Fans come to a Jelly Roll show for more than just a good time. Often, they’re seeking a little soul-soothing communion from an artist who sings openly and eloquently about life’s darkest moments.
Nowhere was that truer than at the Greensboro, N.C., stop on Jelly’s Backroad Baptism Tour on Friday (Oct. 6), when a fan showed up to the show with a sign that stopped Jelly Roll in his tracks.
“‘She’s my baby sister,” the sign read, in reference to the hit song Jelly wrote about his mother and the women around him who have faced addiction. For this fan, though, “She” reminds him of his younger sister, whose picture he included on his sign.
“F–k Fentanyl. 4ever 21,” the sign also read, indicating that the fan’s singer died at the age of 21 after a drug overdose.
@thecrazyhillbillygaming @Jelly Roll Jelly Roll sang “She” for my baby sister Meredith in Heaven 🙌 #jellyroll #jellyrollshe #restinpeaceangel #mentalhealthmatters #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth ♬ original sound – The Crazy Hillbilly 🤠
“I love you brother. And I thank you for coming here to represent her,” Jelly Roll told the fan from the stage, emotion in his voice. “I wasn’t sure if we were gonna sing this song tonight. I’m gonna sing it for you.”
From there, he launched into a live performance of “She” as the crowd sang along, and the fan who attended the show in his late sister’s honor sat down in the crowd, overcome with emotion.
Jelly Roll has a long history of standing with those battling addiction and their loved ones, both in his music and in his life; earlier this summer, he played a special show for addicts in a prison-based Virginia Beach, Va., recovery program.
A powerful synthetic opioid, fentanyl is “the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered,” according to U.S. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. The spread of fentanyl, both intentionally consumed and sold in fake drugs mimicking other opiates, is a massive driver behind the opioid epidemic’s fatalities. In 2022, 73,654 people across the U.S. died of a fentanyl overdose, according to USAFacts.org. That’s more than double the amount of deaths from fentanyl overdoses in 2019.
The Backroad Baptism Tour concludes on Saturday (Oct. 14) in Tampa, Fla.
