"Jelly Roll"

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Speaker 1 Hey guys, do you mind if I count down my cold open to you? Ready? Three,

Speaker 1 two,

Speaker 1 one.

Speaker 2 Hey, the one be silent so that we don't hear it all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So hang on, hang on, Anna.
Wait, wait, let's be, let's be, so you're just going to go go three, two, one, welcome to Smartless or whatever. But you're gonna say the one or the one silent?

Speaker 1 No, I'm gonna say that. I'm gonna, this is the one's gonna start.
Could you start at five just to give me more? Uh, yeah, ready? New Smartless episode in five, four,

Speaker 1 three, five, two.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, what's going on?

Speaker 1 No, welcome to Smartlist is a smart one. Welcome to Smartlist.
Welcome to Smartlist. Welcome to Smartless.
Smart

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 1 Smart,

Speaker 1 less.

Speaker 1 Okay, why? Why the layers?

Speaker 2 It's just freezing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is it?

Speaker 2 Here, yes.

Speaker 1 It is really cold. But don't you have heat? You can put the heat on a little bit? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you end up going for the heat package at your house?

Speaker 2 I live with someone who doesn't enjoy the heat package.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 how is it nice and warm over there at your place, Shawnee?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we put the heat on in the morning.

Speaker 2 You don't sleep with it on?

Speaker 1 God, no. Couldn't sleep with it on.
You got to put the fan on. I sleep with a fan.
You just pick a different fan every night? You just go find somebody

Speaker 1 looking for a big fan to sleep.

Speaker 2 And, Will, it's pretty cold in New York, is it not?

Speaker 1 It's been real chilly, but I love it.

Speaker 2 You're in a t-shirt, though, so you're using the heat over there as well.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, the heat's on. It's quite, yeah, it's quite hot, but

Speaker 1 I also don't, you know, I just came from

Speaker 1 the gym, so I'm running a little hot right now. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 2 So you're still in your juices right now?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I showered and stuff, but you know, you've got that thing,

Speaker 1 your core. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, you get the show. You ever get the shower sweats? Where you take a shower and then you're hotter after you get out of the shower.

Speaker 1 But I do, I've been doing ice-cold showers for a couple of minutes after. Can't do it.
Can't do it. It's not fun.
So wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 So you, you, you, will you walk into a really cold shower?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or do you get it cold while you're in it?

Speaker 1 I'm, I mix it up. I do both.
Today I did just cold.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so I worked out and I did cold. And then I walked home.
And it's nice when you come out of the gym and you've, it's been cold and it's cold outside. Cold it.

Speaker 2 You showered at the gym?

Speaker 1 I did, yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you wear shower shoes?

Speaker 1 You know, I was thinking about this today. Shower shoes?

Speaker 1 I'm going to answer your question, but I've been thinking about it a little bit because I brought this up earlier, like when we were on vacation over New Year's and you washed your hands.

Speaker 1 And I was like, did everybody, remember I said, did everybody else die? Did everybody else get a really deep sickness? No. No.
And then I thought about your obsession the other day.

Speaker 1 You were talking about your colon and stuff. And

Speaker 1 slippers in hotel rooms. Listen, he goes, he's going, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. My bamboo shoot, clean colon.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it occurs to me that everything you're doing is kind of in vain. It doesn't matter.
There's no difference. You're exposing

Speaker 2 total crazy town.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's crazy town. So in your obsession with people walking in showers, hotel rooms with no shoes on, all that kind of stuff.
I mean,

Speaker 2 it's completely unnecessary, but I do. But all I know is that

Speaker 2 I am that percentage more clean than the dirty girdies that are walking around and grabbing a bunch of clean, but my guess, I guess what I'm saying is, what is it getting you?

Speaker 2 It's just, it no, no, it's just a, it's sort of a psychosomatic thing.

Speaker 2 It's just like, I feel like I enjoy eating the bread out of the bread basket, knowing that my, my, my utensil, which is my fingers, right? It's, here's the equivalent.

Speaker 2 The equivalent is if you had a fork that you were about to eat, your yummy little fucking carbo with cheese and sauce and shit all over it, pasta dish, If you dropped that fork on the restaurant floor, rubbed it around on the floor, then picked it up, then scooped your pasta, you'd be like, oh, this feels a little gross going into my mouth.

Speaker 1 Although, that's all it is. I get it.
I get it. You know what? And it's rubbed off on me because I was just in Chicago this last weekend.
And I went to, and in the hotel I stayed at Wax Munch.

Speaker 1 Chicago.

Speaker 1 And I brought. Stop screaming.
Oh, Jesus. We get it.
You're from Glen Ellen, Illinois.

Speaker 1 And I brought

Speaker 1 brought slippers, Jason, because and I used them in the hotel room because I did. I took, I took my shoes off and I was like, I'm walking in other people's.

Speaker 2 And then when you climbed into that clean bed and you pushed your feet to the bottom of that tight little cloth envelope at the bottom, you don't have a bunch of dust and grit and grime falling off.

Speaker 1 You have the grossest terminologies.

Speaker 2 How's your

Speaker 2 envelope?

Speaker 1 When you, I, here's what I, here's what I suspect: here's what I'm saying. Tuck your nards into the cloth envelope.

Speaker 1 Jesus.

Speaker 1 Here's what I suspect. When it's all said and done, when you are on your deathbed and somebody's

Speaker 1 with slippers on your feet. You bet.
What a fucking

Speaker 1 amount of time and energy you've spent thinking and acting on this is so much is valuable time on earth that you've wasted.

Speaker 2 Let me tell you something. In my open casket, if you put your dirty fucking hands on my face,

Speaker 2 when you cry and say goodbye to me for one last time, if those hands aren't clean.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm going to go and walk in a hotel room with bare feet and then I'm going to get in your coffin.

Speaker 1 Put your clammy foot on my cheek.

Speaker 1 On my cold, dead cheek. My hotel feet.
And make your kids watch me do it. Here's the other thing.

Speaker 1 I fucking...

Speaker 1 Sean, years ago we were doing a rest of development. My hotel feet.
My hotel feet. Years ago, we were doing arrested development.
I had to do this whole thing where maybe I mentioned this before.

Speaker 1 I had to put a pill in Jason's mouth. And he was so all over me about cleaning my hands in between every take.

Speaker 2 Before I put a bottle of spray sanitizer in my pocket, I had to do it.

Speaker 1 And then they'd be rolling it. They'd be rolling and I'm like, I need to wash my hands.
And then we'd start and he's like, fucking freaking out.

Speaker 2 Fortunately, my character had to be not into it, too.

Speaker 1 I kind of get it, though. I kind of get it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know. Oh,

Speaker 1 talk to the audience a little bit about what's going on, Sean.

Speaker 1 I just blew my nose. All this talk made my nose run.

Speaker 2 It's another thing. You drink milk and you blow your nose.
I don't think I've blowed my nose since I was 12.

Speaker 1 What do you do? Wait a second.

Speaker 1 What do you mean,

Speaker 1 such a bonker stitch?

Speaker 2 Just nork it in the shower and get on with it. Hey, you, all day.

Speaker 1 Blow your nose in the middle of the day.

Speaker 2 Who's got a runny nose all day, granddad?

Speaker 1 Wait a second.

Speaker 1 Wait a second. I'm a bear off Kleenex new jacket.
I'm going to save all these and put them in your coffin.

Speaker 1 Can I just say, and I just want to say this, and I'm going to put it in terms that Sean can understand. Hashtag relatable, Jason.

Speaker 1 You fucking, so you don't blow your nose. You don't walk with your feet.
Do you understand how.

Speaker 2 And I'm wearing a cashmere robe right now.

Speaker 1 Can you wear a cashmere robe? Nobody can relate to you.

Speaker 2 My nards are in a hot cloth pocket.

Speaker 1 Nobody can

Speaker 1 relate to you at all. Jason, what's your monthly cable bill?

Speaker 1 $2.50, probably. Probably.
You don't know. It kills me.

Speaker 2 It kills me every time.

Speaker 1 I I want to cut the cord.

Speaker 2 I hope we have a guest that can talk me through cutting the cord.

Speaker 1 No, I tell you what, we have to.

Speaker 1 We don't have a tech specialist. Although I don't know if that I don't know.

Speaker 2 We're going to find out.

Speaker 1 I know some stuff about him, and I know some stuff about him that a lot of other people know about him because people know this guy because he is a

Speaker 1 multi-multi-Grammy-nominated person.

Speaker 2 Open your eyes, goddammit. Don't close your eyes and you say that.

Speaker 1 I have to because I'm leaning into it.

Speaker 1 This guy has been at the top. He's been at number one on virtually every Billboard chart, whether it's the all-genre chart,

Speaker 1 breakout, you know,

Speaker 1 Best Country Song, no, Best Country Song Performance.

Speaker 1 He has addressed issues like

Speaker 1 health issues through his music. He's also testified before Congress to advocate for stricter rules on fentanyl and drugs.
He's been such an unbelievable voice of reason in crazy times. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Just an unbelievable talent. And we met him because we introduced him at a concert out on long island at our show you guys it's nobody other than jelly roll jelly rolly roll

Speaker 1 i tell you what i realize where i fall in the hierarchy of country music when

Speaker 1 everybody but me you're talking to a real chesney i'm a dumb dumb i just saw an article did kenny chesney's doing something at the sphere or something like that i just saw that article i don't i don't want to jump back on a train y'all already got off of but i would like to share an experience with shower shoes for a second.

Speaker 1 Okay, please go ahead. Please.

Speaker 1 I feel like it's a great time to. Yeah, well, listen, the fun part is I'm going to tell you where they exist for a different rule.
When you are incarcerated,

Speaker 1 which I've had the unfortunate experience of.

Speaker 2 Oh, we're going to get into that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you have to wear shoes in the shower in case somebody tries to do something to you while you're in the shower. Wait, so you can run? No, no, no, you could put you in.

Speaker 1 So you don't slip. You don't want to slip barefooted.
So you won't put your shoes.

Speaker 2 So you want to supply a nice firm base to whatever's going on in the shower.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Like you don't leave your cell if you're incarcerated in a real like a violent facility unless you have shoes on.

Speaker 1 Like they give you flip-flops, but like, you know, you walk to the shower in your shoes, and then you normally have a friend stand outside of the shower to make sure you're double safe. But really?

Speaker 1 The only thing Jason's fighting in the shower is the urge to put a finger on himself to put him over the top.

Speaker 1 And then sanitize it 30 times later and not eat for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 By the way, you just described the reason why I don't wear shower shoes.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 Jellyroll, welcome to Smartless.

Speaker 1 It started the way I hoped it would. Now,

Speaker 2 are you currently in a hotel room?

Speaker 1 I am. I'm currently

Speaker 1 smartless. No, no, I just, I'm

Speaker 1 barely. Are you barefoot? You're right.
Goodbye, Jelly Roll. No.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 It never happens, but I didn't have. It's a long story.

Speaker 1 I didn't have my, I left my slides on Jellyroll, before we get, now you've just established your intelligent your barefoot in the hotel room, and then you

Speaker 1 alluded to before we want to get into it about being incarcerated. And just a rough estimate, because obviously you can't know.
How long do you think Bateman would last in prison? And

Speaker 1 minutes is fine if you just want to keep it to minutes.

Speaker 1 How long? This is where we got to be honest, right? I'm an honest guy. Of course.

Speaker 1 Jason Bateman that we know right now would survive because he would be extorted so that he would pay for for protection. He would be totally fine.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, had pre, now pre-Jason Bateman being Jason Bateman,

Speaker 1 maybe a day or two.

Speaker 2 Now, do you find that

Speaker 2 weak, soft folks like me go in and immediately strike a bargain to be a friend with air quotes to somebody real tough? And so then you're protected?

Speaker 1 That is traditionally how that works out.

Speaker 2 I'm willing to trade my virginity so that I don't get my

Speaker 1 they prefer money

Speaker 1 everybody's trying to appeal a case but you're not walking in there with money so how do you how how can you pay for security in a prison if you're not walking in there with a wallet yeah it's crazy well back in the days when cash was a real thing you just smuggle in cash like they did drugs but now as you could imagine it's like everybody's got cell phones in there so they're like hey call your people and tell them cash at my people hang on you can have a cell phone in prison cell phone in jail you can't have one but they do that's the catch now they do have tablets i haven't been locked up in a long time so i've missed some of this but they have tablets now from what when i go visit jails they always show me their tablets so they can email and correspond that way wow no kidding but when i was in there we were smuggling them in yeah but i've always wondered that same thing like you hear about like in in jail situations where where the inmates can have like you just said like cell phones or they'll they'll smuggle in drugs or certain foods it's like well isn't anybody watching and like the guards and stuff yeah they it's just

Speaker 2 the guards are probably part of the process, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the big thing, right?

Speaker 1 Here's the thing that, and I'm just going off this list that I just got. It just came in the list of stuff that JB would smuggle.

Speaker 1 A cashmere robe, slippers, preferably Uggs, but just lined is fine.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 almonds. Am I saying that right?

Speaker 2 Can I also have a pair of socks so that the feet don't get too sweaty in the Ugg slippers?

Speaker 1 Socks are feet. Mary's crackers.
Not too many, please, because man, they're addictive. The blue ones.
The blue ones. And no shiv.
No shiv.

Speaker 1 No shiv.

Speaker 1 Wait, I do want to, my last question on this is, and JB, you touched on it. How does that happen? Like,

Speaker 1 you kind of joked. You go in day one, you strike a bargain.
I mean, I walk in there. I'm me.
I'm a total pussy. I walk in and they're like, all right, you've got money.
So do they reach out to me?

Speaker 1 How do I know who's the right guy to

Speaker 1 side with? You know what I mean? First of all, it's a lot of discernment. A lot of the wrong guys are going to come first.
I've seen a lot of guys pay the wrong guy for protecting.

Speaker 1 How does that happen?

Speaker 2 They don't knock

Speaker 2 on the cell door. They wait until everyone's out for recess.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they'll catch it. Or they'll come in your cell when the cell doors pop.
Right. But it's also not as extortionary as we all make it sound.
It's like.

Speaker 1 It truly depends on what your crime was, where you were. There's a lot of mitigating like real, like outside of the jokes at jail, there's a lot of politics of like what actually why you're there.
And

Speaker 1 traditionally, if you keep your mouth shut, you're okay in there. Really? Do you mind if I ask, and we can cut it if you don't want to talk about it, but why you were in there?

Speaker 1 No, no, I appreciate you asking, Sean. I want to talk about it because I think it's a really important part of my redemption is that,

Speaker 1 you know, I was, whenever I was a younger man, I had committed a series of crimes, one of which being an armed robbery case, which is the one that ended up really sending me to prison.

Speaker 1 But sadly, it's been everything from armed robbery to possession with intent to distribute. I've just, I was a lot, I was a 10 year, 12 years in and out of the system kind of kid.
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 Caught my first case when I was like 14 years old. From 14 to 25, I probably did almost that, almost that, most of that decade incarcerated.

Speaker 1 I call it the revolving doors, that once you get in, you know. Yeah.
But I think it's important that

Speaker 1 I talk about it because it's a big thing. I want to give people hope and second chances.
And also, I never want to

Speaker 1 act like I'm running from what I did or my victim deserves better than for me to act like it does. That's great.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Nobody else, my victim, deserves better. Yeah, and you know, it's funny you talk about second chance.
I love your story.

Speaker 1 You're such a good guy, and truly. And I think that

Speaker 1 redemption,

Speaker 1 not enough of premium is put on it in today's culture.

Speaker 1 Certainly,

Speaker 1 we hold people to a crazy standard of

Speaker 1 one strike and you're out now for

Speaker 1 a lot less egregious crimes than armed robbery.

Speaker 1 Somebody might miss. I'm not talking about people who really are saying things to injure people or

Speaker 1 carrying on in a way that's not. But certainly there are people who fuck up.
You're in the public eye.

