Jelly Roll on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show – VIDEO & PHOTOS

Photo Credit: Jason Kempin

Jelly Roll sat down with Howard for his first appearance on The Howard Stern Show for an insightful and candid conversation that covered everything from the Tennessee native’s rough upbringing and former run-ins with the law to his rapid ascent to stardom and well-earned music industry accolades. It concluded with a live three-song performance featuring two of Jelly’s massively popular originals and one medley of classic covers.

While talking music with Howard, the artist had plenty to say about his brand-new single, “I Am Not Okay,” and upcoming album as well as the inspiration behind his biggest hits.

Howard asking: “How did you get caught so much?” “I was the worst criminal ever,” Jelly Roll laughed, adding, “My successfulness of running from the police was zero in 20.”

That didn’t stop him from trying, however, as he explained while recounting a story from his teen years about trying — and failing — to outrun the cops. “In my mind, I jumped out [of the car] and sprinted across the field and almost made it,” Jelly recalled. “[But] I was so fat and Xanax-ed out I stood out and got two steps. The cop was standing there, watching me, and I fell, and he just laid on top of me.”

“He felt so bad for me that he didn’t even charge me for trying to run,” he added.

After spending so much time behind bars, Jelly admitted he eventually began to feel safer and more comfortable in lockup than out on the streets. Even so, occasional fights were unavoidable. “There’s no getting around physical altercations in jail,” he told Howard, explaining how he once fought his cellmate after spitting in the sink without realizing it was the ultimate sign of disrespect.

The sporadic violence aside, Jelly told Howard jail is filled with dreamers discussing all the great things they planned to do after they got out. For him, the dream was always music. But with no traditional instruments at his disposal, he wrote songs by using his steel bunk bed as a drum. “It had a real hollow sound so you could at least keep your time,” he explained to Howard. “You start kind of humming melodies over this loop … and go from there.”

“The hard part was when you write so many of them, you start to forget the melodies,” the singer continued. “I ended up coming home with a bunch of songs that I didn’t have the melodies to, but I had really good lyrics.”

As much as the music meant to him, he told Howard having a daughter is what ultimately compelled him to clean up his act. “I honestly think if I wouldn’t have had a kid, I never would’ve have broken that cycle.”

“Does anything in life scare you after you go through something like that?” Howard asked.

“My fear now is [for] the people I love,” Jelly said before sharing one recent example of how he worried so much about his daughter’s Sweet 16 party that it gave him an ulcer. “If I lost all this today and moved back to Antioch, I’d be fine,” Jelly concluded. “But if you told me my little girl might not have a friend at her birthday party, I’d cry like a baby before it even happens.”

Jelly Roll on his nickname: “If she’d have called me Slim Jim, I might have a six-pack and a big cock,” he told Howard with a laugh about his mother giving him his nickname.

“Everybody had those horrible nicknames,” the singer laughed. “We had a dude in our neighborhood whose nickname was Shit Stain … He’s a grown man now, he’s 44, and I’m still like, ‘What up, Shit?’”

Howard wondered how Shit Stain was faring these days.

Jelly Roll said he’s no longer in jail. “He did like 16 years,” he explained. “And they called him Shit the whole time.”

Jelly Roll on marrying Bunnie Xo and raising a family: “We met at a bar. She was in a situation, and I was just so lost in life,” he said, adding, “I loved her from go. I loved her from the moment I met her.”

“She calls me her Pound Puppy,” he laughed, referencing the ‘80s toy. “She adopted a Pound Puppy.”

“I think it’s one of the wildest stories that has ever happened in the music business,” Jelly said of their love.

While on the topic of his family, the artist told Howard he works hard to provide his teenage daughter with a more stable home than he had when he was a kid. He’s surrounds her with good role models, too, including country sensations Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, and Lainey Wilson. “I always make it a point to get her around them because all she’s seen [in her life before that] is drug addict women,” Jelly said.

Jelly Roll on the song that changed his life: Jelly Roll wrote his first No. 1 hit “Save Me” at the height of the pandemic, shortly after the death of his father. “It changed my entire life,” he said.

“It’s the only time in my career this has happened, and I don’t want to sound like a quacko when I say it, but I heard ‘somebody save me’ in a dream to the point I thought I stole it.”

“Forty-eight hours after I wrote this song, it was on my YouTube channel. Seventy-two hours after I wrote this song, it was at a million views,” he said.

“Save Me” was inspired by the classic Bette Midler ballad “The Rose,” a song Jelly Roll’s mother frequently listened to when he was a kid. “She would say, ‘Play this at my funeral,’” he recalled. “She would sit at the kitchen table — I still get emotional listening to it — she would smoke these cigarettes and say, ‘Remember to play this when I die.’”

“That’s coming from a woman who didn’t think she was going to live, and I know how that feels, how that feels to think you’re not gonna live,” Jelly said.

Jelly Roll on working with Eminem: Jelly was enlisted to perform at a special concert for Eminem’s hometown of Detroit — and to sing the hook on the rapper’s 2002 hit, “Sing for the Moment.” “I didn’t meet him until the day we did it … I was so nervous … You could see the nerves on my face,” he recalled of the opportunity to perform on that track. “This song did a lot for me in dark moments of my life … and I’m a lifelong fan.”

Despite the nerves, the experience was an incredible honor. “He’s just such an awesome dude,” Jelly marveled of Eminem. “There are not enough praises for him. He’s inarguably the greatest rapper that ever lived — ever.”

Jelly Roll on meeting Paul McCartney: “You find yourself in situations that you never would have dreamed,” he said before noting the friendship he’d forged with Jon Bon Jovi. “The even weirder part is when it goes past meeting them and you start to develop a relationship with your idols to find out that they’re actually really cool people.”

“I lost my mind,” Jelly admitted of meeting the legendary Beatle, who in turn was already aware of the rapper-turned-country star. “He just immediately started loving on me — it was really cool.”

“When cool shit starts happening, you’re like, ‘Man, I don’t want to fuck this off … I’d really like to live this way for the rest of my life if possible,’” he told Howard.

Jelly Roll’s new song “I Am Not Okay” is available now.

More information on Jelly Roll’s appearance: https://strn.it/wubnRQ

The Howard Stern Show, which airs on SiriusXM channel Howard 100, is broadcast live Mondays through Wednesdays starting at 7:00 am ET. The full show is also available on the SiriusXM app.

Video clips below credit: SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show.

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