Jelly Roll gets his Mitten on at sold

Two things were made abundantly clear during Jelly Roll’s sold-out concert Thursday night, Aug. 17, at the Pine Knob Music Theatre.

The genre-blending Tennessee singer/rapper is as genuine as he seems in the earnest, confessional songs that have been topping the country and rock charts during the past couple of years.

And he genuinely loves him some Michigan.

Jelly Roll (real name Jason DeFord) was a walking, singing and rhyming Pure Michigan commercial throughout his hour-and-40-minute show, the 13th of his Backroad Baptism Tour 2023 and, he noted, the first and fastest to sell out. “It’s always like coming home when we come back here,” Jelly Roll told the crowd early in the show, 11 months after opening for Shinedown at Pine Knob. “You don’t know how much this city means to me. How much this state means to me.”

It runs deep, he revealed. He shouted out Michigan radio, particularly Detroit’s WYCD-FM and its program director Tim Roberts, for its early support. He acknowledged the rap duo Twiztid for taking him on his first national tour years ago, and Insane Clown Posse for giving him his first festival billing at one of its Gathering of the Juggalos events. He spoke about hearing the Bob Seger, Kid Rock, Eminem (“the best rapper ever”) and Motown when he was growing up, and displayed his widely professed fondness for Seger by slipping a cover of his “Old Time Rock and Roll” into his set.

Jelly Roll also gave a nod to Eminem with a hyper-speed snippet of “Lose Yourself” during a rap medley that finished with the crowd singing Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend” back at him.

He also professed a “dream” to buy some lakeside property in northern Michigan and said he felt the marijuana grown in the state is the best in the world.

It was a lotta love, all warmly received by the 15,000 or so whose exuberance was not diminished by rains that turned the lawn into a sliding board. But truth be told, they would have been just as enthusiastic if Jelly Roll hadn’t said a word about the Mitten.

With one song, “Need a Favor,” that hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country and rock charts and deep roots in the hip hop community, Jelly Roll has become a tattooed and damaged everyman whose impact is even wider than some of today’s biggest pop stars, even if their sales eclipse his at the moment. But in being honest about overcoming a criminal past and finding a kind of populist terrain in his current belief system, Jelly Roll checks off a lot of boxes and connects on a number of heartfelt levels — wearing his heart on the short sleeves of his mechanic’s shirt (name-labeled “Buford”) while keeping the party raging with his own blend of rap-rock, country rap and occasional balladry.

Jelly Roll finds surprising success in country, rock and rap

"I don't believe this is a concert," he explained in one of his several preacher-worthy discourses throughout the night. "It's not a show. I believe this is family reunion of people healing together." He also made an impassioned plea for recreational marijuana -- which was full evident onstage and off Thursday -- to be legalized in all 50 states and to be used in place of opioids.

Musically, meanwhile, Jelly Roll and his seven-piece band got burning early -- literally, with fire pots heating up the stage and pavilion -- as they tore into the crunchy stop of "The Lost," "Hate Goes On," "Halfway to Hell," "Creature," "Dead Man Walking" and the country chart-topper "Son of a Sinner." He brought out tour mates Yelawolf (for "She") and Struggle Jennings (for "Fall in the Fall"), both of whom were crucial to Jelly Roll's early career and offered warm praise to him from the stage. He poured vodka down the throat of one of his guitarist's during the guitar solo on "Bottle and Mary Jane," and Jelly Roll's wife Bunnie DeFord joined came on stage as he sang the love song "Kill a Man." He also tossed Brantley Gilbert's "Son of the Dirty South," on which he guests, into the show and had the audience singing along to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," which Jelly Roll dedicated first to Shinedown and, at the end, to the band and its late guitarist Gary Rossington.

Only the inconsistent, bottom-heavy sound put any damper on the show, but when an audience knows every word anyway it was not a hard problem to overcome.

Jelly Roll was enjoying the night as much as anybody sitting in front of him, too. "You took the most average, uneducated, white trash fat-ass in America and you made him a star," he gushed late in the evening. And the Pine Knob crowd made sure he knew they were abundantly happy to have done that.

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