ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Jesse Welles sings the news.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAR ISN'T MURDER")
JESSE WELLES: (Singing) War isn't murder. Good men don't die. Children don't starve and all women survive.
SCHMITZ: His song "War Isn't Murder" has millions of views across social media.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAR ISN'T MURDER")
WELLES: (Singing) Let's talk about dead people. I mean a dead people.
SCHMITZ: The 33-year-old does not mince words.
WELLES: I really think people are made to create stuff. Some people build tables, and some people make pottery. Some people make spreadsheets. I make tunes.
SCHMITZ: You make a lot of them.
WELLES: Yeah. I'm sorry.
SCHMITZ: Sorry or not, Welles' songs are gaining traction. He's been called the TikTok Troubadour, modern-day Bob Dylan. He's even friends with Joan Baez. He says he'll never be a giant like those folk legends, but he says they have one thing in common, limitations on time.
WELLES: Players had to shorten their tunes up for them to fit on 45s. For me, it was like, I'm going to squeeze as much of these thoughts as I can down into 90 seconds, which was the length of a Instagram reel.
SCHMITZ: Welles films himself playing freshly written songs in a forest near his home in Arkansas, in a clearing made for power lines.
WELLES: It's a quiet place, close enough to the road that I don't have to walk too far, but far enough from the road that I can't hear the cars go by. I like it out there.
SCHMITZ: And with the news coming at us every which way these days, I ask Welles how he decides on what to sing about.
WELLES: I guess when I reckon I have an opinion. It feels like been constant chaos, constant distraction being used as a tool. It's being implemented to stupefy Americans. Chaos, total and constant psychological war on the ability for anybody to concentrate on one thing long enough to fully take in the ridiculousness and the cruelty of it all. All pretense has been thrown out. When they do something, it's for obvious reasons now. They don't even bother hiding. That's where, like, "Masks Off" comes from. The masks are off.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MASKS OFF")
WELLES: (Singing) All the masks are off, and they don't even try. They know that you know that they know, and they don't even mind it. All the masks are off, and they're getting lazy. They think you're so d*** stupid. They think you're so d*** crazy.
SCHMITZ: I can tell that you feel strongly about this. It makes you angry, right? And so is that the process, where you just - you see something, it bothers you and say, hey, I got to write this down?
WELLES: For some things, yes. Other things, I love them so much that I can't shut up about them. Oftentimes, those are the nature tunes and stuff like that. But with topical stuff, it's usually - I don't know. A question has kind of been on the forefront of my mind lately is, are we our brother's keeper? Am I my brother's - is it my gig? If I see a scam going down, if I see some kind of injustice, wouldn't it be up to me to almost warn those about it, or to bring the quiet part out into the open so that we can all kind of discuss this and be informed together? That's how I feel about those things.
SCHMITZ: Jesse, are you religious?
WELLES: No. I'm pretty convinced that there are secrets. There are things that I can't see, but I'm just as convinced that they're right in front of me and that if I just sit still and listen, what's hidden will be revealed.
SCHMITZ: I mean, you kind of mentioned in your last answer the things that maybe you're angry about but also the things that you love about life...
WELLES: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: ...Right? And I think you're referring to this - a bunch of songs that you did. I think it was called "All Creatures Great And Small." Is that right?
WELLES: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: Yeah. And that album is just - what I love about that album is that every song title is just one word, "Turtles," "Bugs." It just goes down the line. (Laughter).
WELLES: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: And actually, the song, "Turtles," was one of my favorites.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TURTLES")
WELLES: (Singing) Turtles. (Vocalizing).
SCHMITZ: It's about the beauty and wonder and awe of what a turtle can do.
WELLES: "Turtles" just comes out of my bona fide love for turtles.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TURTLES")
WELLES: (Singing) They got places to go and things to see, and they don't need you, and they don't need me tellin them...
I've always been fascinated with them, and I've always seen them everywhere I go, here in Arkansas and really anywhere. I just always have my eyes open for the turtles. I just - I love all critters.
SCHMITZ: Let's talk about another song of yours. It's called "Red."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RED")
WELLES: (Singing) I got a red house and a red car, runs on big red batteries. Used to be blue 15 minutes ago but then turned red just for me.
SCHMITZ: You know, this is clearly about the Trump administration, about President Trump. You talk about his red hat, red tie, big pen. The part of the song that I found most interesting is where you talk about when the war comes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RED")
WELLES: (Singing) When the war gets here, we're all gonna hold hands. All the Baptists and the Catholics, all the Marxists and the fascists.
