It's known that Jelly Roll had a pretty tumultuous childhood, but this story is a pretty alarming one. When at the Country Radio Seminar with Eric Church, he let us in on one critical misunderstanding he had as a kid.
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Jelly Roll and Eric Church had a large breadth of conversation topics, such as the time Jelly Roll skinny dipped in the Columbia River.
Alongside talking about the good times, our Big Jelly touched on the bad times. In a clip he shared to Instagram, the "I Am Not Okay" singer spoke of a childhood story.
"I will never forget the conversation when I went to elementary school drunk," she started. Eric Church then asked him to elaborate more on the story, wanting to learn more about the young Jelly Roll.
"We lived in a middle-lower class neighborhood," he said. "Mother kinda struggled with drug addiction, daddy drank. You know what I mean?"
"I was probably 13-years old when I found out vodka wasn't a sweetner," he then said.
"If you watch vodka get poured in a Stanley coffee cup your whole life at 5 am, you just assume it's f--king Sweet'n Low until you're 13 and you want to drink some Sweet'n Low with your coffee," he laughed.
Jelly Roll Went To School After Confusing Vodka For Something Else
The clip cuts off there, and Jelly Roll doesn't elaborate further, but it's heavily implied that he poured some vodka into his coffee, following the acts of his father.
He must have thought it was some pretty strong coffee on the way to school. It's unknown how the teachers pulled him aside, but it can't have been an easy conversation, or an easy act to explain.
Jelly Roll has always been transparent with his upbringing. His songs are littered with traumas of the past and the demons that have stuck with him his whole life. Although he's laughing through the clip, you can tell it's another haunting memory.
The full clip of Eric Church and Jelly Roll's conversation is up on the official CRS YouTube channel. It's an invaluable conversation between two icons in the field. It's well worth a watch.
