And then in early 2024, his father had a heart attack, and everything changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was sitting there next to him in the hospital, and he was hooked up to all this stuff and unconscious,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know what the outcome was going to be. And I thought, he was barely here a minute. He was here a blink of an eye. I didn\u2019t even get to know him but for a little bit. How short is life? I\u2019ve got so much work to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo I started writing like mad. I opened up. Really, from that moment onward, it was just like, I\u2019m going to write and sing tunes until I\u2019m all hooked up on a bed like that. We don\u2019t have much time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since that day Jesse Welles, reborn as a solo artist, has certainly lived up to his own promise, in an astounding burst of creativity that in just over a year has produced four full-length albums and an EP plus countless off-the-cuff song videos. [Since this article went to press, Welles has in fact produced three more full-length albums: <\/em>Pilgrim<\/a> followed just seven weeks later by the simultaneous release of <\/em>Devil’s Den<\/a>, on which Welles played all the instruments, and<\/em> With the Devil<\/a>, on which he performed the same song list as <\/em>Devil’s Den but with a band. <\/em>With the Devil is also available as a complete video performance on YouTube<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Welles initially went viral with fearless takes on such topics as war in Gaza (\u201cWar Isn\u2019t Murder\u201d), fentanyl, whistleblowers (\u201cWhistle Boeing\u201d), Ozempic, and the killing of an insurance CEO (\u201cUnited Health\u201d). At the same time, he sings charming ditties on his favorite things (\u201cBugs,\u201d \u201cBooks,\u201d \u201cGuitars\u201d) and creates poetic, personal folk rock, captured in both homegrown solo recordings like Patchwork<\/a><\/em> and in the full-band studio production Middle<\/a><\/em>. Even more remarkable than the sheer volume of music he\u2019s produced is how great so much of it is\u2014evocative, empathetic, and above all, raw and real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Welles, 32, is a genuine phenomenon\u2014an internet-era troubadour clearly in the tradition of Guthrie, Dylan, Prine, and Ochs (and Cobain, too), yet also very much of this moment. Eager to learn more about his musical path, I connected with Welles on a video call from a Nashville hotel room, with his Stella close at hand, in the midst of a cross-country tour that completely sold out in two days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What initially inspired you to pick up the guitar?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I knew that\u2019s what I wanted. All the music I listened to had guitars in it. I was about ten, 11, and I had Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> and Abbey Road<\/em>. I loved that last track on Abbey Road<\/em>, \u201cThe End,\u201d with the three guitar solos. Even \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u201d had big power chords, this real mean guitar. Though I didn\u2019t know who was playing, it was the beginning of my probably lifelong affinity for Lennon\u2019s playing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t have any kind of video, and I hadn\u2019t really seen anybody play guitar, so I thought they were moving their tuning pegs awfully fast. I broke a lot of strings thinking you change the melody around like that. I didn\u2019t realize you needed to fret it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You really didn\u2019t have a concept of putting your hand on the fretboard?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No. It probably was a year and a half after getting a guitar [a First Act from Walmart], I asked my old man, because your dad\u2019s supposed to know how to do everything, \u201cDo you know how to play this thing?\u201d I was at a loss. He\u2019d never played a guitar in his life. I saw his big finger hit the fretboard, and he changed the note on the low E string. And I went, oh, shoot, that\u2019s probably how you have to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not long after that, an old guy named Harlen Nichols who lived down the road had me over to his house, and he showed me how to play, like, \u201cCamptown Races.\u201d He drew up his own kind of tab on a little notecard, and he tuned up my guitar, because I didn\u2019t have a tuner. I didn\u2019t know how to tune it. He gave me lessons for really no good reason. He had grandkids, but I guess he thought it was neat that I had a guitar. He had a \u201960s [Gibson] Hummingbird, a beautiful guitar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you start making up songs right away?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I was always making up little tunes. Making up a tune was easier than learning somebody else\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was some of the music that made you want to do that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those Beatles records that my grandpa had given me were really all I listened to for probably five or six years until I was a teenager and found Black Sabbath and Zeppelin and stuff like that. You know, I have an older sister. Looking back, it\u2019s kind of funny, but boy bands were a big deal and Britney Spears was in the charts, but she seemed to have no interest in that sort of thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I just loved the music that I got to listen to with Mom in the car on the oldies radio. It was a format that has kind of gone away, but it was British Invasion and Motown, essentially, and some classic country every once a while. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So singer-songwriters like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan came to you later? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A little bit later. I was 13, 14, when I went headfirst into it. I had the Encarta encyclopedia on a CD-ROM. You could look up blues music and folk music. Under the blues one, they had a 20-second clip of Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins playing, and I would play these little bits over and over. They had Huddie Ledbetter, or Lead Belly, maybe Mississippi John Hurt. I heard about John and Alan Lomax, the father\/son duo, and I went down to the library to get the songbook. I don\u2019t know how to read music, but it had all the lyrics written out for \u201cCumberland Gap,\u201d all the stuff they recorded at penitentiaries, and Appalachian songs, too. Anyway, through all that, I got ahold of Woody Guthrie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And then the library had that first Bob Dylan record. He\u2019s just a baby on the cover, and he has a funny hat, and boy, I wore that record out. I really liked that. I also liked Peter, Paul and Mary, and as a proper preteen\/teenager, I loved Simon and Garfunkel. It was so moody and so pretentious. I would listen to \u201cThe Sounds of Silence\u201d and \u201cI Am a Rock\u201d and \u201cScarborough Fair,\u201d and I fancied myself some kind of poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you always have the urge to share what you were learning or writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah. The most important thing was finishing a song, getting some kind of bow on it. It didn\u2019t much matter what it looked like when it got over the line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was 14, my buddy and I were playing guitar together, and his folks got him Sony Acid, the recording program. I borrowed that and put it on my computer, and I would multitrack. I had a washboard, a recorder, and my guitar. I was always recording and making little tunes. I loved to make my friends laugh. I had a guitar with me all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That desire to share your music right away aligns perfectly with social media. When did that click for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That wasn\u2019t until February to March of \u201924. I just said, well, instead of recording tunes, we\u2019re going to be even less precious about it: we\u2019re just going to perform them to the camera and that\u2019s it\u2014that\u2019s the take. And trial by the internet. They\u2019ll tell you just exactly how they feel about something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You put out a mix of topical songs and more personal writing. Do you think of those as separate categories? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the Venn diagram, they have overlaps, but I don\u2019t want to think of those things separately. I do think it\u2019s all one and the same\u2014the music is the music\u2014but I can see how they look separate. One is me making sense of the news, and I suppose the other one is making sense of being alive. But either way, it needs to rhyme, so that\u2019s the fun in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In your topical songs, you often use classic folk and country forms. That\u2019s very Guthrie-esque: writing new lyrics over a traditional structure. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes I\u2019ll have the melody, and the chord structure isn\u2019t sorted out until I put up the take, and that\u2019s the only time I ever played it like that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those classic progressions are the vehicle, and also they\u2019re tested with humanity. We all seem compelled and pulled towards those changes, at least in Western culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t think about that too hard. I feel like it needs to be catchy, you know? With other tunes, I can stretch out a bit, but it\u2019s fun to sing about wizards and spaceships and feelings and religions and philosophies over I\u2013IV\u2013V too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Jesse-Welles-with-acoustic-guitar-Photo-Joey-Lusterman\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Jesse-Welles-Photo-Joey-Lusterman.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1\")