Were fixing to do something that Im never going to do again on this tour.
A formerdrug dealerand recoveringaddict,Jelly Roll was having the biggest year of his life.
By the age of 40, hed been arrested around40 timesand as a teen, jailed foraggravated robbery.
Jelly Roll visited the Chesterfield County Jail’s HARP program Wed. Oct. 30, 2024.Mark Gormus/CHESTERFIELD COUNTY
They were coming on stage to sing with him.
Craig, Ejay, Kevin, and Amin up here right now!
he beckoned, finally.
Yall get on up here baby, come see your town!
Replying to @Cassie Gilbert We brought these inmates out on stage with us.
Also want to say a huge thank you to Sheriff Leonard!
The men jogged into place.
He pumped his microphoned fist in the air, a lyric sheet dangling in the other hand.
Craig, to his left, flexed one arm.
Ejay shook his raised mic like dice.
Kevin, with a dark acoustic guitar strapped to his chest, shook his head and bowed.
If anyone believes in second chances, its fucking Jelly Roll show, right?
the star bellowed to the raucous crowd.
Ejay and Craig had written their own rap verses to it.
For them to have failed would have been perfectly acceptable, Sheriff Leonard told me.
How ill-prepared can you be?
But Ejays original verse was steady and powerful.
And Craig, whod kept his cool all day, absolutely exploded.
[What] I kept bottled in, it came out while I was rapping.
It was a line I said, Chasing my dreams.
It hit me like a punch in the chest, he says.
The grey walls of cement bricks are lined with photos of her loved ones inside the jail and out.
In 2021, she became the director of mental health at the jail and the lead counselor for HARP.
Rhodes discovered tapping in her own healing before it revolutionized her work with others.
Then, there was their singing.
You know who your viewership is?
Leonard remembers Jelly Roll telling them.
Its me and my crew.
He got the job at the onset of the heroin epidemic that ravaged the nation and hit Chesterfield hard.
We were seeing 25 to 30 new people arrested every day with heroin addiction, he says.
Im not equipped to be a recovery center.
A lot of these folks never had a chance.
But I just knew we had to do something to change that cycle.
We just started throwing stuff at the wall.
Quite honestly, eight years later, were still throwing stuff at the wall.
The pathway to long-term recovery is a crazy map.
Not everybodys going to follow the same route.
Even among those who didnt graduate, the recidivism rate was 55 percent.
At the core of its success is Sheriff Leonard and his staffs innovative approach.
I interviewed countless HARP participants as well as their family members.
When we lost him, my trauma was so great that traditional therapythis think-and-talk-your-way-out-of-traumawas ridiculous.
I was like, I cant function.
And so, I started to look for other tools and came across tapping.
They can be triggered by trauma, and Trauma is the absence of safety, says Rhodes.
Not perfect, but perfectly imperfect, he adds, guiding them to tap between their eyebrows.
Rhodes couldnt believe how quickly it helped her cope.
She became certified to teach it around the time she had taken up substance abuse treatment advocacy.
She was nervous, having never been to one, but quickly found community as she described Taylors death.
They sob, I sob, they put me back together, she says.
I do, and then I never leave.
She specializes as a trauma therapist in HARP, teaching tapping and other creative means of coping.
Everybodys in survival when they come in, she explains.
Conversely: Nobodys in survival when theyre creating.
Its their solution, Rhodes offers.
They decide who comes in, Rhodes explains.
Theyve established 48 rules for the male participants and 52 rules for the women.
They set up their rules, they enforce the rules.
If they say, We want Cali to be moved, I dont ask any questions.
Cali, pick up your stuff.
Youre gone, says Leonard.
Were the guardrails, Rhodes adds.
We just check that it all stays on the track.
And once a HARP member finishes their sentence, theyre still encouraged to use the jails psychiatric services.
We start our work with you in earnest after release, says Leonard.
We maintain connection with you for years.
Through his music, Jelly Roll has been doing the same.
@Jelly Roll your lyrics speak to our souls!
Thank you for sharing them with us.
The day ofthe Charlottesville concert actually marked Jelly Rolls second visit to Chesterfield County Jail.
He had stopped by once before, in August 2023, after direct messaging with Rhodes through HARPTOK.
He came with an entourage, Leonard says.
He bought us tons of guitars and stuff.
Well, the first thing.
He walks in the door and says, Whos this crazy tapping lady?
Amin, the HARP quartets lead singer, wasnt there.
Hed first come to Chesterfield in 2022.. Ive always kind of just been stagnant, says Amin.
Been locked up, getting tattoos on my face, I cant get jobs that I want.
His HARP brothers feared he didnt have the tools to beat his addiction on the outside.
He had even snuck drugs into the jail.
They pleaded that he stay active with the program.
Before long, there was a new warrant out for his arrest for violating probation.
Its just such a terrible feeling, Amin says.
I cant even explain it.
However, Amin didnt know it couldnt work that way, and no one told him.
We set him up with this recovery home he wanted to go to, says Leonard.
The Sheriff had officers bring Amin back to jail through an arrest.
Leonard insists that Amins rearrest was an unpopular decision in the office.
You hear this thing probably over the country, the sheriff says.
We cant arrest our way out of this epidemic.
When Amin was forced back to Chesterfield, he wasnaturallypissed, says Rhodes.
She and a peer recovery specialist who had been working with Amin met him there.
Im like, I can live with you being mad, and youre alive, Rhodes recalls.
I cant live with anything happening to you.
This is not the way we wanted it to happen.
And he looks up, and he goes, Oh my God, Im so sorry.
I love both of you.
I know this is going to save my life.
Amin had been in HARP for seven months when Jelly Roll came back.
Yet, painfully introverted, his first time singing for an audience was just two months before.
He doesnt like the spotlight, but hes meant for it.
I like pushing them in a safe wayWe got you.
This cant go wrong.
Rhodes knew Jelly would be stopping in nearby Charlottesville and invited him to return.
Rhodes brought hisBeautifully BrokenCD in, and they tinkered with what they could play themselves.
Ejay wrote his rap verse to Unpretty after overhearing Amin singing it.
He had only restarted rapping in jail.
I just put God before everything.
God, recovery, then self.
It took me probably two minutes because its not hard to tell the truth.
So they didnt know Jelly was coming until Jelly walked through the door.
This time, he nestled in among the HARP family as different members performed for him.
He was a giddy high school kid, sitting in a concert himself, says Leonard.
He FaceTimed his wife, podcaster Bunnie XO, who has struggled with substance abuse as well.
He sang his hit Im Not Okay along with them; he cried a lot.
I like all the songs, says Amin, who sang about five of them to and with him.
I could relate to a lot of his songs; [the] struggle and the pain.
Jelly Roll left Chesterfield around 4 p.m. on October 30, but Chesterfield did not leave him.
He decided they could do it.
We were just stuck, says Amin.
We didnt know what to say.
Like, were in jail.
Who does this shit?
Ive done so much time, Amin says.
I used to think about this shit.
I used to lay in my bed, just picturing myself on stage.
Then he realized he needed a shower, a haircut, and, most importantly, clothes.
We had literally had an hour, says Leonard.
We went and got their clothes from when they were arrested; none of them fit.
We had to send people to Walmart.
Amin wore the same classic black-and-white Vans in Rhodes office.
After jumping through a series of hoops, they were on the road.
I rode in the car with them, had the four of them in the back, Leonard says.
They were so high.
This high, Amin told them, was better than any hed ever gotten from drugs.
Soon, it was their turn.
There had been a mix of nerves and shock among them but also a sense of power.
Im like, Yeah, were ready to shut this joint down.
Thats all Im telling them.
Everyonefrom the audience, to Shaboozey, to Jelly Rolls own bandwas blown away, says Leonard.
Jelly Rolls drummer gave them each a signed drum stick.
I remember the band was like, We dont cry.
We cried when they sang, says Rhodes.
Backstage, Amin confided in Jelly Roll about a largely unmemorable mistake he says he made while singing.
I was like, Hey man, Im so sorry I messed up, says Amin.
He was like, Dont be sorry, it sounded perfect.
Their dozens of HARP brothers are spending time together on the lower floor.
On another wall is a large photo of Rhodes and her son Taylor.
A woman named Ashley, in a dainty voice, tells me what the quartets performance meant to her.
In active addiction, we lose our dreams, she says.
To watch them live out their dreams it just made us dream again.
Ejay now writes every day.
I was playing out in open mic nights, he recalls.
It would lead back to using every time.
Using something to feel comfortable in front of people.
The one thing I learned in 200 years of corrections is we failed, he says.
Theres been no rehabilitation going on.
My older deputies have been conditioned to say, Lock them up, throw the key away.
Youre a bad person.
Theyve been bolstered by younger deputies who believe in something new, he explains.
It has the potential to save even more money by emptying prisons and jails through real recovery.
Were talking to inmates now.
We call them by their first name.
I dont even know their inmate numbers.
We have a relationship with them; we sit with them, and we talk to them.
We cry with them quite often, Leonard says.
People continue to die because the rules were made for confinement in the 1920s.
They dont reflect what we need to do today.