Speaker 1 There are people who fuck who don't who weren't in the public eye, but it becomes public because they did something at work or whatever. Again, I'm not referring to serious crimes.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about people who made a mistake that are kind of looked at by society as like, you know,

Speaker 1 it just doesn't pass. They don't like it.
They disagree with it. And so they say, this person is out.

Speaker 1 And I think that it's a really dangerous idea because you, somebody like you, you're living proof of what can be done when somebody's given a second chance. It can bring a lot of good to the world.

Speaker 1 Do you agree with that? Oh, dude. One, thank you.
Yeah. I mean, that's what I hope to represent more than anything, right? Is that because I don't think I just stand for like criminal second chances.

Speaker 1 Like I think I became a voice for like all second chances. Like I'm a guy that proves that it's never too late to change.

Speaker 1 Like when I was nominated for the best new artist at the Grammys last year, I was the second oldest artist ever nominated for best new artist in the history of the Grammys. Wow.
Wow.

Speaker 1 So it's not only did I turn my life around, I did it at an age where in our business, in the music business, people would tell tell me I was crazy for starting. Right.
You know what I mean? If I,

Speaker 1 if you ain't caught your teeth, but it's sometimes in the acting world, I've noticed that you have guys who will arc later in their career, you know.

Speaker 1 But, like in the music business, they say that our best work's done between 22 and 27. Right.
Wow, right. I didn't even start getting invited to award shows until I was 37.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 I was 10 years past the music frame. That's amazing.
You know,

Speaker 1 you know, but what, but what was the because when I, when we all first met you at what I'll call the Jelly Roll Howard Stern event, uh,

Speaker 1 when I first met you, and this might sound really corny, but I could, you know, you see light in people.

Speaker 1 You see goodness, you see truth, you see all of those good things that make good people who they are. And the second I met you, you were so kind and outgoing and effusive.
And now

Speaker 1 it's totally genuine. And I felt it.
And first of all, thank you for that. Because being a gay person in the place that we all met, I was like, I turned to Will and Chase.

Speaker 1 I'm like, these are the places that I would get the shit beat out of me, you know, 30 years ago. But, but, so where.
So East Hampton? Yeah. No, that kind of bar.

Speaker 1 No, that kind of bar, you know, like the

Speaker 1 bar. Yeah.
You know, but so I met you. You were so kind and so genuine.
And so what was the thing that was your turning point?

Speaker 1 What was the thing that made you go, you know what, I can't do that stuff anymore. I have to open myself up.
I have to be the warm guy I am. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, all, to testament to what you just said, is that just for the record, we would have kicked somebody's ass for you in there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it would have been a totally different experience 30 years later with us.

Speaker 1 I think the kind of the real, the turning point for me, so to speak, or like what I thought really did it all for me, as cliche as it sounds, was I had my daughter when I was incarcerated. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And I don't know why. I do know why.
I used to say I don't know why, but it's obvious.

Speaker 1 I never, it was the most honest accountability and self-reflection moment of my life. Yeah, that's great.
You know, I had to really sit down and do an assessment of, I was fixing, I just got the news.

Speaker 1 A guard knocks on my door to tell me my daughter was born. He doesn't know her name.
He has no information.

Speaker 1 And I am just sitting there like

Speaker 1 realizing I'm worth like, I know this sounds funny, it's jail terms, but in jail, you get commissary, you know? And I had like maybe 20 Raymond soups, 10 honey buns, a couple of packs of Skittles.

Speaker 1 Like I, this is what I had to my name. Yeah.
I had the one pair of clothes that I was incarcerated in. I had zero money.
In fact, I was in debt. I owed restitution to my victim.
I owed the courts.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, I'm in debt. I'm worth.
And I, what, the biggest thing I'm the most proud of in life is that I run the poker table and have like 30 soups. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, that was my,

Speaker 1 and I was like, as a father, I should be proud of my daughter. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, the thing I'm the most proudful about in my whole life is that I've got myself get to such a low point in life that I'm proud of having Raymond noodle soups in prison. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 I don't know why, Sean, but man, that just covered me, dude. Yeah, I bet.
I get it. I get it.
It's funny. It's funny watching.
Jason, you must have just thinking about the sodium from those soups.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I was like, yeah, it's like a thousand milligrams of sodium.

Speaker 2 Y'all would take a week to burn that off.

Speaker 2 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 2 So she's out there and you're in there and you're thinking, I got to get out of here. And when I do get out of here, I got to stay out of here.
And so that was what started to turn,

Speaker 2 turn off the,

Speaker 2 not the instinct to commit crime, but just like the,

Speaker 2 I'm just going to not have that be a part of what I do anymore.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's like something clicks, right?

Speaker 2 Because I'll bet you you didn't, you didn't learn to be some great, nice, warm, loving human being in jail. You always were that.

Speaker 2 I would assume that the crime pattern was probably just a reflection of kind of who you were hanging out with and that people you knew were doing the same thing and you happened to get caught and down this path you went.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, and a lot of it too was financially driven.
Like where I lived at at the time, the only people that had money did crime. Right.
In my neighborhood, it was a real clear-cut thing.

Speaker 1 You either did drugs or you sold drugs. Yeah.
Right. And even if you sold and did drugs, you were better off than the people that just did drugs.

Speaker 1 You know, like, and I know that sounds weird, but, and I'm not trying to get into like a bunch of childhood stuff here, but my mother struggled with her own things from addictive stuff to mental health stuff.

Speaker 1 My father had alcohol things. Like it was a, I was in a house where it seemed very common.
Like

Speaker 2 you weren't doing something weird.

Speaker 1 Yeah, to me, this was what was happening. Yeah, like this was what was going on.
It wasn't until later in life. And there's a famous quote quote in Alcoholics Anonymous that says,

Speaker 1 change happens when the pain to remain the same is greater than the pain it takes to change. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that, yeah, that's interesting. That's cool, right? And that day in jail, I was like, I don't care how painful this change is.
I'm going to make this change.

Speaker 1 And man, it was when I go back and speak at jails, the first time I went and spoke at a jail again, I'll never forget I was leaving and I heard one guy whisper to another guy, he's like, all we got to do is be rich and famous and all our problems are solved.

Speaker 1 So the next time I went and spoke, I forgot about, I never tell them the most important part of the story was that the moment from coming home to jail and deciding I was going to make the change to seeing the fruits of the change was like a decade-long process.

Speaker 1 Right. You know what I mean? Like I didn't bear fruit from that change for 10 years.
I was eating shit sandwiches. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And just trying to find my way and living in a van and doing $50 shows and just like, I was

Speaker 1 going to sacrifice.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's daily. When did you find singing? Did you start doing some of that in jail or were you doing some of that beforehand?

Speaker 1 I was rapping more in jail. That's how I kind of came up in hip-hop.
It was more of the language of the neighborhood. But I would always sing the chorus.

Speaker 1 So like Friday nights, we'd go down in the jail cell and we'd beat on the walls. And I don't know how loud this would be, but like

Speaker 1 kind of how I'm beating on the table. Right.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 And I would go every Friday and I would tap on that window. And I would tap on it for like two measures before I dropped the first down bass note, you know, the beat.

Speaker 1 And by the time I got through tapping for those two measures, the entire unit, 230 inmates,

Speaker 1 come downstairs. Jelly's gonna rap.
Jelly's finna rap. Wow.
And I would always, yeah, I was crazy, right? And I would sing the chorus. And it was like,

Speaker 1 there would be like, we'd be free. Like, it felt like we were free for the night.
You know what I mean? Like, everybody standing on tables.

Speaker 1 And then I'd, I'd write these like choruses like, I'll be gone for a little while, but I can't wait to see your sexy smile. But I wasn't really singing.
I was just like doing it like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But they would love it. They'd be like, sing the gone card for a little while song.
You know what I'm saying? Because it was like our thing. That's amazing.
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 That was, that's when, and I didn't realize I had a voice. Yeah, it was so cool watching music move them people like that.

Speaker 1 Did you, did you have an opportunity to meet, you know, when you first started going and speaking in jails and reaching out to guys and helping people who you must have identified were going through the same things that you did.

