For Jelly Roll, enacting positive change in the world often starts with the very community that raised him.

Even though his fast-growing country superstardom has taken to every corner of the U.S. — and beyond — Jelly still makes it a priority to give back to his home community, including the Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center: The same place where he was incarcerated as a teen.

During a new Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist interview, Jelly explains how he recently partnered with the facility, and even teamed up with the attorney who once prosecuted him.

“I said, ‘I am all in. I will hang drywall and cut a check. Tell me which one you need me to do, if not both,'” the singer recounts.

With Jelly’s support, the program will provide support for at-risk and incarcerated youth in middle Tennessee, offering GED and vocational training programs.

“It started with me just having extreme accountability,” Jelly says, explaining how he got involved with giving back to his community. “Going, ‘Man, I helped make this mess.’ And then, as my heart started getting right, getting more pure, I started feeling a responsibility to go clean it up.”

Earlier this summer, Jelly was onsite during the ground breaking of Nashville’s new juvenile court, and spoke to the importance of emphasizing rehabilitation in addressing youth crime and incarceration.

“A lot of these kids are a victim of their circumstances, where they came from,” the singer explained to press at the August event. “So this is a really cool chance to change things.”

Jelly’s commitment to providing support to at-risk and incarcerated youth in Nashville dates back to the very beginnings of his mainstream country music success.

For his first-ever sold-out show at the city’s Bridgestone Arena in late 2022, he earmarked proceeds for the creation of a new recording studio at the Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center. Jelly has said that his time in jail is where he first discovered his passion for music: A talent that would ultimately help him break the cycle of incarceration and recidivism that he experienced as a young person.

• The singer’s first jail stay took place at a youth detention facility when he was 14 years old.
• For the next decade, he was in and out of jails, mostly on drug-related charges.
• At 16 years old, he was tried as an adult and served an 18-month sentence for aggravated robbery, an incident in which he and others “robbed a couple of guys for some weed” while armed, he explained in a 2023 Joe Rogan interview.
• Tennessee has a zero-forgiveness policy for violent offenders, so Jelly has been carrying an inexpugnable felony ever since.
• Recently, Jelly has talked about how that charge makes it difficult for him to tour internationally, since it was hard for him to obtain a passport. He finally played his first dates in Canada earlier this year.

Jelly’s stop on the Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist was in support of his new album, Beautifully Broken, which drops on Friday (Oct. 11.)

Source: TasteofCountry