The road to stardom is not a straight path.
At least not for most artists that make it. If it was, you’d see a lot more people getting in line trying to make it big. Instead, only the toughest and most persistent people make their dreams come true, often because they have to live through nightmares to get there.
One of those artists is Jelly Roll, who has an almost endless list of obstacles he had to overcome to make it to where he is today as a rapper-turned-country-music-artist. And he’s not shy about his past whatsoever, as he made clear on the Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast.
Jelly Roll sat down with the former Jackass star to talk about anything and everything about his career. Jelly teased new music coming soon, he spoke about his dog Bussy, and even how he and Bunny used to share a Tinder account to seek out threesomes (true story).
But one of the most interesting parts of the interview was towards the end, when Steve-O asked about “Early Dope Boy Promoter Shows.” You could see the bad memories rush back to Jelly Roll as he digested the question, and quickly fired back with an anecdote about some of the worst gigs he ever did, and what he had to do sometimes in order to get even:
“They were the worst. You talk about the biggest mistake we make as young, hungry artists is that we think…I know every opportunity is an opportunity, but every opportunity ain’t a good opportunity. All money ain’t good money.
We’ve had to steal TVs, pool cues, we went to jail, we fist fought bikers that were protecting the club owner…the shadiest shows. Always a promise, and (they’d) never deliver.”
Hey, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
Fortunately, Jelly Roll isn’t having to fist fight anyone or steal televisions anymore. The point of his career he’s at now has actually given the “Need A Favor” singer a lot of insight, as he hilariously explained as he continued:
“I look back now, I wouldn’t stop and get gas near some of those bars I played. And I was just out there, ****** arguing with an owner of this bar, or this promoter. Cause they’d have 30 openers, and they’d make every opener sell two tickets, and there would be 60 people there. It was ridiculous.”
You can hear more about Jelly Roll’s early start in the music industry, along with a plethora of other wild stories (guess that’s why the call it Steve-O’s Wild Ride) in the interview below:
