Entertainment
Jesse Welles: Keeping the spirit of American folk music alive
The story of America can be told through the lyrics of folk music – songs of the Great Depression, the civil rights era, and the social revolutions of the 1960s. As folk singer Pete Seeger put it in 1967, “A song isn’t a speech; a song is not an editorial. If a song tries to be an editorial or a speech, often it fails as a song. The best songs tell a story, paint a picture, and leave the conclusion up actually to the listener.”
And if you’re wondering whether folk music is still relevant today, take a listen to Jesse Welles. He is 33 years old, with a voice older than his years, and a message that speaks across generations:
It ain’t the banks
And it ain’t the taxes
It ain’t the payday loans and the high rent homes
And predatory fees and practices …
If you worked a little harder
Then you’d have a lot more
So the blame and the shame’s on you
For being so damn poor, yeah
From “The Poor”
CBS News
If it seems fitting right now to have a guy with six strings singing about the times, Welles said, “Every dog has its day!”
Well, it’s your own damn fault you’re so damn fat
Shame, shame, shame
All the food on the shelf was engineered for your health
So you’re gonna have to take the blame
From “Fat”
Welles can be soft-spoken in person, but behind the microphone he sings loud and clear. He takes aim at anyone he thinks takes advantage of working people – the “folks” in folk music.
There ain’t no “you” in UnitedHealth
There ain’t no “me” in the company
There ain’t no “us” in the private trust
There’s hardly “humans” in humanity
From “UnitedHealth”
At a Greenwich Village record store last fall, Welles dug through his musical roots, and his mother’s influence: “She really liked Crosby, Stills and Nash, and she liked Fleetwood Mac,” he said. “She liked pretty, pretty music. But no one was really talking about Dylan. So, I suppose that was maybe the first solo space mission I flew, was to go and find, like, some hard folk music.”
CBS News
He was in New York to perform on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where he chose a song that speaks to the unease some feel about our moment in history:
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
From “Join ICE”
Welles is up for four Grammy Awards Sunday, recognition that this troubadour from Ozark, Arkansas, never expected, especially considering his talents seemed to be more on the football field rather than the stage.
He wasn’t always comfortable with his voice, which his sister said sounds like burnt toast. “But burnt toast is still edible!” he laughed.
With that simple and direct “‘burnt toast” sound, Welles gets millions of views on social media.
War isn’t murder
Good men don’t die
Children don’t starve
And all women survive
War isn’t murder
That’s what they say
When you’re fighting the devil
Murder’s okay
From “War Isn’t Murder”
He tapes himself, alone in the Arkansas hills, with lyrics that can seem ripped from the headlines, as in “No Kings.” But he laughs when asked if he sees himself as a political figure: “A political … ? Wow! No!”
Those songs got their start in his spare bedroom-turned-studio, where he played for us a new one:
I knew a man, his only wish
To answer to no one, drink like a fish.
He worked real hard and he got it all.
There was plenty to drink, and no one to call.
If you look down the road, you’ll see the sun
And it makes time, as you take time,
Just to end where you’ve begun.
I’ve got peace like a river.
I’ve got time.
I don’t need a thing
That ain’t already mine.
From “Peace Like a River”
Asked what he’s trying to say in his songs, Welles replied, “I can’t tell you what it means. Like, it’s up to everybody. Nobody is going to paint anything and tell you, ‘This is what I mean when I painted this.’ You know, that’s no fun. That takes away your experience.”
Welles has been embraced by legends of folk and rock. He recently performed with John Fogerty, and late last year he went into the studio with Joan Baez, bridging generations and bringing in new audiences.
Joan Baez and Jesse Welles perform “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” at The Filmore in San Francisco:
For Jesse Welles, it is his way of keeping the spirit of American folk music alive. “I think it’s important that it doesn’t go away,” he said. “It’s something that you know has been going on, it’s been going on for centuries and centuries. You wake up one morning and you go, this is what I do. This is what I was supposed to do.”
You can stream Jesse Welles’ Grammy-nominated album “Under the Powerlines (April 24 – September 24)” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
For more info:
Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.
Entertainment
Why Barry Keoghan is stepping back from the spotlight?
It’s not all red carpet and applause for Barry Keoghan – and he’s not pretending otherwise.
The 33-year-old actor got candid during a recent chat on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up, revealing that the internet’s darker corners are starting to take a real toll.
“I think I removed myself from online, but I’m still a curious human being that wants to go on and, if I attend an event or if I go somewhere, you want to see how it was received. And it’s not nice,” Barry said in a clip shared by Elite Daily.
