Jesse Welles, a Folk Musician Who Sings the News, Is Turning the Page
Welles, a singer-songwriter with a shaggy, dirty-blond mane and a sandpapery voice, has risen to recent prominence posting videos to social media of himself alone in the woods near his home in northwest Arkansas, performing wryly funny, politically engaged folk songs. He's managed to turn subjects like the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight-loss drug Ozempic and the rapaciousness of United Healthcare's business model into viral hits on TikTok and Instagram, building an audience of more than 2 million followers on those platforms. But the song he was recording in that basement in East Nashville, 'Simple Gifts,' is a different beast.
As he delicately plucked his acoustic guitar, he sang its earnest opening lines — 'Slouching towards the sky's extent from the edges of a waste / Was something darker than a hope, something brighter still than fate' — sketching out an imagistic tableau untouched by current events. Welles's new album, 'Middle,' due Feb. 21, is similarly minded.
'The only filter placed on it was I wasn't doing topical songs for this project,' he said. 'These are ones that are self-indulgent, or at least I feel like they are at times. I like to do both. They're two different mediums.' Image Jesse Welles's protest songs deftly blend the whimsical with the serious, turning topics like Walmart and the war in Gaza into viral hits on TikTok and Instagram. Credit... Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York Times
The producer, Eddie Spear, rose from behind a mixing board and adjusted the microphone in front of Welles. Most of the songs on 'Middle' are recorded with a full band, but for 'Simple Gifts' and the album's title track, the setup was pared down to a solitary microphone. 'I'm trying to honor what people are enjoying about Jesse,' said Spear, who has also worked with Zach Bryan and Sierra Ferrell. 'We thought getting a really simple capture in this way might tie in where he's come from and honor this particular period of his career.'
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