Jelly Roll Tour Dates 2026 — Full Schedule, Cities & Venues

Jelly Roll Tour Dates — FAQ

About Jelly Roll

Jason Bradley DeFord was born December 4, 1984 in Antioch, a working-class neighborhood on the southern edge of Nashville, Tennessee. He picked up the Jelly Roll nickname from his mother in childhood and kept it through middle school, through the early scrapes with the law that landed him in juvenile detention before he was old enough to drive, and through the multiple incarcerations as a young adult that he has spoken about openly in interviews ever since. The first mixtape, The Plain Shmear Tape, dropped in 2003 when he was eighteen and just out of one of those stints; the next decade ran through a long catalogue of independent hip-hop and Southern rap releases on his own SlumeRok and Bailee & Buddy labels, collaborations with Lil Wyte, Memphis-Tennessee rap legend Haystak, Tech N9ne's Strange Music orbit, and a loyal but underground YouTube and SoundCloud following that kept him touring small clubs across the Southeast without ever cracking mainstream radio.

The pivot began quietly. By the mid-2010s the songs on his mixtapes were drifting toward acoustic guitar, country phrasing, gospel choruses and confessional verses about addiction, incarceration, mental health and recovery. The 2020 single "Save Me" — a stripped-back acoustic ballad about asking for help before it's too late — caught fire on TikTok during the pandemic year and pulled him onto country radio for the first time. The album Self Medicated and the EP Ballads of the Broken followed across 2020 and 2021 and pushed the country crossover further. By 2022 he was opening for Eric Church and Shinedown on arena tours, picking up CMT Music Awards, and signing his first major-label country deal with Stoney Creek Records (a BBR Music Group/BMG imprint).

Whitsitt Chapel arrived in June 2023 and made the crossover official: a country-rock-gospel record named after the church his grandmother attended, it debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and was reportedly held off the top spot only by Taylor Swift's Speak Now re-recording. The Lainey Wilson duet version of "Save Me" topped country radio. "Need a Favor" went multi-platinum. "Halfway to Hell" extended the country radio run. The 2023 CMA Awards saw him win New Artist of the Year and Musical Event of the Year for "Save Me". Grammy nominations followed in two cycles, including Best New Artist. The 2024 album Beautifully Broken arrived in October 2024 and debuted at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200, his first chart-topping record. Touring scaled from theater-and-amphitheater co-headline runs to full headline arena tours by 2024, with the production growing into a full multi-instrument road band and a horn section on select dates. He has been candid in every press interview about the long arc — the years in and out of correctional facilities, the substance use he has worked to leave behind, the partnership with his wife Bunnie Xo, the daughter and son who anchor the home life he writes about — and that openness is the connective tissue between the prison-and-recovery songwriter narrative and the arena-headliner brand.

Related