Jesse Welles: Moments of Truth
Midway through Jesse Welles’ recent show at a sold-out Atlantis in D.C., a fan shouted out, “Tell ‘em Jesse!” “Tell ‘em what?” he asked back. “Tell ‘em what they need to hear.” He waited for a beat and cracked a sly smile: “No one asked for this.” The thing is, millions of people have.
The 30-year-old Arkansas native, who has taken to singing the news in wry folk songs he posts to social media— where he has nearly 2.5 million followers between Instagram and TikTok—has become a voice of his generation, whether he meant to or not. At shows, fans sing along to his simple-but-sophisticated numbers, which touch on topics as divisive as United Healthcare and Gaza and as common as Walmart and bugs. For Welles, who has been playing guitar since he was 11 and releasing music since 2012, it’s been a welcome reassurance. “It’s like meeting a pen pal or something,” Welles says. “I always knew everyone was out there. There were moments I did think I was crazy and now I know I ain’t.”
Often filmed outdoors in Arkansas, Welles’ songs and social media clips arrive at a dizzying speed. Since 2024, he’s put out multiple studio albums—the topical Helles Welles, the more personal Patchwork and this year’s Middle, a polished, rock-band effort devoid of current events. Late March brought Under the Powerlines, compiling 63 of his social media clips—raw takes, one-offs, Bob Dylan and John Prine covers—captured live. Pilgrim, which was released on July 4, incorporates the sounds of electric guitar, fiddle, pedal steel, along with collaborators Billy Strings and Sierra Ferrell.
In early March, Welles posted the satirical “SpaceXplosion” less than 90 minutes after first hearing about the titular explosion on the news one morning. “You’re running with an egg in a spoon and trying to get it over the finish line without dropping it,” he says.
Of his songwriting ethos, a pace inspired by a revelation he had after his dad had a heart attack and nearly died, Welles says, “You can’t get precious with it. At that point, I had quit making any music and I was looking at him and all the tubes and stuff, thinking, ‘We don’t have long here at all.’ I said, ‘I’m gonna make tunes like mad, until they got me hooked up to a bunch of tubes.’”
