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Jelly Roll shared a video of a powerful moment he shared on stage with four men incarcerated in a county jail.
The reigning iHeartRadio Best New Artist in both Pop and Country categories recently performed in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was one of many stops on Jelly Roll’s ongoing “Beautifully Broken Tour” after releasing his latest studio record by the same title.
Jelly Roll told the crowd he was “fixing to do something that I’m never gonna do again on this tour. This is gonna be the only time this might ever happen in my career, actually.” That day, Jelly Roll had “the most unique experience” in a jail, where he learned about the HARP program. HARP, which stands for Helping Addicts Recover Progressively, is described as a nonprofit that “was created in 2016 inside the Chesterfield County Jail to combat the heroin and opioid epidemic,” per the program’s Instagram account that Jelly Roll tagged when he posted the video on Tuesday (November 5). Jelly Roll said he was “so grateful to HARP for allowing us to spend time with these men and women, and for being the reason this incredible moment was able to take place. Also want to say a huge thank you to Sheriff [Karl] Leonard!”
“I’m about to share a story with you because we’re fixing to do something that I’m never gonna do again on this tour. This is gonna be the only time this might ever happen in my career, actually,” Jelly Roll shared with the crowd in the video he posted on Instagram on Tuesday. “Today, I had the most unique experience I’ve ever had in a jail. A local county jail that has a program that is teaching people how to recover the right way, through therapy and through music, through redemption and giving a real second chance. I left there and I couldn’t quit thinking about them. And I called that local sheriff and I said, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I never got a chance to see if the dream could be real. Would you please bring those inmates to this show tonight so that they could see the dream? If you would please give these young men a second, just show them that it can happen because it happened for me and I was in this same kind of place.’ I can’t believe I’m fixing to say this, but that sheriff is such a visionary, he said, ‘you know what? I will bring those men to come sing for these people tonight in Virginia.’
“These men woke up in the county jail and they’re gonna go to sleep int he county jail, but for the next hour, they get to live like us for a minute and sing a little music,” Jelly Roll continued as he introduced the four men to the stage. “If anybody believes in second chances, it’s a f***ing Jelly Roll show, right?”
“One of the most special moments of my career happened last night,” Jelly Roll said in an earlier post. “Before the show, I had the honor of stopping by a jail in Chesterfield, Virginia where they have a program called Helping Addicts Recover Progressively (HARP). I’ve had the pleasure of getting to visit and talk to the folks in this program before, but this time something surreal took place. Sheriff Leonard allowed 4 members of the program to not only come to the show, but come on stage and perform the music with me.
“I don’t know what it was about me, but I only ever believed things could happen whenever I got close enough to see them happening in front of me,” he continued. “My hope with bringing these men out on stage with me is that they can see a larger picture of what life can become. The place they’re in now is not the end, and the future can be so much more than their wildest dreams. I can never thank and praise the HARP program enough for making this happen, the work they’re doing is truly invaluable.”
Together, the four men put their own spin on Jelly Roll’s “Unpretty,” a song he wrote with Ryan Tedder, Stefan Johnson, Jordan K. Johnson and Amy Allen. Watch that moment here (warning: language).