Speaker 1 And I know that that's something that, you know, I can relate to that when you meet meet somebody who's gone through stuff that you went through and you can go, hey, man,

Speaker 1 were you, did you then have an opportunity over the years to have guys come up to you and say, hey, I met you years ago.

Speaker 1 Hey, you changed, like you coming in here and speaking at this jail had an impact on my life and here's how. Have you had those moments? I bet you have.

Speaker 1 I've had quite a few of them already, especially rehabs because we go to, so my, my rule is I'm a man of faith and my rule is real simple.

Speaker 1 My faith, what I believe of my faith would require from me, and the person that I follow is that I go speak at jails, I go feed the homeless, I go hang out with the widows, and I go to the rehabs because that's where I think that, you know, the God I serve would want me to go.

Speaker 1 That's where the representation of him went. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course. So I get it a lot, especially out of the rehabs.

Speaker 1 The jails too. The jails are so different, though, because some of them guys I'm singing in front of won't come home for another 10 or 20 years.
But I will tell you a cool story.

Speaker 1 I went to the Oregon State Penitentiary to do the first, I brought the first music to the yard at the OSP, the original penitentiary in Oregon, the only death row left in Oregon, or was the only death row left.

Speaker 1 And we took the music back to the yard. And there was a guy who'd been in there for 19 years.

Speaker 1 And he tells my manager, man, he's like, man, I'm coming home at the end of this year. I come home the day after Christmas.
I've been gone for 20 years, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 I'm just looking forward to hanging out with my daughter. She's 22.
I've been gone since she was two.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we fly him out and his daughter for my New Year's Eve show. So imagine being incarcerated for 20 years.
You come straight out.

Speaker 1 We put you in a first-class flight with your little girl, who's not a little girl anymore. She's 22.
And they came down and partied with us in Nashville all of New Year's Eve. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 You know, and I just,

Speaker 1 I'm thinking about how over, I'm overwhelmed by this, right? And I've been doing this a few years. I just imagine what this guy is feeling, you know? And great, went straight home and got a job.

Speaker 1 And just the character of a man whose vision and dream in jail was to go have do an activity with his daughter. He's like, man, I've missed 20 years of my little girl's life.

Speaker 1 The first thing I want to do is go home and be a part of her life. That's so amazing.

Speaker 2 How soon after your daughter was born, did you get out?

Speaker 1 I got home when she was almost two. Yeah.
And this story is even probably the coolest part of this whole story, Jay.

Speaker 1 My daughter,

Speaker 1 her mother at the time, because I was rightfully so a fucking criminal, wouldn't let me see her. So I had to go to court.
I had to to get supervised visits through the courtroom.

Speaker 1 Like I had to step that very slow, build a relationship then

Speaker 1 six hours on Friday evening, but she had to be home before 10 p.m.

Speaker 1 And then I, you know, I just had to, I had to keep going to the court every six months and going, look, I'm continuing to prove I'm changing. I'm in college.
Look, I'm doing this.

Speaker 1 I'm like, you know, music, like being famous wasn't even a thought that. I just wanted to be a good dad.
I just came home. Like, I just wanted to focus on just working on those 10 years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was, you know what I'm saying? I was just like building that fast, fast forward. That same little girl that was born when I was incarcerated is fixing to turn 17 years old.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 She's got one of the highest GPAs at her high school. She's a dual enrollment kid and this junior going to college.
Me and my wife have had full custody of her for eight years. This is my best friend.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 Wow, what a great story.

Speaker 2 She's been living with you for the last eight years. Yep.

Speaker 1 No, that's great. It's awesome.
How cool. It's such a great story of how

Speaker 1 anything is possible. It's so great, man.

Speaker 1 Again, that part of your, well, all of your story I find so inspirational. I mentioned it before, too, you know, when you went and testified before Congress

Speaker 1 was about a year ago, wasn't it? It was like January of last year. Exactly.
And

Speaker 1 really advocated for limiting or getting rid of, or what was it, fentanyl and all that stuff. And I remember you were like.

Speaker 1 I used to be part of the problem. I was a drug dealer and now I want to be part of the solution.
Didn't you say something like that? That's exactly what I said, Will. Thank you.

Speaker 2 And were you trying to help them out on what might be some more efficient ways for them to

Speaker 2 exact some change?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. We're working on, there's a, it's a double-sided sword.

Speaker 1 We were working on a bill to stop the flow and the demand. So it's trying to figure out the balance.
But

Speaker 1 I just, it was breaking my heart that the statistic I gave, Jason, was, and I don't know if you know this either, Sean. This will blow y'all's mind if you don't, but

Speaker 1 over 160-something people in America die every single day to fentanyl overdoses. How many? How many? 160.
160 something.

Speaker 1 To give y'all the reference I used at the fentanyl is that is a 737 plane crashing full of human souls every day. Every single day.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Now, if it was a plane that was crashing every single day, I don't predict this happens for four days before every airline in America shut down and there is a national.

Speaker 1 If there was a hundred and something squirrels in Central Park dying a day,

Speaker 1 there would be pickets out there of save the squirrels. Rightfully so.
I'd be one of the picketers. You know what I mean? Like literally.

Speaker 1 So to me, it's just, we can't minimize human life because they're struggling with an addiction. Addictions aren't a personal problem.

Speaker 1 That's how we've looked at them in society. We've dismissed addiction as, well, they're getting what they deserve.
They chose to do those drugs. And it's like, if you don't really.

Speaker 1 understand addiction and you that I could see where you would say that but now we're in a place where everybody knows an addict everybody has a friend or a family member who's like no that dude was a great guy or a great woman, and then she got on drugs and I didn't recognize her, couldn't talk to her.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my brother died, my brother was an alcoholic, and he died from it. Yeah,

Speaker 1 and so you know, it's totally different.

Speaker 2 Can you die from chin chin? Because Sean's Sean's white knuckling right now, 167 days in a row.

Speaker 1 I thought that was the number that Sean had the chicken cow.

Speaker 1 Kong pow, kung pao chicken, kung pao chicken.

Speaker 2 It's just gonna take you down, Sean.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, look at I can't

Speaker 1 wander.

Speaker 1 So, Jelly, talk a little bit about, man.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you get out

Speaker 1 and you decide to make a change because you're a daughter, and you've been making music, as you alluded to, while you were there.

Speaker 1 And now you're out and you're going to school and you're working on reestablishing your relationship with your kids and all that stuff. What's the moment? What's the first musical breakthrough moment?

Speaker 1 What's the moment where you go, oh, wait a second? We might have something. What's the first song mixtape? What is it?

Speaker 1 Walk us through that a little bit. Thank you.
This is a question I never get asked because this is like a throw throwback.

Speaker 1 Because I know the tipping point moment, like what Malcolm Gladwell would say was my moment was a song called Save Me. Oh, yeah.
But what I know was my moment.

Speaker 1 Because we know our moment before everybody else does, right?

Speaker 1 Like as an artist, like we know a moment that's like, y'all might not have seen it then, but something in me triggered like, I got something to hear. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I came home and my buddy bought a flip cam from Best Buy. His name's Chad Arms.
And he was like, hey, man, they got this new thing called YouTube that came out since you've been incarcerated.

Speaker 1 It was like, it's kind of like Facebook, but only for videos. I was like, fire.
He was like, yeah,

Speaker 1 you got to go to a laptop, right?

Speaker 1 So he turns on a beat and I just got out of jail. He's like, yo, just start rapping or something.
I'll cut it up later. And I put out this thing called a 10 minute freestyle.

Speaker 1 It got taken down later because I said something about my parole officer and got in trouble.

Speaker 1 But I'm just like, you know, I'm a young kid out of jail.

Speaker 1 jail so i'm just talking rapping and uh he put it on youtube and at the time it was called the 10 minute freestyle and i won't make y'all do the quiz i normally go pop quiz why was it called the 10 minute freestyle and it's because at the time youtube wouldn't let you upload a video longer than 10 minutes that was youtube band which was 10 minute 21 second videos and at the time they called it viral because it got like 40 000 views this is baby youtube infancy so i was like this is it we're gonna be this is gonna work people care you know this is like it was different because when you're passing mixtapes out in the neighborhood you see the neighborhood caring, right?

