After years underground, Jelly Roll sets sights on headlining arenas

If a guard comes looking for you inside a Davidson County corrections facility, it typically means one of two things: A death in the family, or the birth of a child.

For Jason DeFord, rock bottom sounded like a knock on his jail cell door. 

"We just wanted you to know your daughter was born," DeFord remembered hearing when a guard visited him on one of the so-called state-funded vacations taken by the Nashville native before most knew him by his stage name — Jelly Roll.

He replied with an instinctual question: "What's her name?"

Before answering, the guard looked at DeFord, who can’t forget what he heard next: "F*** if I know, man. I’m just tellin’ you what I had to tell you."

With that, DeFord smashed into his breaking point.

He hit a low unlike any in his years defined by courtroom hearings and incarcerations. DeFord knew he needed to change. Fatherhood demanded it.

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"I remember thinking, ‘Man, I gotta be a father,'" DeFord said. "I was lucky to have a good father, even though he was a little rough around the edges, really blue collar. I was like, ‘I want to be a good father.' That was the moment for me."

And he climbed back up — one song at a time.

DeFord left his jail cell and found the stage, building an independent music career by slinging t-shirts out of his car trunk and selling homemade CDs on the street corner. As Jelly Roll, he laid roots for years in underground hip-hop, sleeping in a van after $50-a-night shows. Steadily, he began growing a fanbase that followed the singer's heart-on-his-sleeve truth-telling from rap to chart-topping success in mainstream rock and burgeoning crossover country stardom.

Now, riding a breakout wave that took more than a decade to build, this Nashville native eyes his biggest night in Music City yet: A headlining show at Bridgestone Arena. Jelly Roll plays the downtown venue Dec. 9; proceeds from the concert benefit Impact Youth Outreach, a local nonprofit serving at-risk youth in the metro.

Ticket information for Jelly Roll at Bridgestone Arena can be found at jellyroll615.com.

"I love Nashville because it molded me," DeFord said. "The eclectic-ness of this city made it where I'm able to mix rap with country music and country with rock music. This city has done so much for me. I've also seen the other side of this city that's so neglected. The side where the neon lights don't shine bright. The dark alleys and corners and crevices where kids are hopeless.

"These kids are one decision away from never being able to turn back. ... I'm passionate about what I can do to help kids from making that decision."

From Antioch to arena stage

A towering 37-year-old with tattoos crawling down his forehead and across his face, DeFord often flashes a sprinkling of gold teeth and conjures his room-warming laugh when asked about one of his life's oldest loves: Nashville. The youngest of four siblings, he was raised in working class Antioch, just miles away — yet a world apart — from Music Row.

As the family baby, he never controlled the radio. Instead, DeFord absorbed his dad's love for James Taylor and sister's passion for Metallica. An older brother introduced him to Notorious B.I.G. and his mother often played Motown or outlaw country.

"To me, there's two kinds of music: Music that's meant to be heard and music that's meant to be felt," DeFord said. "And I was exposed at an early age with a music that was meant to be felt."

He understood as a child how the best songs can pull someone up from a low point, and he soon began aspiring to be a "rocker" or "rapper," as DeFord said he wrote on his elementary school papers.

But first, DeFord took a detour that could've permanently derailed his life. As a teenager and into his 20s, he was arrested and served time for aggravated robbery and possession with intent to sell charges, respectively.

His brimming personality deflates briefly as he describes his "embarrassing" felonious decisions. But DeFord knew after his daughter was born nearly 14 years ago that he needed to "dive in deep" on supporting his family with music.

"I still accept collect calls every day," DeFord said. "I have cellmates [who] are doing double-life that'll never get to experience the success I tell 'em about on the phone, even to come watch. I'm like, 'I played Tortuga [Festival] yesterday ... and they're just like, 'Yeah, we don't understand.'"

The son of a sinner

DeFord didn't leave his cell and step into sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium, of course. He nearly walked away from music when album sales and door cuts weren't supporting his family.

But sitting nine years ago at a booth in the back of Midtown bar Tin Roof — a regular haunt for DeFord and his father before the latter died in 2019 (DeFord still crashes the bar or nearby staple Whiskey Jam often) — his dad told him that giving up wasn't an option.

