel the way this makes me feel because this is like it go back my childhood really, like this is the same […]
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