Speaker 1 But it's like, is somebody outside the neighborhood ever going to care? So I'm like, there's not 40,000 people in my neighborhood. We're hot.
This is real. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 You can build an audience and they like what you're doing. People that don't even know you like what you're doing.
That's it.

Speaker 1 That's powerful. It was easier when people knew you.
Like school in y'all's world, maybe like school theater.

Speaker 1 It's like, yeah, of course, you know, but like when you had to go do it at another high school, it's like, whoa, I might be on to something. I'm not a big hit here.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, right. So, so you make this, so you make this YouTube video and you get you get some, a little bit of traction, early days of YouTube, and then

Speaker 1 presumably you make some more and you start doing that kind of more.

Speaker 1 When do you first start getting the sniffing around from the corporate entities that like to control these kinds of things and make and see they see dollar signs for themselves from you?

Speaker 1 Man, I tell you how lucky I got, and I think y'all got lucky like this too, is that nobody seen what was happening until it kind of happened.

Speaker 1 So like by the the time the labels were calling, I was making seven figures a year off my YouTube. Right.
Oh, wow. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So, by the time they call, it's just like, then they call, like, hey, we'll give you a million dollars. I was like, I made that.
What are you talking about? Yeah. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So, the first call to answer your question directly came in like 2018. We didn't negotiate a deal until 2021.
Wow. Because they kept coming.

Speaker 1 Like, I was like, I don't think y'all see the metrics, but y'all aren't. When I finally signed my record deal,

Speaker 1 I love talking about inside baseball, how the sausage makes my favorite. I know it's so.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 1 When I finally signed my record deal, I had already had, you know, 3 million or 2.5 million YouTube subscribers, a billion

Speaker 1 views on my YouTube channel. Amazing.

Speaker 1 I'd already had a couple of gold records independently. I was selling 2,000 to 4,000 tickets everywhere in the Midwest and Southeast, everywhere in the Bible Belt or the Rust Belt.

Speaker 1 If it ended with belt, we were killing there. You know what I mean? So it's like,

Speaker 1 you know, we got, once we got left of Colorado, we, you know what I'm saying? But we knew we were way out here eventually.

Speaker 1 Left

Speaker 1 Colorado.

Speaker 1 So by the time they started sniffing around, I was like, look, here's kind of where we are. And I got the deal I dreamed of.
Right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Because they had to do something better than what you're doing.

Speaker 1 How about this? Y'all know, y'all will get this. I own 100% of my master recordings.
I own

Speaker 1 100% of my publishing. I own my IP completely.
I own everything

Speaker 1 with who I own as me. And now you have a whole library that is, you can hold on to for the rest of your pass it on to your daughter or whatever you want to do.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Just, you know what I did with it, pay the taxes on it early and put it in the trust and let it grow.

Speaker 1 Put the catalog there for the family. Let them, I broke generational curses, baby.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How did you, and then so, so you jumped into that

Speaker 2 community of,

Speaker 2 you know, I'll say in quotes, legitimacy, right? Where you, you're, now you're, you're at these shows with, uh, with all of these sort of

Speaker 2 established acts and these record labels and all of the sort of the infrastructure. Um,

Speaker 2 how have you found that community, you know, because you came from such a

Speaker 2 yeah. And it's, uh, you're, you're, you're, you're the, you're the real deal.
And, um, how has that merged? um with you and how have you merged with them?

Speaker 1 It's been great. It's been really cool.
They, um,

Speaker 1 my deal from the beginning was look man i'll trust y'all if y'all trust me

Speaker 1 so you know let's just not question each other at all so when y'all ask for something i'm not going to question y'all y'all know what y'all are doing but equally if i tell you i want to put out an album a year or 30 songs on an album or i start making some of these what might seem like crazy artistic choices I was like, you just got to let me ride my wave.

Speaker 1 This is, this is what I've been doing. This is just the way I operate.

Speaker 1 You know, I came into a label that was used to doing at the time, two-year, three-year album cycles, and I put out an album a year for the first three years on my deal wow you know i just came in at a totally different pace well they're smart to listen to you because more more people in those positions should listen to the artist i mean they're you're you're you because you're of who you are like you'll make them the money they they're looking for if you just leave you alone and it's borne fruit you've had these number one singles you've had uh i mean your single i am not okay

Speaker 1 i mean which is a great song it's such a great song and as i alluded to in the intro it deals with you know ideas of mental health and really talking about it openly.

Speaker 1 I love that song, dude. I think that's really powerful and inspirational.

Speaker 1 But that thing, that was a massive hit. And that came,

Speaker 1 that's... the record label, Trusting You, and you going, I know what I'm doing.
And then you put a song like that out that just explodes. For sure.
That must have felt vindicating. It felt

Speaker 1 especially with the label because I'm like, I just came off the song, Save Me with Laney, which was a huge hit for me, but it was a big ballot. So here I am going back to the label.

Speaker 1 I'm like, hey, look, I don't want to turn it. I know y'all are going to think I'm the male Adele here, but it's like, I've got another big ballad that I love.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 I was like, I think it's going to touch people.

Speaker 2 Maddell is a good song.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Madell. I'll take that one, Sean.
I'll steal it.

Speaker 1 I'll name my album there.

Speaker 2 Forgive my

Speaker 2 naivete, but

Speaker 2 if I'm a label and I no longer have to print albums and cassettes and DVD or CDs or whatever the hell it is.

Speaker 2 What would be the burden that I would have to bear if my artist wants to put out an album a year? Like, in other words, what cost, how much do I have to spend as a label?

Speaker 2 Because you're making the music and then you just put it out digitally.

Speaker 2 What would give them pause to have that kind of frequency?

Speaker 1 Spot on.

Speaker 1 What would be the biggest pause for most artists, not me, is that they need their money.

Speaker 1 So every time they're going to record a new album, they got to tap in and go, hey, I need a million dollars. Oh, I see.

Speaker 2 They just got to pay you your fee.

Speaker 2 But are they fronting you that fee that they then can claw back with the sales?

Speaker 1 Gotcha. And at the rate of the deal, it's the worst thing in the music business.
I've been preaching against this for so long. I refuse to do it.
That's why I don't take their money at all. Right.

Speaker 1 Is that because in any other business, what the record businesses do to artists would be illegal, right? Like if a bank did it or a car lot did it, they'd shut them down. Okay.

Speaker 1 Because because you're not allowed to put an interest rate on that kind of money right but if you don't call it a loan you call it an advance

Speaker 1 right so when i take the word loan out of it i call it an advance and then we recoup it at the rate of the deal so let's say jason excuse me do you need to blow your nose sean can you run over there real quick

Speaker 1 thank you sean let's say y'all three do a smartless album right sure

Speaker 2 what instrument would each of us play go ahead and assign us each an instrument okay everybody gets an instrument i think we should be able to do it.

Speaker 1 What do we strike you as?

Speaker 1 You look like you could rock a saxophone. That's right.
It could be a really cool curveball to see you in a saxophone.

Speaker 1 I would love to see, just because I think this would be so out of pocket for the crew, is if Sean was like the electric guitar player and he carried like a big, just gaudy Gretsch, just one of the

Speaker 1 most oversized guitars.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and then Will's on the keytar.

Speaker 1 No, you got to have a drummer. Yeah.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 He's not a drummer.

Speaker 1 He fancies himself a drummer the most athletic of us yeah the youngest queuing most athletic and i'm just blowing things yeah but let's say

Speaker 1 just stick with what you're good at dude

Speaker 1 blowing air

Speaker 1 wet my reed all right so pretend y'all get the deal pretend y'all get the deal right and i say it's a 70 30 deal 70 in the favor of the label 30 for y'all and i'll give you a million dollars to record the first smartless album right

Speaker 1 like okay we get 10 apiece. You know, they're putting up all the money.

