Jesse Welles

One Liner:  Modern protest music for the current moment

Wikipedia Genre:  rock, folk, folk punk

Home: Ozark, Arkansas

Poster Position: Top Quarter - Line 5

Both Weekends
Friday at 4:15

T-Mobile Stage

Thoughts:  My guy is coming to the Bourbon and Beyond festival, and I remember being confused to see him on the third line of that poster.  Because he is on par with Counting Crows, Forster the People, Goose, and Jason Isbell.  Which is some heady company for someone I had never heard of.  But I think he's hot shit right now as part of the current protest against all of the corruption and evil in our current government, so he is having a moment.

Real name is Jesse Allen Breckenridge Wells, and he originally performed as Jeh Sea Wells, then as the front-man of the bands Dead Indian, Cosmic-American, and Welles.  Wait, I remember Welles.  They came to ACL a long time ago, but I really liked their brand of psych rock.  "Are You Feeling Like Me" was a jam.

But now, he is a completely different brand of fella.  This should be fun: "In 2024, Welles garnered attention on social media for writing and performing folk protest songs, including "The Poor", "Cancer", "The Olympics", "United Health", "Join ICE", and "War Isn't Murder", a track about the Gaza war."  I can't wait to hear "United Health" rail on the man!  It is apparently appreciated by the Man, though, as he received four nominations for the 2026 Grammy Awards.  Dave Matthews introduced him at Farm Aid as "one of the best songwriters I've ever heard in my life."  Which is high praise.  I wonder if Dave has heard Jason Isbell?

Holy shit.  OK, this is awesome.  You can listen to it and tell what he is saying because his lyrics are pretty clear, but here are the lyrics to "Join ICE."

[Verse 1]

Well, if you're lookin' for purpose in the current circus

If you're seekin' respect and attention

If you're in need of a gig that'll make you feel big

Come with me and put some folks in detention

[Verse 2]

Just last week was kind of tough, I put a kid in cuffs

I zip-tied a lady to a van

We can sneak around town, hunt workin' folks down

I hear they got a great benefit plan

[Chorus]

Join ICE, boy, ain't it nice?

Join ICE, take my advice

If you're lackin' control and authority

Come with me and hunt down minorities

Join ICE

[Verse 3]

Well, I failed the academy, the cops weren't havin' me

The Army didn't sound that fun

So I found me a paramilitary operation

That was keen to hand me a gun

[Verse 4]

I got picked on at school, I never felt that cool

There's a hole in my soul that just a-rages

All the ladies turned me down, and I felt like a clown

But will you look at me now, I'm puttin' folks in cages

[Chorus]

At ICE, we're respectin' power

Join ICE, I hear they got great hours

There's a sign-on bonus of 50 grand

They're in need of you needin' to feel like a man

Join ICE

After reading about the absolute nutjob who recently murdered Johan Sebastian Suran Guerrero in Maine, this absolutely hits a true note.  The ICE agent was an Army veteran who had serious mental health issues since early childhood.  When he told his ex-wife that he had been hired by ICE, she assumed he was having a mental health episode and was lying.  They broke up after his abuse, including throwing boiling water at her while she was holding their child.  Only the brightest and the best!!!

The rest of these tunes are similar - mostly basic little pluckin' ditties with him singing pointed lyrics about why our system sucks.  "The Poor" has great lyrics too.  

The new album, 2026's Masks Off, keeps in the same vein but a little more rock forward.  "Red" has a groove to it that is fun as well.  "Masks Off" has an anger and truth to it that is very good as well.  "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 damn stupid, they think you're so damn crazy.  Killing people from a distance in an instant, at the insistence of a president, with a blackmail gun to his head, for the fun that he had in the Dark Ages, pages and pages and pages and pages, they thought they'd get away with it."  In the background, I feel like that guitar riff he is using during the verses sounds like one from a Rage Against the Machine song.  Can't put my finger on which one.  Just under a million streams.

The unfortunate thing is that the right people will never hear that song.  Although, I suppose, the people I think ought to hear just wouldn't give a shit because that is the whole point.  They're getting money and power despite their terrible behavior and destruction of the proper order of the world.  Pretty good guitar solos in there too.  "The Ballad of Big Balls" comes on like the Georgia Satellites singing about keeping your hands to yourself and yet is singing about the failure of DOGE, I think.  "Domestic Error" is a good one about making up terror to scare people.

I'd absolutely go watch this guy play.