First off, straight out of the gate, let me admit it: I’m no big fan of country music. I mean, OK, Johnny Cash in an all-black pearl-button open-collared shirt sitting on a wood stool alone on stage under a single spotlight with no backup save for his acoustic guitar, singing gravel-voiced from the bottom of his gut? Yeah, I can dig it. But what passes for country music these days? Whining and complaining and posing and pretending? Are you listening, Jason Aldean? Try that in a small town? Yeah, right. No thank you ma’am. I’ll pass.
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Maybe that’s why, when I saw my old friend Crispin Sartwell’s byline in the NY Times today attached to an article titled “Can Jelly Roll Heal the Broken Soul of America?” I was more than a little taken aback. Turns out, not only is Sartwell now retired from the philosophy faculty at Dickinson College in my natal town of Carlisle (PA). But he’s also in recovery (as in 12-steps, AA, and all the rest). Plus, he’s a big fan of the country musician Jelly Roll. What the…?
Now I wouldn’t know Jelly Roll (the country musician) from Jelly Roll Morton (the ragtime jazz pianist). But I do know that when Crispin Sartwell speaks, I sit up and take notice. (You can read a previous post I wrote praising him, here.) As Fate or Something would have it, the new album’s offerings plumb the depths of addiction, recovery, and our shared longing for a higher calling. To the delight not only of Crispin Sartwell, but apparently to the delight of a whole lot of other folks too.
Full disclosure: I’m probably not going to rush out and stream this one on Spotify. Still less likely is the possibility I might spend my hard-earned cash on a pair of front-row Jelly Roll concert tix. But the facts remain: If you’re intrigued, as I am; and if you delight in Sartwell’s taking a gratuitous shot at Taylor Swift’s billion-dollar Eras Tour; then maybe (just MAYBE) Jelly Roll might be the one for you. Gotta at least be as promising as the prospect of an AA meeting with bad coffee and stale cigarette smoke in the Whitsitt Chapel basement on a hot Tuesday night at the tail-end of July. Can I get an “Amen,” brothers and sisters?