Speaker 1 You sign the deal. But the problem is I recoup at the rate of the deal, which means every time Smartless makes a dollar, I take 70 cents of that dollar and I go, this is mine.
That was our deal.

Speaker 1 You're like, yep. And then I go, now this would be your 30 cents, but I'm going to put this 30 cents towards the million dollars you owe me.
Right. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a that's a 70% interest rate, gentlemen. I don't care how you slice or butter that bread.

Speaker 1 Now, you could, you've found legal loopholes to make it not that but ultimately that's absurd you know what i mean yeah

Speaker 1 we'll be right back

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Speaker 2 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 1 Now, let me ask you something. How did you become so savvy?

Speaker 1 Did you have your pitfalls along the way and you learn? And

Speaker 1 this is the result of that? Is now you're like, I know how to do deals now, because you must have made some bad ones in order to know what good ones are. Yeah, well, that's what happened.

Speaker 1 And the cool thing was nobody wanted to sign me. So like when nobody wants to work with you, but you're like, I had to figure it out myself.

Speaker 1 Right. So you had, so you had to make it yourself.
And by the time they came to you and they're like, hey, here's how the deals are, you're like, hang on a second. The math doesn't add up.

Speaker 1 I don't need your fucking money under your under your assistant.

Speaker 2 I'm making plenty on my own.

Speaker 1 Right. When you, yeah.
When you kind of see that, when you see that math up front, you go like, uh-uh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, as soon as you see it, and then you're aware, because I've done enough distribution deals. And early in my career, I had to take a little money.

Speaker 1 So you'd go get a hundred grand and then you'd see it took you six months to pay the hundred grand back. And you're like, by the time I paid the hundred grand back, they made a half a million dollars.

Speaker 1 Right, right. I was like, I'm tripping.
This is credit. You know, it wasn't even,

Speaker 1 you go through that enough times that when it finally happens, the label calls, like, hey, we'll give you. And that's where labels kept messing up.

Speaker 1 The first three or four labels, oh, I love talking about this. The first three or four labels that would call me would just offer me money.

Speaker 1 They thought I was just some dumb redneck, which they were right, but they thought I was a dumber redneck than they thought I was.

Speaker 1 And they would come and they'd be like, hey, you know, listen, I'll never forget one label said, it's a blank check.

Speaker 1 Like, whatever you want it to be within reason, you put the amount of money you want us to give you, and then we'll put a number of albums with it. Right.
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 You know, and I had a guy at the time who was ill-advising me. He was like, Let's just ask for like 10 or 20 million bucks, dude.
This will change both of our lives forever.

Speaker 1 He was like kind of managing me a little bit. I was like, right then, I was like, I think I need to find another manager.
You know what I'm saying? I was like, I don't think this is right.

Speaker 1 I was like, because I'm also in a space where, you know,

Speaker 1 mama didn't raise no fool. You know what I mean? It's like, I was smart enough to go, I don't, if they think I can make 20 million dollars,

Speaker 1 and that's what these people do is they count beans and determine if people can make 20 million dollars. I think I can make 20 million dollars, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 I was like, Maybe I'm crazy to think that, but you know what I mean? I was like, No, they showed their cards, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Anytime somebody comes at you with a number and says, Hey, this is out of the blue and says, This is what we want to give you, you're like, All right, this is a great starting point.

Speaker 1 We're obviously worth way more than they're building, they're building in a pad that's favorable.

Speaker 1 We've had our own experience with that ourselves

Speaker 2 but now so but industry standard on the deal structure for for live performance so so touring and stuff like that is much more in the favor of the artist is that correct yeah well

Speaker 1 yeah always ancillary participation is what they call it to try to get us away from the 360 deal which is what it is still they just gave it a cooler name

Speaker 1 but it's always in favor of the artist depending on what your deal was and how much money you took i know some artists in town that did bad ancillary deals too though that did like 50 50 or 70 30 ancillary so they're in this 80 20 record deal where they're only getting 20 of their streaming royalties don't own any of the masters 100 of the masters will own up owned by the label for the rest of the year right right that's crazy and then they go out and they'll do a 60 40 ancillary participation and the problem with that meaning the concerts yeah yeah but the problem with that is is that if i give the label even 80 let's say i mean 20 let's say i said you know what we've done great y'all built my profile i'll give you 20

Speaker 1 booking agent wants wants 10%.

Speaker 1 Management's still coming in at 15. Business manager is still at 5%, which I've negotiated all those fees back over the years.
But I mean, you know how this works.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you just, next thing you know, there's a, what I try to advise artists is this, you're going to end up in a situation where you're going to make what your manager is making if you're not careful.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? You know,

Speaker 1 the difference is they've got to be able to do that. When you and your manager move in the same neighborhood together, you're in trouble.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 Do you get, you get to keep all the merchandise money? How does that work?

Speaker 1 It's normally in the

Speaker 1 S.

Speaker 2 Same ratio.

Speaker 1 But yeah, just whatever that is. Ticket sales? It's out of mind completely.
Do you feel like you have to tour, whether that's emotionally, financially, spiritually, or do you want to tour?

Speaker 1 Because I ask people this often who come on the show who are musicians or in bands, because I'm such a homebody. Like whenever I have to go anywhere and pack and then...

Speaker 1 you know, shack up at a hotel and like, you know, pack is awesome.

Speaker 1 Fucking

Speaker 1 pack a suitcase. The idea of going out and learning in the world is really, what really holds me back is the idea that I have to fucking pack.
Hire somebody to fucking pack for me.

Speaker 1 I hate packing. You're not learning anything at your fucking house.
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Maybe I am. Both you guys.
I'm learning a lot today from

Speaker 1 Mr. Roll.

Speaker 2 Washing in a strange room.

Speaker 1 Jeez.

Speaker 1 No, well, the whole point of all of that was I'm such a homebody. I can't imagine going on tour all the time.

Speaker 1 Different ways of saying he's lazy, by the way.

Speaker 1 Exactly. What's that like for you? Well, I think it's a need and a want.

Speaker 1 I need to write music.

Speaker 1 That's something I know. For like my spirit and my therapy, like I have to write songs.
Like I have, there's something in me. I'm very

Speaker 1 empathic. I meet people every day.
I hear these stories about how my music has helped people through dark moments. And that stuff sits with me.
I don't find a way to exercise that.

Speaker 1 Touring for me is just the old school. Like, I'm an old school rock and roll dude, man.
Like, I still smoke pot and play the guitar a couple hours every day just for fun if I can.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, it's still like, just get lost in jamming and learning other people's songs. Like, I

Speaker 1 love this life. I love the pace.
I love the bus. I love the smell of diesel fuel.
I love pilot truck stops at 6 a.m., Sean. I mean, I love all that stuff.
You know what I mean? That stuff is.

Speaker 1 Sean does too. Different reason.

Speaker 1 In my 20s, different reason for truck stops Those change.

Speaker 1 What was it like? What was the moment

Speaker 1 when you got that first Grammy nomination? What was.

Speaker 1 Oh, I cried, baby. Yeah, I'm snot rocking.
Did you? Did you? Oh, nasty, couldn't quit crying. Then I called my mama to tell her, and I videoed myself calling her.

Speaker 1 And my mama's a little older, you know. So I'm like, mama, I just got, I'm snot rocketing.
So she can't hear me. I'm just blowing snot bubbles.
And she goes, you said something about some money?

Speaker 1 I said, no, mama. I said the Grammys.
She said, look, you said you're Granny. Granny.
I said, no, mama. I said, I just got nominated for a Grammy.
And she's so funny. She goes, well, that's good.

Speaker 1 And then two seconds later, she goes, hey, I seen a picture of you and Tanya Tucker together. How cool is she? I'm still crying.
And my mama's asking about Tanya Tucker, the country singer.

Speaker 1 She had seen a picture of us together on the internet. She's like, what's up with Tanya Tucker, though?

Speaker 1 But it was cool, man. It was.

Speaker 1 In our business, it don't get no bigger, man. Right.
The easiest way to describe it is I've been blessed to win a CMA. I've been blessed to win an ACM.
I've been blessed to win.

