Jelly Roll Shares How a Dangerous Gig Sparked His Lifelong Pre-Show Prayer Ritual
It’s hard to picture Jelly Roll getting nervous about much of anything. The Nashville-born artist grew up in Antioch, Tennessee, one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods, and has seen more than his share of trouble — from hustling on the streets to spending time behind bars for drug dealing and armed robbery. But according to Jelly, there was one night on tour that rattled him enough to start a new tradition that’s stayed with him ever since: praying before every show.
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“We Should Probably Pray Before This One.”
Like most performers, Jelly Roll now gathers his crew for a pre-show prayer before hitting the stage. But as he recently told Miles Adcox on the Human School Podcast, that ritual began out of sheer fear during his early days playing sketchy bar gigs.
“We were playing in really rough bars early. Like sketchy, alleyway, trailers. We played a bar one night — I’m not making this up — with the old school chicken wire.”
He recalled asking the bar manager about the wire fencing that separated the band from the crowd:
“I’m like, ‘What’s that there for?’ He said, ‘Oh, they’re going to throw stuff at you tonight. They throw stuff at everybody.’”
That’s when Jelly realized he might need a little divine backup:
“I was like, ‘God, this is crazy.’ And that was the night that I was like, ‘Boys, we should probably pray before this one.’”
“The Most Awkward Prayer Ever”
Jelly joked that he “only talks to God when he needs a favor,” but that night, fear trumped pride.
“We all circled up. I just remember it was the most awkward prayer ever. We didn’t know how to pray, really. I’d prayed in jail, but never out loud. I just said, ‘God, just protect us in here.’”
Whether it was divine intervention or coincidence, the prayer seemed to work:
“We went in there, and we didn’t get nothing thrown at us. When I came offstage, we were like a bunch of degenerates — all drunk and on cocaine — and they were like, ‘It worked, man! The prayer worked. We gotta pray!’”
From Chicken Wire to the Juggalos
Not long after that, Jelly and his band were booked to play at The Gathering of the Juggalos, the infamous festival founded by Insane Clown Posse, where performers are routinely pelted with Faygo soda (a sign of affection, believe it or not).
He remembered watching another band get bottle rockets fired at them before his set. So once again, he led a pre-show prayer — and, miraculously, they were the only act that night who didn’t get hit.
“Hard to say prayer doesn’t work when it can even protect you from the Juggalos,” he laughed.
Evolving Faith
Over time, Jelly Roll’s prayers have evolved from self-protection to compassion. As his crowds grew, he began praying not only for his crew’s safety but for his fans as well.
“When I started noticing fights in the crowd, I prayed for the safety of my fans first,” he said. “And after we lost a fan in a DUI crash on the way home from a show, I started including that too — praying for everyone traveling back home.”
What began as a frightened plea in a dive bar has since become a spiritual cornerstone of his career — a way to stay grounded in humility, gratitude, and awareness of the people around him.
For those skeptical of prayer, it might sound like coincidence. But for Jelly Roll, it was a sign — a tangible moment when he felt that faith really does work.
“Needed some help from above to get through that one,” he said with a grin.
And maybe that’s what makes Jelly Roll so relatable — a man who’s lived rough, learned grace the hard way, and still bows his head before every show, just to say, “Thank You.”