The Interview - Jelly Roll Cannot Believe How His Life Turned Out

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

From jail and addiction to music stardom — the singer tells David Marchese he’s living a “modern American fairy tale.”

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. I think we've all had the experience of feeling pretty low and wanting to put on a song. It doesn't necessarily fix things, but the song can have the effect of feeling like someone has reached out and put a hand on our shoulder. For me, the musicians who do that are Joni Mitchell or Prince. Prince's Sometimes It Snows in April is one I listen to a lot when things are rough. But for many Americans today, the artist who they're turning to in those moments is Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll's real name is Jason D. Ford,

and he's the rare singer who's been able to cross over on the pop, rock, and country charts, which means a ton of different types of people are really into his music. And his songs are almost all about struggling to get by, which is something he knows about. He's a burly, face-tattooed singer from Antioch, Tennessee, and he was in and out of prison starting as a teenager and into his mid-20s. He's dealt with loss and addiction and years of professional frustration. But in 2021, when he was 36, his music career finally started taking off.

Jelly Roll is launching a cross-country headlining arena tour this month and has a new, highly anticipated album coming in the fall. He was also nominated for the Best New Artist Award at the Grammys this year. But he's become something more than just a star. He's also a figure of hope.

Many of his fans see in him someone who has experience with the battles they're fighting every day and is still standing. Here's my conversation with Jelly Roll. And you prefer if I call you Jelly, right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's what my mama calls me. I'm way more comfortable with that. And why does your mama call you Jelly? She gave me the nickname when I was a kid.

I love jelly donuts, so she just called me a little Jelly Roll. The bad joke I make is, imagine if I'd have loved Slim Jims and she'd have called me Slim. I might be 185 pounds and be a porn star or something, you know, but it just worked out different for me. So you're, at the end of this month, you're kicking off a headlining arena tour. Can you tell me some of the more intense things that fans come up to you and tell you, either if they meet you before a show, after the show? Man, I think I've heard it all, to be honest, Bubba. I think I've heard everything from

your music was played at my daughter's funeral. She had an accidental overdose. Or to your song, Helped Me Get Through Rehab. I listened to Save Me on repeat for 30 days straight. Or it was our morning song before we did our gratitude list. Yeah, everything from funerals to hospitals to recovery centers. How much I think Save Me is, they've documented as like one of the more played songs in recovery centers in America. And I've heard, and I hear, you know, the good stories too that I got sober.

This song did this. It's so crazy the range of emotions I hear. Is it ever hard for you to be the recipient of that, to take on that kind of stuff that people are telling you? No, I feel more honored that I have like a purpose or that I'm able to be useful. You know, I spent so much of my life not only not being useful, but being counterproductive to society, kind of making an already bad place worse,

that to be in a place where I'm actually being able to have service and help people has completely changed my whole mentality. So it never feels like they're asking something from you that's more than you can give? Well, that happens outside of fans telling me their stories. I'll cry with a fan in aisle three of a grocery store over a real cathartic story, and I'll get in my car feeling better about life. But I see a missed email from a friend, you know, to say, hey, you've been blowing me off for five months, you know, and they're just kind of laying into me.

It just hurts your feelings because you're like, man, you just have no understanding of where I'm at in my life right now, you know? Last week, I went from Canada to Tampa to LA. I was in Alabama last night. I'll be in Michigan tonight. I'll be in Wisconsin tomorrow night. I'll be in Wyoming Saturday night. I'll be in LA Sunday night. I'll be back in Dallas by Tuesday. Time management for me gets a little wonky. You know what I mean? So what I've had to do, and it hurts my friends' feelings, but I just have to be honest to say that I have no priority outside of what I'm doing right now musically and my direct family, the people in my household. That's all I have time for respectfully. And it hurts my feelings because I've lost a lot of friends over that.

So you find that people are not understanding of that explanation? The real friends are. The few. But it's funny how fast you find the ones that just don't get it. And a couple of them I've even took with me. Like, why don't you come spend a week with me? And then they'll leave like, okay, I get it. And then they just ask for money too.