Speaker 1 You swept the CMAs, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, you clicked it. I've had some big moments.
And being nominated for a Grammy, just the nomination trumps all those. Sure.

Speaker 1 Before I got nominated for a Grammy, I was introduced as the new, the CMA, ACM award-winning multi-platinum recording artist. Right.
I am now introduced real easy. Grammy nominated.
Recording artist.

Speaker 1 Jelly Girl. Just being nominated.
Got rid of every award I'd ever won even being in my title. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's how cool it is.

Speaker 2 So, who would you be most excited to meet at a big event, like, say, like the Grammys or something like that?

Speaker 1 Ooh, that's a good one because at the last Grammys, I got to meet Taylor. Taylor Swift came and talked to him, and I felt like the bell of the ball dog.
And I tell you, I felt like king shit.

Speaker 1 I felt the same way I felt when Howard Stern hugged me.

Speaker 1 Right? When Howard hugged me, I was like,

Speaker 1 dude, this dude likes me for real.

Speaker 1 I'm looking, and Taylor's walking across the room. And it's like, this is Taylor Swift.
So you're just watching people park like the Red Sea. They're just like.

Speaker 1 And as she's walking, and my wife grabs me, she goes, I think Taylor's walking over here. I was like, no, no.
And I'm looking at her and she's looking at me.

Speaker 1 And I was like, no, I think she's walking over to Boy Wonder because Boy Wonder was sitting, Boy Genius was sitting in front of me.

Speaker 1 And I think she's walking over to Boy Genius. And she did.
She walked right up to me and gave me a hug. It was super cool.
I was like, oh, this is funny. She's amazing.

Speaker 1 And then I was so nervous, I fumbled. I forgot.
I was going to tell her this great emotional story about how I pushed my daughter on the swing set at at a park she'd built in her old hometown. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I just could not remember. I was like, the park, my daughter, I was like, just so bad.
You'll get that chance again, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 You got to meet Jay-Z there, too. It was really cool.
Stevie Wonder. I mean, it was like, it was definitely...
Ed Sharon came and talked to me. I mean, it was really cool.

Speaker 2 All good people, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is all. That is so cool.

Speaker 1 You know, it's funny. I was thinking about your song,

Speaker 1 well, I'm Not Okay, but Save Me and all your songs and what is Son of a Sinner. And

Speaker 1 I got to hang out with a country

Speaker 1 singer-songwriter a few months ago. We were out late night and

Speaker 1 he was playing all his songs, but acoustically. There were a bunch of us in this room.

Speaker 1 And I was like, and when I was listening to him play these songs acoustically and singing with the power and the emotion, I was like, I was like, these are. These are the poets of our time.

Speaker 1 Country music has become the, they speak about the heart of what's going on and and when you listen to the lyrics and you listen to the passion especially in an acoustic setting I found it in when it was like really stripped down it blew my mind man.

Speaker 1 I was so moved by this it was probably a guy you know Thomas Rhett it was of course yeah so I was with my buddy yeah I was with Thomas and he was he was playing and he was playing some of his songs and he was playing some of lots of other people's songs as well Man, it was and it's true.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know how much you guys, Sean and JB, have listened to

Speaker 1 a lot of the country that's coming out now and the stuff that it's unbelievable, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all good. It's all good stuff.
Well, you got to think, all the poets

Speaker 1 have always ended up in Nashville.

Speaker 1 Bob Dylan went out of his way to come down here and write and do Nashville Skyline.

Speaker 1 One of the only places James Taylor frequented besides his island of his own where he rode at up on the northeast was he'd come to Nashville every now and then.

Speaker 1 It's always been, it's always kind of leaned that way.

Speaker 1 And I think that we're having the biggest moment we've ever had with it.

Speaker 1 But what you got to experience is what I tell people that makes country music more special than every genre is that it's all about the song with us.

Speaker 1 Like it's all about the hits with the other genres, like not in a bad way, but like, you know, it's

Speaker 1 a lot of production. It's a very produced thing.
But like in our business is if I take all that shit out and I just grab my guitar right now.

Speaker 1 Or if I grab this piano right now and I break this song down to just me and you acoustic, it really makes the song stand out.

Speaker 2 Right. And what you're you're talking about.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's it's incredible. I, I, I was so moved in a way that it was really unexpected, man.
No, dude, it's especially when you get to do it like that.

Speaker 1 Like when we're all the best is when you get three or four or five of us in a room together and we're playing past the guitar. Oh,

Speaker 1 that's cool. It's awesome when we're like, yo, what did you write? He's like, yo, I wrote this last week.
And then Thomas Ritch singing a song that might not ever come out that he just wrote.

Speaker 1 And then I'm singing a song I might not ever put out that I just wrote because it's like anything else. I just wrote it.
So I think think it's the best song I ever wrote.

Speaker 1 I got to listen to it for two months for him. Like, that song's not that good.

Speaker 1 Listen, I'm not trying to create my own private concert for me, but what I would like to do, my dream would be to come to like Nashville and hang out with you and Tommy. What a great guy.

Speaker 1 You guys would love him too, right? He's such a great guy, right, Jelly. And he's the best.

Speaker 1 What a talent.

Speaker 1 Talent and great husband, great father. I mean, just

Speaker 1 great. All around.

Speaker 1 But to come in and hang out,

Speaker 1 that would be like a dream. That would be a total dream to be a a fly on the wall with a bunch of you guys.
It would be unbelievable.

Speaker 1 I mean, come anytime.

Speaker 1 The cool thing about it is we do it. Wow.
I think it's what made, it's similar to what y'all do. It's what made Smartless the biggest podcast on the earth.

Speaker 1 We immediately heard three friends who are at the top of their class, but are buddies at core just hanging out and being fucking buddies.

Speaker 1 Like, that's us. Like, when we're all sitting around together, passing a guitar, like, we're not a bunch of country music superstars.

Speaker 1 We're a bunch of dumbass songwriters trying to show that we can still write dumbass songs. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you're right. Two buddies and Jason, and we, you know, we do the show.

Speaker 1 We got him, everybody. We got him.

Speaker 1 How about this?

Speaker 2 This is probably as stupid as all the other questions I ever asked, but

Speaker 2 what about, I would imagine that your

Speaker 2 life before things got better

Speaker 2 was a richer pot from from you to pull from to write songs versus now?

Speaker 2 The question is, are you as inspired with stuff to write about now that things

Speaker 2 have the edges a little bit more rounded in your life?

Speaker 2 You know, deservedly so.

Speaker 2 Or is it, or are you still finding stuff that really grabs your heartstrings

Speaker 2 now?

Speaker 1 I pull from a little less personal pain, but I've gotten a thousand more more muses. Okay,

Speaker 1 it kind of balanced itself out. I get, I, um,

Speaker 1 I get, I'm not making this number up, I'm sure y'all do too, but I get thousands of messages across every platform a day, and 70% of them are like real,

Speaker 1 hey man, your song helped me out of a hole. I got sober to your music.
Uh, I dealt with the death of my father with cancer to this song, like this song, like we played this at my mother's funeral.

Speaker 1 We played this at my cousin who had a fentanyl overdose's funeral. So like it goes back to me being very empathic.
Yeah, yeah. I feel this.

Speaker 1 Like I'm the kind of guy that's like, if you start crying, I will cry. We will cry together.
I have a nobody cries alone policy. You know what I'm saying? It's just automatically.
I love it.

Speaker 1 So it's like, I hear these stories. You know, I hear these stories every day.

Speaker 1 So not, I'm not, I had a, man, this is, I've never said it this way, but there was a moment I thought I was special because of where I was from and what I've been through.

Speaker 1 Like I thought like, oh, this, the world's clicking for me because all this shit I went through is like, makes me special.

Speaker 1 And then I realized what makes me special is that we've all been through some sort of shit. Yeah.
And that I am a representation of that.

Speaker 1 And once I realized that I wasn't telling my unique specialty story, I was telling the story of millions of American who have felt the same kind of pain and don't take this, Sean, to speak on it, but

Speaker 1 I speak for Sean's brother. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I am an active voice for Sean's brother right now.

