In the recording studio of a small house on a Monday afternoon in January, Jesse Wells sat on his lap with a guitar, dressed in black from head to toe.
Wells, a singer-songwriter with a hairy, dirty blonde mane and sandbar voice, rose to recent prominent posts posting videos on social media alone in the woods near his home in northwest Arkansas I did. . He turned subjects like the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight loss drug ozenpic, and the Leilafee of the United Healthcare business model into virus hits on Tiktok and Instagram, and added over 2 million followers on those platforms. It's built. However, the song “Simple Gifts,” which he recorded in his East Nashville basement, is another beast.
He sang that serious opening line as he delicately picked the acoustic guitar – “Beat forward from the edge of the waste towards the sky range / Something darker than hope, brighter than fate It was the event. Wells' new album, “Middle,” is scheduled for February 21st.
“The only filter placed on it was that I wasn't singing topics for this project,” he said. “These are self-satisfaction things, or at least I feel like they're there at times. I like to do both. They are two different mediums.”
Producer Eddie Spear rose from behind the mixing board to adjust the microphone in front of Wells. Most of the songs on “Middle” have been recorded in full band, but for “Simple Gifts” and the album's title track, the setup was stored in a lonely microphone. “I'm trying to respect people enjoy Jesse,” said Spear, who also worked with Zack Bryan and Sierra Ferrell. “We thought that getting such a truly simple capture might combine where he came from and honor this particular era of his career.”
Wells, 30, is already living a full life in the music industry. Growing up in the Ozark of Ark, he latched into music, devoured homemade cassettes from Beatles albums recorded from his collection, listening to oldies radio stations that spun classic rock, Motown and old country songs. I did. “If the South was 10 or 15 years behind the times, the Ozark was about 30 years,” he said.
At 11 o'clock, he became his almost constant companion to use the money he saved to buy guitars at Walmart. At the public library in nearby Fayetteville, he discovered Smithsonian Folkways' “Anthology of American Folk Music” and his 1962 self-titled debut. Wells was said to have sounded like “burned toast,” but after a classmate on the school bus introduced him to Nirvana, he had an inspiration about his song. . 'I can't do Robert Plant, but maybe I could do Cobain. ”
As a teenager, Wells played in bands, learned his favourite songs and wrote his own songs. During his vacation, he borrowed a drum kit from the school band director, set up a home recording studio in his mother's garage, and burned songs on CDs he sold at school. “I'll be a seasonal album,” he said.
After graduating from high school, he continued to drive out trucks. Part of the name is Ye Shee Wells, and the band is dead with Indians and space Americans. Music from this era included acoustic folk songs and loud, psychedelic garage rock. The ever-growing catalogue suggests a musical aesthetic more about processes than products. “You can't be valuable about it,” Wells said. “It takes serious hub arrogance to think you're going to write a masterpiece.” For him, the goal has always been to “just create a series of jobs.”
At age 22, Wells moved to Nashville and formed a band simply called Wells, signed with 300 entertainment, labeling his companions alongside the young thugs and Fetti Wop. The band released an album by Angsty Grunge in 2018, entitled “Red Trees and White Trashes,” and toured relentlessly, opening festivals with suspects such as Greta Van Fleet and Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits to highly suspects I did.
Being on the label means “jumping the same hoops as everyone before you,” and he played 500 shows in two years and told him to build from there. “Then there's 500 shows later and there's nothing to show that. When you have that lot of people, it's an investment. They want something to pop out. Not that. When, and when you did all the festivals, music videos, tours, they moved to something else, no one else they are responsible for but you, and who I do I'm not responsible for that.”
Disappointed, he returned to Arkansas to try and put his rock and roll dreams to rest. “I've read a lot and I've really grown up for running,” he said. “I was like, 'I'm going to imagine my life without playing any music at all.' ”
It didn't take. In late 2023 he set up a tiktok on his phone and found a musician playing cover songs on his feed. He began the same thing: “Clay Pigeon,” a song by Foley of Flame, popularized by John Pudding. Dylan's “Don't think about it again.” Tom Petty's “You don't know how it feels.” They got traction, so he kept it.
“Then my old man had a heart attack and something just snapped into me,” Wells said. “I started singing the news, and it's a way to understand what's going on around me.”
The folk songs on Wells topic are skillfully blending the slightly whimsical with the fatal serious. Jaunty's “Walmart” says “Toddlers eat cigarettes in a keystone beer cart,” and the narrator watches, but the song evolves into a subtle burning prosecution of predatory big box capitalism. Masu. “Murders Not War” is an angry protest song filled with Saadnick lyrics that challenge traditional wisdom.
“He won't perform as a statement of Hollywood elites that will make Hollywood elites,” and “Have you seen the rain?” of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which was released in October. “It's not easy to write a hot topic song in this political environment and not escape as a partisan. He did a really good job of finding humanity on tricky issues and bringing everyone to the table.”
“Singing the news,” Wells also called it, creating a real buzz. Wells was invited to help farm in September, where Dave Matthews introduced him as “one of the best songwriters I've heard of in my life.” His current tour of the mid-sized club, running until April 10th, sold out within two days of sale. Despite all the indications that this rise is driven by songs he tore from the headlines, he shruggs without pressure to rely on them for a new album. The outcome is disgusting.
“I was failing in my life with this,” he said. “I'm familiar with that feeling. I'm fine with that.”
The “Middle” song isn't completely covered by the world. The enthusiastic, well-built “horse” refers to American foreign policy, but it helps in a broader meditation on love and hatred. Galloping “War is God” feels like an ominous and biblical parable, drenched in the daily flow of bloody images of Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti and more.
The rest of the album surfs between a surreal fantasy world and Wells's own inner life. His dexterous writing and tough, bare bone arrangements can't help but remember many of the classic lockers he grew up listening to: Dylan, Petty and Neil Young. If this turns out that this is not something his growing fanbase wants to hear, then that's fine. He continues to stable cancellations for all sorts of songs on social media.
“The cool thing about putting them right away is, even if you think it's a masterpiece of Douggum, you stand it up and know that no one is eager to it, you have your sign It's about being there,” he said. “We'll move to the next one.”
