From the middle ages up to the modern era, society has leaned on its traveling troubadours for truthful commentary on the times. These folks trek from one town to the next, relaying the news, putting pain into words, and healing with a little humor.
Jesse Welles unassumingly upholds and continues this tradition. Fearless, he reports from the frontlines of a divided country on the brink, addressing inequalities and injustices, cutting through all bullshit and driving directly to the source of the matter. His songs leave the same mark in front of a sold-out club as they do under the unbiased eye of a smartphone camera as he strums his guitar alone in the wilderness of Arkansas.
Following tens of millions of streams and a groundswell of acclaim from Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and more, the singer, songwriter, and guitar player cuts deep on his 2025 full-length album “Middle”
“Breathe to write, write to breathe,” he says. “Humans are meant to create, so I’m gonna create music and keep releasing it constantly.”
Jesse calls Ozark, AR home. You might’ve caught a glimpse of Ozark on the HBO documentary Meth Storm or in Paris Hilton’s reality television show Simple Life, but neither do it justice. With a population of 3,590, it’s a place where most families reside down dirt roads. The town consists of a turkey plant, an engine plant, a gas station or two and a handful of restaurants.
Growing up, his father worked as a mechanic, and his mom a school teacher. Early on, his grandpa copied The Beatles’ White Album and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for Jesse. Those cassettes would become the soundtrack to endless hours of bike rides and treks through the woods, long bus rides to and from school, and walks to the library. At 12-years-old, he finally scrounged up enough to dough for a “$56 first act guitar from Walmart.” It became like another limb to the boy. Bringing the guitar everywhere, he played along to the radio, studied “what the grownups did” during impromptu jam sessions at parties, and gleaned nuggets of wisdom from local old-timers. He fed his obsession by checking CDs out of the public library and ripping them to the family computer, embracing classics from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie. He experienced another revelation “as soon as YouTube made its way to Arkansas.”
“Once somebody showed me Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, I was fucked,” he laughs. “We had waited like 10 years for our library to get the internet. Then, the old Pentecostal women who worked there wouldn’t let me plug in my headphones!”
Not one to take such news lightly, he actually wrote a letter to the Franklin County Seat and received permission to return to the library (with headphones in tow). Throughout high school, he balanced school band, playing football,and maintaining his GPA with jobs as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, a DJ at the local country radio station KDYN Real Country, and chain-sawing trees at a local nature reserve. Simultaneously, he wrote, recorded, and performed original music, selling CDs at school. Upon graduating, he transferred from University of Arkansas to John Brown University where he picked up a degree in Music Theory. He further cut his teeth as the frontman for rock band Dead Indian, while also moonlighting as a standup comedian with “some rough characters.”
Relocating to Nashville, he launched his eponymous band Welles, releasing music and touring incessantly. He logged 280 shows in a year, canvassing North America and Europe alongside the likes of Royal Blood, Highly Suspect, Greta Van Fleet, and Dead Sara. Dropped from his old label (mid-Pandemic), he quit a job at a vegan meat manufacturer and returned to Arkansas. He consciously put music on the backburner. Reading voraciously, he devoured books by everyone from Cormac McCarthy to Mary Oliver. He funneled his excess energy into running, completing and pacing half-marathons and marathons.
In February 2024, life changed again when dad suffered a heart attack. Sitting in his father’s hospital room with a Woody Guthrie biography on his lap, Jesse realized what he needed to do.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to sing the news’,” he recalls. “There was a lot of war going on. That was bugging me—on top of my own shit life. I’d done my best to give up music, but I couldn’t. I decided I’d do this.”
He walked into the Ozarks, placed his phone on a tripod, sang right to it, and posted the performance. The ensuing series of videos made a seismic impact online. He impressively attracted over 1 million followers on Instagram by performing tunes like “Cancer,” “Fentanyl,” and “War Isn’t Murder” out in the cold. On a creative tear, he served up two full-length albums, namely Hells Welles and Patchwork. Audience enthusiasm manifested on the road, and he sold out successive headline tours. Capping off 2024, he railed against the corruption of the healthcare system in the powerful polemic “United Health,” which Rolling Stone hailed as “a John Prine-like ballad.”
Now, Jesse turns the page on another chapter with the single “HORSES.” The track hits its stride as guitar gives way to wailing fiddle. His gravelly delivery transfixes, “I’m singing this song about loving all the people that you come to hate…I thought I was gathering oats for my horses, but I was getting by whipping my mules.”
“It’s a pro-love song,” he notes. “Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to all kinds of atrocities. You build up walls. If you love everyone, it’s a lot easier on you—and everybody else too. Hate is a whip for the mule. Nobody gets nutrition from it.”
A steady beat sets “WHEEL” in motion. Jesse leans into the laidback groove and goes with the flow on the breezy hook. “You can roll the windows down and turn ‘WHEEL’ up,” he grins. “I love the notion of us being on a wheel that’s spinning forever. It’s a concept you’ll find in all sorts of religions and spiritual ideas”
Then, there’s “WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME.” He sets the scene right away, “I was reading Blood Meridian on the hood of my car.” A hummable acoustic melody underscores an emotionally charged refrain punctuated by harmonica and a scream, “Why don’t you love me, honey? What can I prove?”
“I took everything I love about seventies Dylan and Nirvana and smashed it together,” he goes on. “I’m dealing with the angst you feel when you don’t get noticed by somebody, whether your partner, parents, friends, or boss. What more do I have to do to make you believe in me? The verses are just me being a weird space cowboy in Arkansas, reading books on the hood of my car and thinking about guitars and ponies.”
Jesse is speaking the kind of truth you can’t get on the news or on social media. This is the kind of truth that’s best shared with a microphone over the vibrations of an open chord.
“If my music helps you believe you can make art and tell the world how you feel, there would be nothing better,” he leaves off. “I hope you get those paints out of the garage or fill up your journal. Turn on your phone and say what you gotta to say. There’s so much wild stuff in my head. I want to see where it can go.”
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