Photo by Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Swift River Productions

“To me, country music is three chords and the truth, and I know in my soul that what I do … is write three chords and the truth,” Jelly shares during a chat with the Full Send podcast.

“I know if I don’t write nothing else, I write the truth.”

“There’s two different things,” he explains. “There’s being country and being country music. Because even country music as far as time has been wasn’t always just super country rednecks, you know what I mean?… It’s like country music’s always had a wide stroke. Like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson wasn’t singing about fishing or hunting… and they were as authentically country as you could be.”

“So the country thing — long answer Bubba because I’ve been wanting to talk about this — is to me, it’s just my spirit is country music.”

Growing up just outside of downtown Nashville, Jelly Roll was exposed to the genre by proxy. However, he was introduced to country music within the walls of his childhood home.

“My mother listened to country — real outlaw country, like Waylon and Willie,” he says. “You know what I mean? Like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard.”

“90s country too,” Jelly adds. “Tracy Lawrence, George Strait, Garth Brooks. Dude, I could probably sing more Garth Brooks songs than Garth Brooks can.”

Jelly Roll also treated fans to Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” at every one of his tour stops last year.