"He said, 'Son, if you would've invested this time into being a brain surgeon, you would've been. You can't be giving up up this close to the finish line,'" DeFord said. "Fast forward, I live in the same neighborhood as a (expletive) brain surgeon. He ended up totally on the money."

He added, "If you're willing to put the time and energy into it, there's no way it doesn't return. Whatever that is in life."

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And in the last year, DeFord continues to experience returns unlike any before in his life. While scoring a Gold certification for "Creature," his 2020 hip-hop collaboration with independent powerhouse Tech N9ne, DeFord began writing and releasing songs that lean into a country and rock influence — connecting to his audience with plainspoken pain and hard-living tales that many take to heart.

In 2021, he inked a deal with Nashville's BBR Music Group to release major label debut "Ballads of the Broken." DeFord celebrated the release with a sold-out Ryman Auditorium show — a long way from the bar gigs he once played at Silverado Dance Hall on Murfreesboro Pike.

"I didn't think we were gonna sell it out at all," DeFord said of the Ryman show. "I'm still the kid at heart that expects everything not to go my way."

Spoiler: He sold it out in minutes.

Audiences at the Ryman and beyond flock to his warm, remedial voice — on songs like the standout self-reflection "Save Me" and mold-breaking country ballad "Son Of A Sinner" — in droves, pushing DeFord to more than one billion song streams across popular music platforms.

Listeners often flood his inbox by the thousands, connecting with a sincere vulnerability in his songs. Some listeners tell DeFord that his music pulled them off an emotional ledge; others may share that it offered hope during an intense medical treatment or provided a soundtrack to a loved one's funeral.

"If 999 of 1,000 of those messages are a complete exaggeration, and one person's telling the truth," he said, pausing to wipe tears from his eyes, "wow. ... It's way easier for me to sing it than say it."

Nashville music manager Matt Wallace began working with DeFord around 2017, immediately noticing the leathery bond between singer and fan. Inspired by the message in his songs, Wallace punted on a career at a CPA firm to instead help DeFord "make sure that he doesn't have 100,000 monthly listeners, he has a million monthly listeners," he said.

And with DeFord, he sees an artist delivering a communal experience for those needing connection, Wallace said.

"This is church for a lot of people, when they go to a Jelly show," Wallace said. "They walk away and send a message months later that says, 'Hey, I'm nine months clean since the show in Silver Springs, Maryland.'"

'Songwriting was always my passion'

Now, DeFord announces his first headlining arena show in his hometown on the same week he tops the Mediabase Active Rock radio chart with hard-edged single "Dead Man Walking." The song reaches No. 1 as he simultaneously cracks top 30 on country radio with the introspective "Son of a Sinner" — a crossover achievement unheard of from a modern artist.

And he'll continue to straddle a line between genres in 2022 when DeFord bounces from tour dates with modern rock staple Shinedown to sharing a stage with Nashville hitmaker Brantley Gilbert.

"Songwriting was always my passion, it just came out in the form of rap," DeFord said on moving from hip-hop to rock and country. "When I listen back to my old mixtapes, I was singing the hooks, I just didn't know I was singing. I was afraid I was afraid to open up and sing."

Now, DeFord offers a message that extends beyond the stage and all-hours Music Row writing room he and his team opened in 2019. He dedicates time locally to sharing his story with at-risk youth.

DeFord hopes that — when struggling youth hear a story of positive change coming from a best-selling Nashville artist with face tattoos and gold teeth who once made similar decision — his time evokes substantial change. In Nashville, he'll donate proceeds from the arena show to expanding his outreach. He aims to match proceeds with a $100,000 out-of-pocket donation.

"The Gideons were the only people who came to see us in jail," DeFord said, adding: "I appreciated it, because I found the word of God. But, equally, I didn't relate to that man in that suit. Nobody came through that ever looked like me.

"They need relatability. They don't see nothing but failure. They don't think success is even an option."

Maybe sharing his story helps ensure there's one less jail cell for guards to come knocking on.

"I still choke down tears every single night of tour," DeFord said. "Every single night there's a moment on stage where I'm overwhelmed with gratitude and also the feeling of accomplishment of what my original goal was: to help people with music."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jelly Roll's unstoppable journey from underground to headliner