Jesse Welles Songs: Reading the Moment

We have to be able to read the moment — what’s happening now. Not on the surface, but in the undercurrents. On the surface are the fascism and the emotions it manipulates. Also on the surface are the corporatism and the desires it invents and instills in us. However, the emotions manipulated by the fascism and the desires instilled by the corporatism are surface-level phenomena, while our deeper urges for love, connection and truth remain pulsing in the undercurrents. We are to believe that our more deeply real human longings and needs get supplanted or even obliterated by the fascist manipulation and the corporate invention of desires — indeed, that’s what the people orchestrating those projects want us to think. But if we look closely and honestly within, we will detect our true desires flickering still, waiting to be fanned into flames that may warm us.

The songwriter Jesse Welles is composing lyrics that speak to our deeper longings and one way he does this is by simply stating the lies of the culture inside a melody, with a chug- chugging rhythm guitar as backing and a wailing harmonica to echo and dialogue with the tale told by the words. In “The Poor” he sings:

“If you worked a little harder
Then you’d have a lot more
So the blame and the shame’s on you
For being so damn poor

It ain’t the price gouging
And it ain’t the inflation
It ain’t everyone above ya tryna make a buck off ya
And screwin the whole congregation”

Hearing these ubiquitous guilt trip bromides sung over Welles’ steam engine rhythm & chords disarms them and exposes their total absurdity, as well as their cruelty. In “Fat,” Welles continues this tactic of declaring the lies of the culture, and the effect is to offer solace and the possibility of healing to all of us who have been harmed by these untruths.

“Well, it’s your own damn fault you’re so damn fat
It’s just like when your grandpappy’s lungs turned black
That was his fault too
The doctor told him what to do
He smoked Camels, guess he bought the wrong pack

It ain’t like a team of evil scientists
Through rigorous testing
Created the most abominable snacks
Grinding critters and chemicals up in the factory
Now your hand is stuck inside of the sack…”

The absence of fear and the ability to spot bullshit is required in order to see clearly through the cultural scrim draped over late capitalist reality. Welles does this… and what liberation it is to hear a man wryly croon the lies that uphold the whole cruel system, thus laying bare both their ridiculousness and their emotional violence. As an American songwriter living in the wake of Vietnam, the Central American Dirty Wars, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror and now the America-funded genocide in Gaza, it was probably inevitable that Welles address the ludicrous lies told to justify armed conflict. Over a jaunty guitar rhythm and delivered in a neighborly, conversational tone, we hear Welles sing:

“War isn’t murder, good men don’t die
Children don’t starve and all the women survive
War isn’t murder, that’s what they say
When you’re fighting the Devil, murder’s okay
War isn’t murder, they’re called casualties
There ain’t a veteran with a good nights sleep

Let’s talk about dead people
I mean a-dead people
The dead don’t feel honor
They don’t feel that brave
They don’t feel avenged
They’re lucky if they got graves”

We need to be able to read the moment. On one level, a fascist and his oligarchic sidekick are assuming the presidency of the US. This is true. On one level, corporate capitalism and the mad impulse toward endless economic growth are throttling the planet. Also true. But the nobility of the human spirit is far from extinguished and we are now starting to hear a new cadre of artists who nimbly and imaginatively oppose the vast death machine. By exposing the lies of this moribund culture, they can help get us in touch with our humanity, even as it remains under threat.

postscript: Joe Devito

The new wave of the songwriters who will matter are those who will be committed anti-capitalists who are serious about the word-craft/rhymes/metaphor etc. Some are appearing. Joe DeVito, Jesse Welles. It’s not easy being a songwriter in an aggressively ideological capitalist culture. You have to make a living and the only way to do so is to participate in the capitalist system to some degree. It becomes mentally fatiguing to maintain a vocally anti-capitalist stance and pressure is always mounting upon you from the other direction: to conform, to give up the critique and give up the fight. However, I think we have arrived at such a point of exploitation and cynicism and rapacity — not to mention ecological and existential crisis — that more and more songwriters will just be willing to say “Fuck it, I’m going to call out the bullshit in the most creative and playful manner possible. There’s really nothing left to lose in doing so…”

“WHO DO YOU LOVE” / JOE DEVITO

Well I don’t wanna be cool
I just wanna be true
I think that you are just like me
And I’m just like you
And all those books that I read
Yeah baby all two
Well they all made me feel funny
Make me even more confused

[Verse]
Cause if you wanna get to Heaven
Seems you gotta cut a couple corners
You gotta pay off a couple coroners
You gotta drop a couple bombs
And on the lopsided land
Here at history’s end
We can only ever be comrades
We can’t evеr just be friends

[Chorus]
Tell mе who do you love
Tell me who do you love
Tell me who do you love
Who do you love
Who do you love

[Verse]
Cause Bob Dylan’s gonna die
Fore we can make him AI
If he grew up today
Probably be loaded on SSRIs
And I love my SSRIs
So I’m trying to murder my mind
My end goal is to be clueless
And bluesless and blind

[Chorus]
Tell me who do you love
Tell me who do you love
Tell me who do you love
Who do you love
Who do you love

[Verse]
Cause the world has been burned
It’s been broken and bruised
By the hands of some
Billionaire freaks so
But my soul is the same
Gasoline rain
Is dissolved in my skin as we speak

[Verse]
And the shoes on my feet
Were a gift from mom
Made in a sweatshop in
Vietnam
And designerly jeans
But it just ain’t what it seems
Oh they came straight from the Philippines

[Chorus]
Tell me who do you love
Who do you love
Who do you love
Who do you love
Tell me who do you love, yeah
Who do you love
Who do you love