Brantley Gilbert couldn’t be more proud of the song that he and Jelly Roll collaborated on.
Fresh off the release of his latest album, Sins of the Father, the country singer joined the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast and talked to us about his very personal record, broke down his song “F***ed Me Up” that featured over 15 f-bombs, the importance of being open about mental health, and how he feels that modern music consumption has hurt country’s storytelling.
Gilbert also talked to us about the challenges of splitting time on the road and with his family, how he’s gotten back into church, the work he does to help veterans and why he saw Toby Keith as such an inspiration, and how the one feature with Jelly Roll on Sins of the Father tackled homelessness.
The country singer says that the idea for the song “Begging for Change” was born out of a real life experience that Jelly Roll had close to when he and Brantley were writing together:
“He was an integral part of that song, and a driving force of that song. The whole thing came from (when) he came into a write one day and was a little heavy. He just looked like he had something on his mind. We stepped out to smoke and I said, ‘Dude, you good?’
He said, ‘Yeah, I was leaving an event for the label this morning and there was a homeless dude by the vehicle.’ He recognized him. It wasn’t that he recognized him that bothered him. It was that he went to school with the guy, and Jelly said he was always the guy that was the life of the party and the least likely to be homeless.”
That really stuck with Jelly Roll, and Gilbert saw it as an opportunity to write a song that could help people.
They quickly got to work on the song, which basically tells the exact story that Jelly Roll laid out for Gilbert. The two artists also paired it with something that Brantley has said ever since he’s been in recovery:
“Nobody wakes up one day and says, ‘Man I think I want to be an alcoholic and a drug addict, be riddled with mental health issues and be homeless.’ Those are four things that truly are non-biased in any form or fashion. They don’t care what color you are, where you came from, who your parents are, or what tax bracket you are in. They just want you dead.
He and I coming from checkered backgrounds have a unique ability to kind of meet people where they are at. We speak that language. I never tell somebody that I know what they are going through. We’re all as different as our fingerprints. All of our rock bottoms are different, but they are still rock bottoms.”
Now, looking back on Sins of the Father, Gilbert truly believes that he and Jelly Roll’s collab is the album’s “ace up their sleeve.”
He and the “Need A Favor” singer saw an opportunity to shine a light on the condition known as homelessness, and built a song around a personal and heartbreaking interaction that Jelly Roll experienced. Gilbert hopes that the song can help those who are in a difficult and challenging circumstance:
“It’s kind of the ace up our sleeve on that album… as much as we all want to on every time we write one, few and far between are the moments where you are able to write a song that has the potential to help and relate to people that are in a not so great place and motivate them and incentivize them to get out of that whole they are in. This one does that.”
@whiskeyriff @Brantley Gilbert #jellyroll #whiskeyriff #whiskeyriffraff ♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff
You can hear about all of that and more from Brantley Gilbert by checking out the interview on YouTube or making sure to download the podcast on Apple Podcasts by searching “Whiskey Riff Raff” or by clicking here.
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Cheers, y’all.