Speaker 1 Whether Sean knew that before this call or not, is that most of my life mission is getting people to understand that alcoholics and addicts are good people. They're not bad people.

Speaker 1 They're just in the middle of a bad situation. That's exactly what I'm saying.
And it's one of the core tenets of

Speaker 1 recovery is that idea is that you're exactly right. You're not unique.
It's that people can identify.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And it's through that identification, you know, that it creates community.
And community is the opposite of addiction when you can create that, you know,

Speaker 1 administrative. That's it.

Speaker 1 it's so powerful opportunity of addiction is connection baby you're speaking to me will let's go with it

Speaker 1 yeah it's so it's so true it's so true and then when you do that when you go through that and you and everything that you've been through and everything you just said uh mr roll

Speaker 1 uh is the um

Speaker 1 is is is that is that you are now like i said at the beginning of this interviews

Speaker 1 You are now a light and you speak so eloquently about everything you've been through and the kind of enlightenment that you've gone through.

Speaker 1 And it's such a, like people are now drawn to you for those reasons. And people seek out your advice, your guidance.

Speaker 1 It's really fascinating.

Speaker 2 They're uplifted through that connection.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
The message is different when it, a message always hits different when it comes from one of its own. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, that's why I go back to jails and that's why I go to rehabs because I remember none of our own ever came back and talked to us.

Speaker 1 So no matter how well-intentioned other people were, it just didn't hit. You know what I mean? Because it wasn't coming from a place that we could like.

Speaker 1 And it lights you up as much as music lights you up. The messaging.
Yeah. Yeah, baby.
Yes, baby. It's my real purpose, man, is to serve.

Speaker 1 Giving it away is the best feeling of all, right? I mean, that's where the power comes from. That's the hack that people don't.
You need a blessing, be a blessing, baby. Yeah,

Speaker 1 well, it's like, you know,

Speaker 1 if you're feeling unloved, it's because you're not being loving. That's been my experience.
And if I push love out on people, I get that back back on me

Speaker 1 tenfold. Basically,

Speaker 1 yeah, that's what I was trying to say.

Speaker 1 It's 100% true.

Speaker 1 And this is a hack that

Speaker 1 I'm a little reluctant to share, but this is totally true. That I find if I'm feeling low or if I'm feeling like unconnected or I'm feeling lonely or whatever,

Speaker 1 I reach out to somebody else and ask them how they're doing. It's the most unbelievable.

Speaker 2 I'm going to send you my number in the chat.

Speaker 1 Just at the bottom of the screen. We know how you're doing.
You're at home in your thing.

Speaker 1 And Sean, I know you're at home having no experience.

Speaker 1 It's a sad Hollywood story. They can't even do a real life Hollywood story because there's not enough info.
There's not enough life. They can't fill an hour because it's too boring.

Speaker 1 It's got famous and rich and sat in his house. Who's going to watch that? A webisode.
We could do a webisode.

Speaker 1 We might be able to do a webisode. We'll go back.
Jason. We'll look at for dumb-dumb.
Look at Scotty got me this pencil holder. It's a little typewriter.
There we go.

Speaker 1 I'm excited about that. That took up a week.
That was a week.

Speaker 1 That was a week of shit just to get that.

Speaker 1 Jelly Roll, man, honestly, having you here has been so amazing. This is awesome.
Yeah, you're just such an inspiration. And thank goodness that you are who you are, man.

Speaker 1 You've touched a lot of people. You certainly touched me.

Speaker 1 And I know you've helped a lot of people. So thank you for your kindness and your voice and everything and your music and your artistry, all of it, dude.
Will, thanks for inviting me on.

Speaker 1 Jason, thanks for mistaking me for Kenny Chesney, who's a foot shorter and 300 pounds lighter.

Speaker 1 Sean, I love you to absolute death, man. I love all of y'all.

Speaker 1 I can't thank y'all enough for what y'all are doing for the world, man. How happy y'all are making people, how much joy you're bringing to people's car around every day.

Speaker 1 Man, I just hope y'all know that this was, I'm sure y'all did it just to find, you know,

Speaker 1 just to connect with each other and it just kind of spread. But, man, that's

Speaker 1 you are helping so many people, man. You are a direct servant, man.
You don't even, I'm sure you know it. I'm not, I'm acting like y'all don't know, but you're a servant, people, man.

Speaker 1 I hope you're not. You're not wasting an hour or two of your life every day just shooting the shit with your friends, man.
You're helping a lot. My therapist listens to y'all.

Speaker 1 He's never been excited about me doing anything, but this was like a really big deal. This and Jay Shetty for him were like, whoa, I can't believe.

Speaker 2 I'm sure you're as thankful as we are that people are actually listening to what it is we want to say, right?

Speaker 2 It's a real joy. It's a blessing.

Speaker 1 Y'all leave with love, baby. Y'all leave with love.

Speaker 1 And if you're ever in LA, please, let's have a meal or something. I would love to see you.
Please. We'll do it.
Yeah. We'll link for sure.

Speaker 1 I'll reach out. I'd love to see y'all again sometime, man.
I'd love to have you. Yeah.
Thank you. The great Jellyroll.
Thank you, brother.

Speaker 2 Thanks for being with us. Thanks, boys.

Speaker 2 What a nice man. That's a

Speaker 2 nice way to start the day.

Speaker 1 I didn't get a chance to talk to him at the, at our event.

Speaker 1 I mean, just said hello.

Speaker 2 Me neither, but I was struck, as you were,

Speaker 2 just how infectious his light, his energy was, his warmth when he, uh, when he, when he shook our hands, it was, yeah, it was, uh, it was kind of like he's the kind of guy you want to hang out with, you want in your life.

Speaker 1 It'll make your life better.

Speaker 1 Those kinds of people make your life better.

Speaker 1 He makes, he, he's, there's a guy, again, like he's just when he's turned his life around and he's spent, he's dedicated his life to making other people's lives better, which is awesome yeah i love it you know that option is available to you will yeah i listen i'm gonna start today i'm trying i mean i'm not the one again i can't you guys have nothing to talk what do you talk about on a talk show it just occurred to me there's nothing

Speaker 1 i come up with bits yeah you know i come up with bits you know funny stories come up with

Speaker 2 i tell garbage about how i don't like to walk around hotel rooms with my bare feet and crap like that i just make it up

Speaker 1 oh my God. But we know them all.
How many run out of it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I need, I do need some new stories.

Speaker 1 I know, Will, you're always like, you got to go see the world so you have something to talk about. It's true.
Just not even just on talk, just in general. Read books, meet people.
People do.

Speaker 1 Get off my fucking back.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to get off your fucking back. I was put on this planet to be on your back, egging you on to, I want you to be a better.
I love Sean Hayes, and I want the best for him. Okay.
Very nice.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but why don't you just turn on CNN International and you could be a little bit more like a house.

Speaker 1 No, you're not because you're at home or watch a movie with whatever landmark you want to see. To the world, you know, it is.

Speaker 2 But it's just, what about my sheets and my pillow? And

Speaker 1 yeah, or Sean, you should get to what you're looking at on your screen. Go ahead.
What do you

Speaker 1 think?

Speaker 1 I'm looking. I keep

Speaker 1 trying to think of, well,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 if you could travel a lot back and forth to Los Angeles and New York, if you had to

Speaker 1 use that one so many times.

Speaker 1 What about this? But I don't want to travel anywhere because I'd miss you guys. Because if I leave somewhere, I'd have to wave good

Speaker 1 bye. I feel like we've done that too.
That's right.

Speaker 2 We've never come up with anything where buy is in the middle of a word.

Speaker 1 Okay, win by a nose, saw them go by, two by two, selling by his. Hey, listen, listen, listen.

Speaker 1 How's that? Listen,

Speaker 1 the good news is you can go anywhere in the world, right? And you can do stuff.

Speaker 1 And if something happens back home, if somebody gets hurt, somebody gets killed, and the cops interview you, if you're out of town, you've got a great

Speaker 1 day.

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