That's a whole other problem. We got a whole phone that's just people asking if it's the philanthropy people I know from Antioch phone. Antioch, the town in Tennessee where you grew up. Yes, sir. Yeah. So do people hit you up for money a lot? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And you know what's funny about money in our business? I'm sure you know this, but we don't have the money people think we have until five years after they think we have it. It's on the way. I think I'm going to have the kind of money people think we have until five years after they think we have it. It's on the way. I think I'm going to have the kind of money they think I have, but I don't have it today. And they think I had it yesterday. People quit asking for light bills and started asking for motor vehicles and houses. And you're just like, whoa.

How do you let people down from that? You just got to be honest. You just got to tell them the truth. But that's the other problem, too, is that in other places, I'm not in my life where I have a lot of time to explain. Also, I'm in a weird place in life where I'm starting to be really introspective and reflective of who I owe an explanation to. I'm raising my daughter to be a decent young woman. I'm raising my son to be a decent young man. I'm in love with my wife. That's one of the biggest priorities of my life. If I got a little spare time to hang,

it's with my brothers and my mom and my dog. You know, I want to ask a question about your wife. I saw something, I think it was on her Facebook page earlier in the year, about how she was commemorating the one-year anniversary of being able to give up sex work. And the way she said it was that she and you used to have conversations. You said something to her like, one day you're not going to have to do this kind of work anymore. Do you remember that day? When did that day come?

Well, we had the conversation early when we were dreamers laying in bed together. And I was really broke and she was pretty broke. She had a little more money than me. I had no money. I had less than nothing. And that was kind of our dream, man, was that, you know, I wanted to get away from the life of crime. I wanted to do music, but I wanted to do country music. And she kind of believed in that dream and steered me towards it. I believe that she had a personality and a story. And to see it actually come to fruition has been, you know, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's a modern American fairy tale, kind of, right? It's this really kind of white trashy one, but it's kind of poetic and beautiful

in this really fucked up way, you know? And I think that's what's so cool about our relationship, too. But was there a day that you can recall where either she said to you or you said to her, like, I don't have to do that work anymore? I remember it. The business is, it happens in such a gradual way that you don't actually have a real moment. You have moments where you see it after it's happened. Like, even when Bunny posted that, I was like, yo, you know that was like two years now or three years now. You're that far detached from the reality of... Because in her mind, I think that was her just having a real vulnerable moment of like, yo, it feels like it's been a year since I walked away from this. You know what I mean? It's like, we've also been in a vortex, David. You got to remember that days and nights are starting to blend together. The fact that I dropped Son of a Sinner in 2021 blows my fucking

mind. When I sit here and think, dude, that's only been three years. I've lived a decade, David. I've went across the United States. I've seen the craziest shit. I've had the best time. It's been so wild. I've been to the Grammys. I've won awards. I've been on TV things I never thought would happen. It feels like it's been a decade, but it's been 36 months since I went to country radio. Well, you know, just that little list you ran down, you know, stuff has been going really good for you. It's fucking crazy. But the question I had is, like, I was listening to the, I think there's eight or nine of the new songs you're working on. I got sent those and I was listening to them.

And they're about painful subjects, you know, or subjects that people understand as jelly roll subjects. You know, they're about addiction, you know, adversity. They're about when you feel like you're at the end of the line and you don't know where to go, but you got to keep going. You're not singing about joyful stuff. Given that your life is in a better place, is it harder to come up with that kind of material? First of all, I hear these stories every night,

what the songs are doing for people. All of a sudden, what was so isolated to what I thought was just my story becomes the story of tens of millions of people. For the first time in my life, I experienced something called purpose. Now I know who I'm speaking for. And it's deeper than my story. This is my child's mother's story who's still actively in and out of jail and in her addiction. That's how close this still is to my house. Regardless of the size of my house, I still have family members that are

just got out of rehab. I'm so impacted by this and I'm such an empath in how I feel things that it's so just natural to write these stories. It's all I've ever known. I also think about this perspective, right? I lived a really shitty life, mostly self-inflicted for 20 years. I've lived a pretty wildly unbelievable, amazing life for 24 months. I'm still catching up. We're going to know jelly rolls healed when I'm like, I'm losing weight right now. If I keep getting this weight off, this is the beginning of me starting to heal my demons. You might get a happy album with Skinny Jelly. Skinny Jelly might drop a happy album. How have you talked with your kids about the period in your life when you were in and out of prison? And how have you explained that to them?

