Jelly Roll speaks candidly about his experience at Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, a subject he says he has never spoken about publicly before.
In a new interview with The New York Timesthe artist – who tops both the Mainstream Rock Airplay and Country Airplay charts – was asked about an unreleased song, “Winning Streak,” which will be featured on the upcoming album Beautifully brokenscheduled for release in fall 2024. “Winning Streak” “basically describes going to an AA meeting,” NYTnoted David Marchese in conversation. “Is alcohol addiction something you struggle with or have struggled with?”
Jelly Roll explained that the song was written “from the point of view of a story that I had actually seen happen” at an AA meeting he would attend “about my demons”.
“I still drink a cocktail every now and then and I'm a known weed smoker, but I got off the drugs that I knew would kill me,” Jelly Roll said of his relationship with drugs and alcohol in the podcast interview. which was published on Saturday (August 17).
He continued, “It was really hard for me to get off these drugs,” which he previously said included substances like cocaine, pain pills and codeine. “Something I do [for] Maintaining my relationship with these drugs is that I will continue to attend the meetings, even though I'm not a sober book guy — but I never share, I just sit quietly and appreciate the message and the meaning.'
Jelly Roll added, “It's the first time I've talked about it publicly. I don't tell people I go to meetings. It's not a part of my story that I share because I have so much respect for the men and women in this program who are truly completely sober that I never want my stuff to get in the way.”
Jelly Roll, who says in the chat that he's “actively getting better every day,” described the moment at an AA meeting that influenced his writing of “Winning Streak.” It tells someone else's story, but in the first person.
He said it felt right for this particular track and named first-person songs like James Taylor's “Carolina in My Mind” that have inspired and moved him, solely as a listener.
“This kid, he's going through it,” he said of the meeting that led to him writing “Winning Streak.” “One of the old men sitting there said, 'Look man, everything's fine. Nobody came in here on a winning streak.' It was such a beautiful thing. If you've ever been to an AA meeting, a big one, like this room had 20, 30 people, it felt like…. You see the room split when he said that 'cause half the room is old, sober guys who remember he's the young dude, so they laugh, and the other half are other guys who immediately feel it in their bones and cry. But it's the same feeling and emotion, and there it was. That was the beginning of the 'Winning Streak'.”
“Get By,” another new song from his upcoming album, will serve as the soundtrack for ESPN's season-long college football coverage on the ESPN and ABC networks. Jelly Roll, whose latest new music release is Post Malone's “Losers” collaboration F-1 Tris album, will hit the road for a series of headlining tours later this month.
Listen to his full interview, over half an hour long, with The New York Times below.
