Jelly Roll is about as atypical country music superstar as you can imagine.
Forget the cowboy hats, boots and western twang. Jelly Roll, a former rapper turned country music singer in 2020, prefers baseball caps, spendy high-top sneakers and the bluesy, rockin' side of country.
And trust me, if you've never seen him before, you'd never see the big man and think of the likes of Garth Brooks or Clint Black or George Straight. But this one-time federal penitentiary inmate is turning the country music world on its head since he burst on the scene in 2020 with his viral YouTube hit "Save Me," which has been adopted by many living with drug and alcohol addictions, as well as their loved ones, as a sort of anthem.
Watch an interview with the entertainer, and you can't help but come away liking him and admiring the hard journey he's been on his entire life. But for faithful people who might not otherwise run across his kind of country rock, it's worth making time to catch his two hour documentary called "Jelly Roll: Save Me," an unflinching look at how the 38-year-old star rose from a childhood growing up in Antioch, Tenn., a Nashville neighborhood filled with apartment buildings and mobile home parks.
Outside of the cross Jelly Roll has tattooed on his face, you might be surprised at how deeply faithful the country crooner is, but while openly faithful, he also lives his life unvarnished, admitting to still battling his addictions and being forthright about living with his sometimes crippling mental health issues. So, this is a heads up that the documentary is not for those easily offended. There's a lot of foul language, copious talk about drugs and alcohol and a lot of material that wouldn't be considered "appropriate" by some.
Through intensely thoughtful and emotional monologues, in addition to interviews with those people around him he loves the most, the documentary's viewers see how a young Jelly Roll struggles with a broken home life, obesity issues and being bullied at school. And the documentary skillfully brings the audience along in two story arcs that are intentionally woven together to reveal the past that shaped the star, and the current day star struggling to save himself and trying to give hope to so many millions more who walk in his shoes.
The first story arc is the telling of Jelly Roll's journey, from childhood mayhem, to teenage drug dealer, to incarcerated young man, to being absent in prison when his daughter was born to his turning to music in 2011 to turn his life around. The moviemakers use historical video, still photos and a bevy of interviews with people very close to him to tell the compelling story of Jelly Roll's three decade fight to the top.
The second story arc in the documentary follows Jelly Roll and his crew and family starting three months out from his historic concert at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena in December 2022, which would become his biggest paid audience ever. During the many interviews leading up to the big event, the artist is transparent about the anxiety he feels over the statement concert in his hometown, and about how he to this day still struggles with a lack of self confidence and his past "demons."
Over the two hours, the team producing the movie artfully pulls together both story arcs with the movie culminating with Jelly Roll taking the stage in Nashville to sing "Save Me" to his 16,000 adoring fans.
Admittedly, I'm late to the game on this movie. Shelley and I just watched the documentary, which currently is streaming on the Hulu platform, last night but the movie actually was released last May. However, if you haven't yet seen it, I'd highly recommend making it appointment TV over the next couple of days when you have some downtime.
Jelly Roll might not ever call himself a clergy member, but to his most dedicated fans, he's nothing short of spiritual leader. You can see it in their faces and hear in it the tearful stories about how instrumental his music has been that fans share with him throughout the movie.
But I think Jelly Roll says something about his fans and his concerts that really poignant, and those of us faithful in the church world need to hear. He astutely mentions that for some of his fans, attending his concerts and hearing in person the music that is helping them manage their own struggles is a church-going experience. And you can absolutely see the fire and fervor in the belly that he instills in his audiences in the movie. It's got the feel of an old-fashioned tent revival ... just involving people with lots of tattoos, and lots of drinking, smoking weed and swearing.
As unorthodox as it all might sound, Jelly Roll delivers his fans hope, and while he isn't on stage preaching from the Good Book to a staid audience sitting in pews, he most certainly is delivering the gospel. Both in his work when he visits juvenile detention facilities and prisons, and when he is talking to his audiences between songs, Jelly Roll speaks about forgiveness, second chances and why it's important to want to stay in this life for the ones who love you.
In an interview for the official Grammy Awards news site, he was asked if he feels like he's preaching while he's on stage and he responded: "I think the music does the preaching, I just talk. You know what I mean? I think the music's the sermon, I'm just the deacon."
He went on in that interview to discuss how while he is faithful and believes in spiritual redemption, he struggles with the institution of religion itself: "I'm really, really, really kind of against religion. I'm not very religious at all. But I definitely believe in spirituality. I had this thought, how I look at church and how I see church now is different than I ever seen it. I realized that it's a bunch of people going to a place as an attempt to build community, seek forgiveness and be better."
And it's this message that I think that as faithful people we need to hear. But we often don't because it's our churches where the people like Jelly Roll and his many, many followers won't be seen.
Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment: We're just not really good at welcoming them either. So these millions of people who have lived tough lives, and battle addictions and struggle with feeling the slightest bit of self worth ... well, they turn to artists like Jelly Roll who do a far better job of making them feel seen and heard than the church does.
If as Jesus says, the church is supposed to be more like a hospital for those who are broken sinners ... well, again, Jelly Roll is providing a far more effective community for healing for millions of people than we are as the church. And for that reason alone, this documentary worth your time as a faithful person to give it a watch. There are lessons there for us to learn about how to be more welcoming and understanding of the human condition. And these lessons aren't taking place in a church. They're happening at 16,000-seat arenas in front of the most least likely country music star you'll ever meet.
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