Arkansas songwriter Jesse Welles has been playing music professionally for over a decade, but last year, his career took off when he began performing his protest songs on social media. Jesse was here for a Live & Direct session on Tuesday, Feb. 25.
Interviewer: Kyle Smith
Engineers: Tom Hurley, Thomas Cipollone
Set list:
Horses
Wheel
Middle
Fear is the Mind Killer
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity:
Kyle Smith: Jesse Welles, welcome to Pittsburgh. I guess, welcome back to Pittsburgh, you've been here before.
Jesse Welles: Yes, I love it here. I appreciate you having me.
Kyle Smith: You've toured before and it didn't all just start with this song that I heard for the very first time about three weeks ago and had to listen to that over and over again. "Horses" is on your new album called “Middle.” Would you like to give us a little background about where you've grown up? Because I know you grew up in Arkansas. Give us a little bit of how you got here.
Jesse Welles: I grew up in Ozark, Ark. And I just did everything that you do in a town like that. I had a couple jobs, like the grocery store and the Chinese restaurant and the radio station. And I cut down trees for a guy, too. And I played football when I was in the school band. So I listened to a lot of public radio and I went to a lot of public libraries and stuff and got ahold of some of the music that you wouldn't typically get ahold of there.
Kyle Smith: I would imagine that would include a few of the troubadours that perhaps...
Welles: That's absolutely, yeah, yeah. I had an encyclopedia in Carta CD that you put into the CD-ROM, you put it in there, and they had like little samples of Lightning Hopkins, and they had little samples of Pete Seeger you could listen to, and little samples of Woody Guthrie. I'd spin those like little 20-second samples over and over again.
Kyle Smith: Well, the song that you just did, "Horses," is the first single from the new album called “Middle,” which is out. You just decided to put it out on your own. And we'll talk about the album a little bit later. But what do you think led you to writing some songs that deal with society and maybe even a little bit of foreign policy? But that song is really about love.
Welles: Yeah, so like why a tune about the love? This is probably about the only thing that's gonna bring anybody together. You can't take out hate with hate or anything like that, and I don't know, I reckon when you deal so much in... political notions and stuff like that you start looking for a cure or way out or whatever you find pretty quick you ain't gonna like stamp out hate with hate or anything like that, so it's... you know it's just a lot.
Kyle Smith: A love tune. You know, I think you also reference that in a couple of other songs on the album, including "Certain." There's a few lines in that song about that as well. But could you give us a little bit of insight into your career so far, because this just didn't happen overnight. We'll talk about the viral nature of social media and your presence there in a little bit and how you built a following. But you've toured a lot in the past, and you've been writing songs for well over 15 years since you were very young but, can you give us a little insight into the background from going to Arkansas? Because you toured in a band for quite a while.
Welles: Some people have like a motorcycle or a doberman or a tattoo and I just I always had a rock band and I thought that that was a cool thing to have and, you know, I just I wanted to play rock and roll music and so I did and then I saw other folks were out in the woods playing songs, and I thought, I can do that. And has a little less overhead, so...
Kyle Smith: Yes, it was. Yeah. Did you return to Arkansas after touring then? Is that when you decided to kind of hone your craft with some little pointed songs at society?
Welles: Yeah, I came home in 2021 and I had been gone since like 2015 or something like that. And I was going to stop playing music and I was just going to... I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I was gonna quit playing music because I was kind of burnt out on it. I wasn't really honing anything, but just running and reading a lot, and I think holding it down for about two years, and then my old man had a heart attack, and I thought, well, life is pretty short, and then all the tunes just kind of started coming, you know, around February of 2024, I just started writing tunes all the time, you know, and now here, now we're up to this.
Kyle Smith: So a lot of the songs have been written in this last year, and you just put this record out last Friday. It came out for the first time. It's called “Middle.” And we'll hear a couple more songs from it, then we'll talk a little bit about your social media presence and a little more about the record. But Jesse Welles is here. He's in town for a sold-out show tonight. In fact, his tour went on sale, and it sold out within a day, all 25 dates. And so he's playing the Thunderbird tonight. He's doing solo stuff. He also has a band here tonight. And we're lucky to have you here, Jesse.
And this is really a treat. I didn’t really realize until hearing that song "Horses," I didn’t really realize your background that you built in your followers that you had built over the last year by making some — you referenced it a while ago, singing songs in nature, but kind of ripping things from the headlines. What gave you the idea to get out in nature and sing about hot topics? Like health care and United Health and Walmart and war isn't murder?
Welles: I'm kind of about people not dying, if we can help it. So as far as reasons, that's my reason. With regards to the woods, I was out there already. So it was just a matter of putting a camera up and doing it there.
Kyle Smith: But did you have any idea about the positivity you'd feel and the followers that would happen?
Welles: No, you can't. You can't know. I figured nothing brings people together like making fun of someone. And I figured that's what would be, you know, best case scenario you'd get made fun of. Something else has happened. Nah, you can't know. You can't know what's gonna pop off.
Kyle Smith: Well, now you've got an album that is flushed out and produced. You've got band members on it and some guests and things. Let's talk a little bit about “Middle.” And it's the first album for you under your own name. So I guess your proper debut. You started writing these songs back into February. But there aren't a lot of references, direct references to headlines on the new album. I mean, there are some mentions of things. Was that a conscious choice?
Welles: I usually have a few songs going at once and kind of like having a few things on the burners of a stove or whatever, you know, and I would always go by and drop a line into one or drop something into another and as they get done, start a new one and then finish the one that was next up in line. Some of them will be topical tunes, and then some of them are a bit more self-indulgent, which are, you know, these tunes, these are the songs that, you know, I like to write myself and people who, I reckon, who crave the same sorts of things lyrically and just harmonically. These are a big... these are the big risk tunes, you know.
Kyle Smith: I had heard the cover that you did with members of Mount Joy of the CCR tune "Who'll Stop the Rain." And that's where I first heard your voice and thought it was a unique voice. So I hadn't really gotten the viral moments and the stuff that's happened in social media and stuff before. But I would imagine you made some of those connections while touring and making musical friends on the road before, but you worked with a pretty top-line producer right now who's worked with Sierra Farrell and Zach Bryan. And how did that flush out your sound or bring out the sound of the album in “Middle?”
Welles: Ed [Spear]. I met Ed about a hundred years ago. He was engineering for Cobb when I did my first rock and roll record that was with Welles and he and I have just been real good pals ever since and he is a now very much a producer in his own right, right, as you noted. I would send him a big list of tunes and he'd listen through them and he would tell me the ones that he was excited about and I would say, okay, we're not doing any of those. And then really it's a matter of, he helped me put a band together for the studio. And then we go in and we play the tracks live. And we would take the best takes and go ahead and roll with that. He offers a lot up harmonically and arrangement-wise and melodically too. He is very much, very much a real producer of music and he could take something and say, well, this says 20 verses and no one is going to listen to it. But we like the melodies, so can we pick your three favorites, you know, and stick with those. So he helps me organize my thoughts to some extent.
Kyle Smith: Well, you're just getting started on the road. You've got about another 20 shows or so ahead of you, and you've got accolades from Dave Matthews saying you're the best songwriter he's ever heard, which is pretty amazing.
Welles: I love Dave.
Kyle Smith: Yeah. Yeah, we like him too. And he's been around a long time, and from what I understand, you're gonna be playing Newport Folk Festival this year as well. Congratulations. Well, we would love it if you would share another song with us before we send you off into the dark, cold afternoon here in Pittsburgh before your show here at the Thunderbird tonight in Pittsburgh, which is sold out. Jesse Welles is here. The new album is “Middle.”