Honesty, vulnerability. So I just talk to my kids the same way. I've always been honest. Bailey was different, right? My oldest, because of what her mother was dealing with at her being seven or eight years old. I was trying to describe what addiction was to an eight-year-old without using words like addiction or drugs. Is that possible? Well, you know, I've been to enough programming to know how many people truly, and I believe too, that it's a disease, that it's a thing that happens that's truly changes the genetics of a human. That I don't know if you've ever really experienced a drug addict really close to you or not. Have you? I have not. No. The strangest thing happens, man. And I'm so

glad, please, let's talk about this for a few seconds. Somebody you've known your entire life turns into a different person. It is unbelievable. I mean, you know them one way. Because I've had it happen to baby mothers, cousins, biological brothers. You know a person one way your whole life, and they turn into a completely different person, man, that's a raging disease. It is unbelievable what it does, you know, and that's the way we tried to explain is that your mother is kind of, you know, your mother's struggling with something, you know,

it's a medical thing. There are a couple more questions I have about music for a second. You know, you're working on these, working on putting out these new songs. You know, you put out a couple of new singles recently. In what ways do you see it as sort of moving the Jelly Roll story forward? Well, what you see is what you get with me. It's always kind of been that. I'm not thinking about what an arc is here. I don't think about me being on act two right now. Really? Yeah, it's just not the way I think of it, man. I think of more of everything as a going out of business sale and I give everything I got, everything I do, every time I do it right now. And hopefully I can ease back

and start arcing this stuff and thinking about next year and years after that. But right now, it's just trying to impact as many people as we can while God's given us a platform to impact people and hit it as hard as we can while we can. Plus, I don't know me. You know, I'll probably, my publicist is going to hate this, but I don't know enough about myself yet to know how long I'm going to do this. I don't know how I'm going to feel after I do this for a few more years or what God's going to send my way or what purpose God might want me in film. He might want me to tell my story a different way. I'm not sure. I might go to college. I got options. You know what I mean? I came from nothing, dude. You know what I'm saying? It's like, man, I might want to

learn something, dude. I might come intern under you for a year, dude. What's up, man? Talk to me, dude. 27, 28, what's up? So I'm still treating everything like, hey, man, I just want to serve people. I'm looking for songs that have purpose. When I go to put out a song under the name Jelly Roll, I think to myself, why? Because for the first time in my life, in the last three years, I can tell you, it has nothing to do with a financial decision at all.

I'm well past putting out anything for money. I own my masters. If people see my record deal, they've made big announcements about record deals for artists that I own my masters. If people see my record deal, they've made big announcements about record deals for artists that are worse than mine. Wait, so what are we talking? Tens of millions? I'm okay. If I sold my catalog today, it would be one of the deals they would write about it. So it's like now it really is a why. Songs like Winning Streak. From the new album. Tell them you heard Winning Streak, right? Can I ask you a question about Winning Streak. From the new album. Tim, you heard Winning Streak, right?

Can I ask you a question about Winning Streak? It's, of course. You know, that song describes somebody basically going to an AA meeting, you know, in a church basement. Is alcohol addiction something that you struggle with or have struggled with, or are you just playing a character in that song? I was actually writing from the perspective of a story I seen happen for real. So I actually watched this story unfold. And every other way we tried to write it except for first person didn't work.

So I'm sitting in a meeting, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, right? And my deal is for my demons, which I still will have a cocktail every now and then, and I'm a known weed smoker, but I got away from the drugs that I knew were going to kill me. And it was really hard for me to get away from those drugs. And something I do to maintenance my relationship with those drugs is I will still attend the meetings, even though that I'm not a textbook sober guy, but I never share. I just quietly sit and just appreciate the message and the meaning. This is the first time I've talked about this publicly at all.