SCHMITZ: And I felt like you're saying here that when people get to the point where they're fighting for their beliefs instead of, you know, those who are manipulating those beliefs, that there'll be some sort of unity in that. Or am I way off base there?
WELLES: I don't think that you're off base, but really what I reckon is that a lot of the fighting amongst us, a lot of our arguments won't seem like such a big deal when a real war hits the beaches. Or maybe it's that the war has been waged against us by getting us to fight within ourselves and amongst ourselves. And we were just pawns in it all along.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RED")
WELLES: (Singing) I got some red pills and a bottle. I got black and blue ones, too. All the pills are all the same. The illusion is you choose.
SCHMITZ: You know, you're probably one of the only singers that I listen to that sings about the U.S. healthcare system. You have many songs about this. You've got this one song called "United Healthcare" (ph). It encapsulates so many people's frustrations with insurance companies.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNITED HEALTH")
WELLES: (Singing) There's an office in a building and a person in a chair. And you paid for it all, though you may be unaware. You paid for the paper. You paid for the phone. You paid for everything they need to deny you what you're owed. There ain't no you.
SCHMITZ: There's one line in it that I wanted to ask you about. When you sing, CEOs come and go, and one just went. And I'm assuming here you're talking about United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was murdered in New York City. You know, I heard that line, and I paused a little. And I'm wondering, when you wrote this song, did you struggle over that line?
WELLES: When they murdered him, I put up on Threads that no man's death should be celebrated and was promptly informed just how everyone else felt about that. I still believe that no man's death should be celebrated. I think it does the dead no good, and it does the living even worse. But there are times where the ingredients you got bake the cake that you get. And it's incredibly unfortunate that somebody felt - that so many feel - that they are in such a hopeless position that somebody else's death would fix it. That's a sad state of affairs.
SCHMITZ: I want to talk about one more of your songs. In your song, "The Poor," you sing about poverty and almost about how often poor people are blamed for being poor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE POOR")
WELLES: (Singing) If you worked a little harder, then you'd have a lot more. So the blame and the shame's on you for being so d*** poor. It ain't the fight...
SCHMITZ: Tell me about the process of writing this song. What went into that?
WELLES: You grow up hearing these things tossed out amongst the people in your town, which is comical looking back because we were all living in some strata of poverty. But still, one would tell the other, if you worked a little harder, you wouldn't be so poor. It's your own fault you're poor. It's your own fault you're fat. It's your own fault you're this or that. It always - it was always the person, the individual's fault. And I just try to take those little meaningless backwards aphorisms that I grew up with and turn them on their head.
SCHMITZ: You know, there's one line in that song where you say - you're talking about, I was selling chocolate bars. I had a disorder. I was cutting up a frog, got lost in the fog, learning how to play a recorder. I mean, this brings up so many memories of school for most Americans, I think.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE POOR")
WELLES: (Singing) I was selling chocolate bars. I had a disorder. I was cuttin' up a frog. Got lost in the fog learning how to play a recorder. If you only worked a little harder.
It's an autobiographical tune. What I thought stood out was that they had us selling chocolate bars as fundraisers for band instruments. This school - they couldn't afford books, couldn't afford music instruments. You can't even afford school lunches, but the football field would be put in - a turf field would be put in. And the whole football team would have new helmets and shoulder pads, but you couldn't afford a tuba for the d*** band, so much so that they'd have the kids go out and work for it. And I just thought that was backwards.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE POOR")
WELLES: (Singing) If you worked a little harder, ah-ha. If you worked a little harder, ah-ha.
SCHMITZ: How long are you going to be doing this, Jesse, you know, this formula of filming yourself out in the forest?
WELLES: I don't know. Maybe I'll stop today. Maybe I'll do it until I'm old and gray. I don't know.
SCHMITZ: I feel like you just had the first lines of a song there.
WELLES: Maybe. I guess you'll have to send me the recording.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter) Well, we will do that.
WELLES: (Laughter).
SCHMITZ: That is singer-songwriter Jesse Welles. Jesse, it is a sincere pleasure to speak with you.
WELLES: Thanks for talking with me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SPIRIT QUEST")
WELLES: (Singing) Ain't it funny how the things you thought you needed were just prisons of the mind? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
