Jelly Roll Explains Missing Opry Special
Jelly Roll was slated to perform with Ashley McBryde at the Opry 100 TV special on March 19 but had to pull out at the last minute because of illness….
Jelly Roll was slated to perform with Ashley McBryde at the Opry 100 TV special on March 19 but had to pull out at the last minute because of illness. And for Jelly, he had to be pretty freaking sick to miss a show, especially an Opry TV event.
On the show, he was going to perform the Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash classic "Jackson," which Ashley ended up performing with Post Malone.
Jelly told The Pivot podcast in an interview this week of missing the show, "Broke my heart, man. I just could not break this fever. And I've never had a fever that just kept me down, man. I probably slept like 20 hours."
Jelly doesn't miss many shows. On his 2024 tour, he didn't miss a single one; he even powered through an illness so severe that it involved a visit to the hospital.
The country star learned young that missing work for illness was just not tolerated in his family. He explained, "My uncle Buford used to tell me this story about, his father, which was my grandfather, one time, and he said, 'I can't come into work today, I'm sick.' And all Big Buford, my grandfather, said was, 'That's good, working sick builds character. I'll see you in a minute.' Hung up the phone."
Jelly said he took the same attitude about work, noting, "So I pride myself on sick shows. Anytime I'm so sick that I can't go, it scares me. Especially because I've been so focused on getting my health right."
He added, "I canceled one show in the last five years because of an ailment, and it was the Grand Ole Opry 100. I hated it, man. I hate any time I gotta miss a show. I hate any time I have to miss almost anything."
He concluded, "I got FOMO (fear of missing out) anyways. I spent my whole life in one isolated area doing nothing with my life. Now that things are going good, I wanna be as many places as I can be doing as much as I can possibly be doing."