I don't tell people I go to meetings. It's not a part of my story that I share because I have so much respect for the men and women in that program who got actually completely sober that I never want my stuff to get in the way of them. So I just sit and I'm watching and this kid's just, he's going through it. And one of the old men sitting in there was like, look, man, it's all good. Nobody came in here on a winning streak. And it was such a beautiful thing where if you've ever been to an AA meeting, a big one like this room had 20, 30 people. And it felt like

you watch the room kind of split when he said that, because half of the room are old, sober dudes who remember being the young dudes, so they chuckle. And the other half are other dudes who just immediately fill in their bones and cry. But it's all the same emotion and feeling, right? And right then, there it was. That was the beginning of Winning Streak. And no matter how we tried to get to it, writing it outside of first person, it didn't feel as personal. Plus, I don't write first person songs from the perspective of like me, me, me,

as much as I know how much first person songs inspired me. Because when you're singing a first person song as me listening to it, it's my song. I'm expressing my emotion. You know what I mean? So it just, it felt more right that way. What are some of the first person songs that inspired you? Can you think of any?

In my mind, I'm gone to Carolina. James Taylor, yeah. I have to say, I love you in a song, Jim Croce. Yeah. You know, you started as a rapper, and then not too long ago, you started singing. And then there were questions, and you can still find questions online or people criticizing you online for, you know, saying like you're inauthentically country. And the conversation about authenticity seems so much more central to country music than to other genres. Why does the country world seem to care so much about who is really country and who is not really country? I don't think they care as much as we think they do. I think it's the textbook story of America right now, where we're listening to the smaller groups of people more than the larger groups of people that we've

like, well, really, 95% of the people agree this is really good country music, but we're going to live and die on them five. Ain't that the story of America? Even in country music, right? Like, now duplicate that in every process of being an American, and we wonder why the country is so sideways, you know? But this is an age-old story that goes for every genre. Rock and roll, what—man, I'm going to get in trouble. Rock and roll's problem was they allowed this same problem to create 30 sub-genres of rock and roll. Explain to me what you mean. So, like, do you remember, like,

it was just rock and roll, and then they started, well, no, this is heavy. This isn't heavy. This is more classic sound. And they started putting rock and roll in 30 different rock and roll boxes, and then it kind of became hard to follow.

Where country music has always been wide. I'm just a part of the width of the story now. Country music's just, instead of sub-genre-ing, they've just always been like, you know what, we just accept the width of country music wherever it's at. So if the length of country music right now is somewhere between Coulter, Wall, Tyler Childers, and Post Malone. If that's the width of it right this moment, or Brandi Carlile,

Sturgill Simpson, and Morgan Wallen, and Zach Bryan. That's the beauty of country music. Why couldn't Beyonce get played on country radio? But see, now you're trying to put an entire genre into one part of what it does. Because I can also tell you that she dominated the streaming

playlisting and the algorithmic radio with that record. I mean, it was her three months. But country programmers weren't picking it up to the same extent. Yeah, but think about it this way, then. Is it similar that what she did is the reason that it opened up wide enough for Shabuzy to have the number five on country radio right now? Oh, I see what you're saying. There's always somebody just pushing it a little further. And country's been smart enough to continue to let it get further instead of sub-genering it. So one could say that Willie and Merle and them, Johnny Cash, had to walk so they could run. Yeah.

One could say that Beyonce had to crawl so Shabuzy could walk. So I want to go back to your struggles a little bit. You first were incarcerated when you were about 14? Yes, sir. And what was that for? It might go back a year before that. I got caught with a cannabis charge in Antioch and a pack of cigarettes as a juvenile, and they cited me.

And I didn't go to court because they, this is how wild the 90s was. The cop trusted me to take the citation to my family and go to court, which of course I didn't. So the police had to show up and haul me to jail. That was my first one at 13. At 14, I think it was a schoolyard fight. And then I think the way you've described it

as you were sort of in the, I don't know what metaphor you use, revolving door, conveyor belt of in and out of, you know, so there was a drug dealing. I think there was an, was it aggravated assault charge? There was an aggravated robbery charge for my youth. So you were in and out of prison till about 25

and then kind of famously in the Jelly Roll story So you were in and out of prison until about 25, and then kind of famously in the Jelly Roll story, you were inside and I guess somebody told you your daughter was born, and that was kind of like your epiphany, where you said, I got to change my life, you know? But was there anything that someone could have said to you or done for you before that that could have changed the path you were on?

I'm not sure. I'm learning to forgive myself for the decisions I made when I was that young, because I felt like an adult and I was very conscious about the decisions I was making and they were wrong and I knew they were wrong and I was doing them with a sense of pride and excitement. But I've learned to give myself the grace

to look back at that and go, man, dude, I was 15 though. Because I have a 16-year-old that lives with me now and she's really smart. And she's an old soul, but man, she's 16, dude. And she shows it all the time. You just got to look at that and the perspective of it.