“There’s a lot of hate online. It’s a lot of abuse of how I look.”
And it’s not just a passing annoyance – it’s changing how he lives.
“And I say this being absolute pure and honest to you. It’s becoming a problem,” he admitted.
“So yeah, I don’t have to hide away because I am hiding away. I don’t have to go to places because I actually don’t go to places because of these things. But when that starts leaking into your art, it becomes a problem because then you don’t even want to be on screen anymore.”
That last part hits hard – because when an actor starts avoiding the screen, we all lose.
But the most gut-punch moment? It’s not even about him.
“It is disappointing for the fans, but it’s also disappointing that my little boy has to read all of this stuff when he gets older,” Barry shared.
Entertainment
Justin Timberlake’s Hamptons DWI arrest video has been released
Justin Timberlake’s attempt to keep his DWI arrest footage out of the public eye has failed and the video is now out, showing the singer stumbling during sobriety tests and telling officers, “These are, like, hard tests.”
Timberlake, 45, had filed a lawsuit against the Long Island town of Sag Harbor earlier this month in a bid to prevent the footage from being released.
That effort was unsuccessful.
The video shows the SexyBack singer being pulled over in his grey 2025 BMW before being put through a series of field sobriety tests by officers.
He appeared confused and unsteady throughout. When asked to walk a straight line, he stumbled a couple of times. As the pressure of the situation mounted, he told the officers, “My heart’s racing.”
He was polite throughout the encounter, responding to officers with “yes, sir”, but declined to take a breathalyser test on multiple occasions.
A female companion arrived at the scene after he was handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car, offering to drive his vehicle away.
Timberlake was arrested in June 2024 and charged with one count of driving while intoxicated, along with two traffic citations for failing to stop at a stop sign and failing to keep right.
According to a source who spoke to Page Six at the time, he had been at the historic American Hotel in Sag Harbor for dinner with friends before being pulled over, with police reportedly stationed outside.
Friends on the scene pleaded with officers to let him go.
One detail that emerged at the time painted a particularly awkward picture of how the night unfolded.
“The cop didn’t know who he was at first,” a source told Page Six. “Justin said under his breath, ‘This is going to ruin the tour.’ The cop replied, ‘What tour?’ Justin said, ‘The world tour.'”
His mugshot, taken after he was brought into custody, showed visibly bloodshot eyes.
Timberlake subsequently took a plea deal, with his DWI charge reduced to a traffic violation rather than a criminal offence.
Entertainment
‘General Hospital’ star Jacob Young makes major revelation
Jacob Young has spoken publicly for the first time about a seven-year opioid addiction that began with a routine dental prescription and spiralled in secret, hidden even from his own wife.
The General Hospital actor, 46, made the revelation on the Imperfectly Perfect Podcast, tracing the roots of his substance use back to a difficult childhood and describing how addiction eventually took hold of a significant portion of his adult life.
“I went through seven years of my life, wasted on opioids, still trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I didn’t know,” he said.
“It was just needing to numb… It was the only thing that made me feel normal.”
The opioids came into his life through an unexpected route.
After he and his wife Christen Steward had bought a house and settled in together, Young underwent dental surgery and was prescribed Vicodin.
Apart from having his wisdom teeth out as a teenager, he had never taken opioids before. What followed was years of dependency that he kept entirely to himself.
Young’s history with substances had begun much earlier, though.
He started smoking marijuana around the age of 14, and it wasn’t until his mid-20s, when fame from roles on All My Children, General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful brought him into the orbit of New York City’s nightlife, that drinking and cocaine use entered the picture.
By the time he married, he had largely left those behind. The opioids were a different story.
He eventually sat his wife down and told her the truth, a conversation he credits as the turning point. From there, he sought counselling and medical support to work through his dependency.
Looking back, Young connects his substance use to a childhood defined by instability.
His parents divorced and he was shuffled between them in a way that left him unsettled. The family relied on welfare and food stamps, and Young grew up alongside three older siblings in what he described as a humble upbringing.
In his adolescence, he went to live with his father, which felt stable, until his stepmother, who had become like a second mother to him, died by suicide.
His relationship with his father broke down in the aftermath, and a difficult relationship with his mother at the time left him without a reliable parental figure during some of his most formative years.
“I was going through stuff that I didn’t realise that I was ever going to go through, emotionally,” he said, a quiet acknowledgement of just how much had been buried, long before the prescriptions began.
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