So, sorry, sorry. I just never get to talk about that portion. But I was so young in those early years of that. I don't know what could have helped me, to be honest. Was there any aspect of the incarceration experience that felt rehabilitative? Towards the very end of my sentence, I went to a program to get your GED, which was in the short haul of the CCA I was in. Tell people what CCA is, though. Correction Corporation of America. It's one of them for-profit prisons that's everywhere. It's making trillions of dollars a year, probably hand over fist from the federal government.

Insanity, by the way. But I wanted to get my GED because as soon as they said I was having a kid, I was like, I need to figure this out. I don't have GED. I'm 24 years old or something, 25. And I went to that unit and got my GED, which I'm super proud of. And the unit next to it was a Christian program called Jericho for a company called the Men of Valor that helps rehabilitate men here. And I spent six months in that program and went to their halfway house when I came home. And that was the first time I experienced something that was really cool. But once again, it wasn't a state-funded program. It was a nonprofit Christian-based program that the state had allowed into the facility.

But that's the only time, especially as a juvenile. Even now when I go to that juvenile, I go there and hang out, and they're working with me to make changes there because it's sad. They treat those kids like, I know they've done heinous crimes for sure, but, you know, they're 15 years old. Can we get some color on the walls in here? Can we not make this place feel as dreary as a life sentence? And you're saying it shouldn't just be up to nonprofits to provide those kind of services? The government should be doing more? Well, I mean, the government puts itself in every other facet of our business.

I wish the government would either get more involved or get more out of the way, but pick one, you're in the middle. It seems like you only infringe on us when it's convenient for y'all. But when we actually need y'all to infringe, you know what I'm saying? We can't get y'all over here, you know what I mean? But that's my own thing with the government. I'm not a politician. I'm a dumb songwriter. You're not dumb, but because of your felony, you can't vote. Is that correct? No, I can't vote. So how does that color

your view of politics? I'm not, I don't have a view. But you just described a point of view on politics. So now don't say I don't have a view. Well, because I'm a taxpayer now, right? So my view is real simple. It's like, where is this money going? I see the check. That's where I have a little skin in the game finally. It's like, yo, you're telling me I can't get my brother into rehab when he needed it? But I paid this much money in taxes last year?

It's like, yo, either get clean out of the way and I'll community together and build one ourselves or come the fuck over here and help. But it's like, you're just in the middle with me. Yeah. It's like, I don't keep up with politics. I don't want to get deep into this because this is always the shit that makes headlines and I don't want to be headlines, but it's like, somebody asked me a question about jail the other day, David, and they said, is it like it is on TV? Do they have baseball and basketball and football? And I was like, they might have a basketball court, but that's it. Because anything that involves two people going against each other can end in a fight.

And when I said that, it hit me. I was like, wow. And then we wonder why the country's divided. It's a two-person fight, always happening at every level. It's always pick this guy, not this guy. It's like a system made for us to fight about. I'm just not getting involved in that shit.

I have enough causes to fight about. Politics ain't one I'm venturing into. Do you feel like in country music, there's a particular feeling of push or pull to declare your politics or say what side you're on? I think that that's not in country music. I think it's everywhere. Think about how politically charged

this country is right now. Like there's a pressure from everybody for us to talk about it a little bit, and I'm not getting involved. That shit is, we really think our vote counts. That's where we are. This is like, that's how naive and much we, like, I wish people would just get behind

the causes that matter. I'll give you one. Yeah. While I'm mad enough. I think my vote does count, by the way, so I don't. Oh, I'm sorry, David. Don't. You're fooling yourself.

You're wasting your time. Don't do it, man. Don't fall into that trap, dog. You know what? If you need an afternoon off, you fucking go vote. But if you think it actually weighs any merit of what's happening in this country, it's crazy. That's madness, David. Stop it. You're smarter than that. Wait, because you mean it's just a drop in the bucket? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, man. It's just something to fire people up, man. It's it, dude. It's not.

This has been happening. My daughter hates when I talk like this. I've seen this. This is a tale as old as time. Every four years, they get the country to fight against each other. It's the goal. You're telling me if they said you as a felon can now vote, that wouldn't be meaningful to you? To have my right to vote?

Yeah. Because I would like my basic rights as an American. Whatever the ground minimum rights we are given in this country, I'd like to fight to prove that I deserve them back. But as far as am I going to get up and go vote with it? No. This is a slightly left field, but I know you got your first face tattoo when you were in prison. I did. And it makes me sound like such a square to be asking this question, but can you talk to me about the thought process behind the face tattoo? I don't know what the real thought process was behind that one. I can tell you more about the ones that I've decided to do as an adult male.

Sure. That is more thinking about reflection. Like this is because I carry my own cross every day. Yeah, it's a cross on your cheek, yeah. Yeah, and it's the first thing I see when I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth. And I immediately know that I got to carry my cross. But some I look in the mirror and when I brush my teeth and I immediately know that I got to carry my cross. But some of these younger ones, man,

I don't know what I was thinking. I was in such a hopeless place, man. I probably thought I wasn't going to get out of there anyways. You know? What's the one that looks like a scar down your eye? Oh, man, this right here.

Thank you for bringing this up. Nobody ever asked. This isn't meant to be a scar. This right here is a clown. Oh, like a harlequin kind of thing. Mm-hmm. So why'd you get that one? That's a real personal thing.

Huh. Yeah. Did you listen to my last album? Yeah. There's a song called Nail Me on there. That's the feeling of this tattoo. I don't know how to, sometimes when I can't articulate it,

the song can, but that's what this is. Jelly, thank you so much for taking all the time to talk with me. I appreciate it. No, dude, thank you, man. And I'll talk to you again sometime soon. I can't wait, man. What if I show up, I got the same tattoo?

That'd be pretty good, right? Then I'll forgive you for all the political badger. My wife might not be so keen on that trade. You never know, dude. It might change y'all's whole thing, dude. It might get another 20 years out of y'all, dude. You know what I'm saying?

A little curveball in the relationship? I'm going to plan on losing another 200 pounds so it's like my wife married a whole different dude. It's like, you want to try another 10 years

with this skinny motherfucker? You know what I'm saying? All right. Have a good one. Thank you, Bubba. After the break, Jelly calls me out in a nice way on the parts of his story I'm misunderstanding. Don't take this wrong, but there's a cultural disconnect between you and I that's really kind of endearing to me.

It's what makes me like talking to you. continue. Can you hear me, Bubba? I can, Bubba. How are you? Did I use Bubba correctly? Yes! There you go. Alright, Bubba. And I love that you emphasize the two B's for the syllables. That's what makes it country. When you go Bubba like you go. All right, Bubba. I love it. And I love that you emphasize the two Bs for the syllables. That's what makes it country. When you go Bubba, like you did.

Just going back to your youth and some of the trouble you got into, at some point, the way you described it, you're in prison and you're told that your daughter was born and then a switch flips and you realize you got to change your life. And I'm sure, you know, fundamentally in the broad strokes, that's true and that's what happens, that you had this epiphany and then changed.

But that also sounds almost like something from a movie, you know, like change is never quite so easy as, you know, you get one piece of information and then you see the world a different way. I don't think. I don't know. I do believe that immersion happens. I do believe that dramatic change happens. I do believe that.

I believe that you saying that right there is the opposite of what happens in Alcoholics Anonymous every single day. And I think that you saying that shows me that you've never been a part of that culture of life and never seen people have those rock bottom real experiences where they woke up and said, today's the day I quit shooting heroin. And yeah, there is a lot of steps after that. They have to go to rehab. They have to detox. They have to do five days of punishment and pain. They have to find new playgrounds and new playmates. There was a lot of steps I had to change. But yeah, maybe the change wasn't dramatic, but the decision was dramatic. That's interesting. You know, and I think the truth is you're absolutely right that I don't

have experience with the kind of AA epiphanies that you're talking about. It's just outside of my realm. It's weird. Everybody's rock bottom is different. You know what I mean? For me, it was realizing that I was the most qualified person to raise my daughter and that scared me i just literally was like i know her mother's a piece of shit her mother's family which isn't able to raise this child my family's not able to raise this child you know what i mean i've really got to figure this out you use the term a piece of shit, but I know you're also very understanding of the struggle of addiction. I think

you even referred to it on our first conversation as a disease. Do you find it hard to extend sort of the same sympathy or non-judgmental attitude you have generally about addiction towards... Of course. Yeah.

Of course, I'm human. I have to watch the effects of this every day. I've had to hold that kid crying for eight years and try to explain this to her for eight years. And even as a 16-year-old with an incredible GPA, you know, I mean, just brilliant young woman, she's just, her brain's still not developed enough to fully understand.

You know what I mean? She just hasn't lived enough life to get it. her and when i say piece of shit i'm also realizing david and don't don't don't take this wrong but there's a cultural disconnect between you and i that's really kind of endearing to me it's what makes me like talking to you it's like i also say piece of shit really endearing you know what i mean like yo she's a piece of shit like she's a fucking like i'm a piece of shit you know what i mean like we're not good people it's like i'm always a white trash piece of shit i'm just actively doing better every single day i do know what you're saying it's

like when i call myself white trash i don't mean like you know what i mean saying. Except when I call myself white trash, I don't mean it. Like, you know what I mean? I meant like, yo. And the spirit of transparency with you is like, but yeah, sometimes I am way less forgiving than her. And I have to catch myself when I have those human enough. Because it hurts. It's so close to home. And after so many times, you just finally get to a point

where you're just like, yo, man, is it the drugs or is it the person? And I know how much drugs change people, so I can give them grace. Well, I appreciate that explanation, and I'm glad our cultural differences are endearing to you rather than annoying. No, it makes sense. It's great. It makes it fun to talk to you, because there's moments I have with you where I'm like, okay, this is a little... I thought about this. I tortured myself about the your vote don't count thing that I was fucking with you about i was being very tongue-in-cheek right oh you were just needling me yeah i was just kind of jazzing you a little bit i was just

fucking with you it's like i know how important voting is as long as you're not just uh after the fact uh trying to do some uh revisionist history we're saying oh actually i was joking no no no and the point i was trying to get across but it didn't come through in my humor in the moment, was like, there's just also so much more important stuff that we should be active about fixing homelessness in America and violence on the street. I think it would be so much further in society. You know, I got to say throughout this interview, I've been so pleased with how open you've been to answering whatever questions I've been asking you, even the ones that make you think this guy's from a different part of the world than me and doesn't understand what I'm talking about.

Is there a question that you'd be scared to answer? No, I mean, you know, i couldn't imagine you have a subject you could bring up right now that's not worse than one that's already been brought up it's uh because this has been a fun interview for me because we kind of have talked about all the shit that i try to remember um but i truly think that part of the superpower of what's happening with me is just my complete vulnerability. So yeah, it's not a question. There's questions I don't want to answer, but I'm not afraid to.

Jelly, what do you think you're doing five years from now? I hope by then that I'm not doing as much music. I hope that this parallels into a real philanthropic career for me. The goal is to do well enough this next five years that I can spend the next, whatever God has for me after that, to serve.

And what do you want to do tomorrow? I want to be useful. I used to want to be happy. Now I just want to be useful. I was thinking you were going to say something like, take a nap. I got a show tomorrow. Won't be no nap tomorrow, Papa.

Sunday, though, hibernation. Biscuits and gravy. It's my cheat day on my night. I'm going to eat biscuits and gravy and a cinnamon roll for breakfast and go right back to sleep. Living the dream. It's the dream, David.

It's the dream, baby. Biscuits and grapes. That's Jelly Roll. His new album will be out this fall. We reached out to Jelly's daughter's mother during the production of this episode. She couldn't be reached for comment. This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly.

It was edited by Annabelle Bacon. Mixing by Afim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Photography by Devin Yelkin. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew, and our producer is Wyatt Orme. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Maciello, Nick Pittman, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schumann, and Sam Dolnik. If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts.

To read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash theinterview. And you can email us anytime at theinterviewatnytimes.com. Next week on The Interview, Lulu interviews Jenna Ortega, the star of the Netflix hit Wednesday and a new sequel to the movie Beetlejuice. It was a very transformative period in my life. We shot Beetlejuice not that long after Wednesday had come out. So one day I just, I woke up in somebody else's shoes. I felt like I had entered somebody else's life and like, I didn't know how to get back to mine. I'm David Marchese, and this is The Interview from The New York Times. Thank you.