Not according to Spotify, where his streams are anemic.
But I keep getting e-mail from people telling me he's the great folk rock protest hope.
So I checked him out.
You're going to be immediately put off by his voice.
I know, I know, Bob Dylan didn't have a classically beautiful voice and look at him!
Then again, Bob Dylan was the best lyricist of all time.
But let's stay with Dylan.
There were only two originals on Dylan's debut. Which had almost no commercial impact.
But then the unsung hero, the forgotten devil of Dylan's career, took action.
Albert Grossman. He got Peter, Paul & Mary to cover "Blowin' in the Wind." That's what broke Dylan, this effort of his manager. No act ever made it without a good manager. And some of the best rub their clients the wrong way. The acts don't want to listen to advice, they want to do it their way. Ken Kragen made one act after another stars. From Kenny Rogers to Gallagher to Travis Tritt. And so many left him and never had the same success.
Anyway, by time Dylan emerged on the hit parade, not only had we heard a hit cover of "Blowin' in the Wind," but the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the Turtles' "It Ain't Me Babe," so that both listeners and the industry were primed for "Like a Rolling Stone," which believe me sounded different from everything else on the radio.
Or maybe we should look at James Taylor. He had a cult audience, his first album percolated in the marketplace and then "Sweet Baby James" came along and... "Fire and Rain" put James over the top. It was all about the hit.
So do I think people are lining up to cover Jesse Welles's songs?
No.
Do I think one of his tracks could be plucked by a radio programmer and pushed to the top of the chart?
Well, that's not the way it works anymore. Radio responds to Spotify, to the internet, radio comes last, radio plays it safe.
So if there was spontaneous combustion on Jesse Welles...why does he have only three tracks with more than a million streams on Spotify, and none of them are from his most recent album. There is no conflagration.
However, today's world is different. You can make it without a hit. Just look at Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes. She can sell tickets without having written any truly memorable songs. People clamor for the story, the groove, the sound.
Will the same thing happen with Jesse Welles?
Now Welles is no newbie. He's recorded before. And unlike Dylan, he wasn't commenting on social conditions from day one. But he wrote a song about Gaza and...as of this writing, "War isn't Murder" has 3,541,874 streams on Spotify. There are 1.4 million views on YouTube. This is not a juggernaut.
The second million streamer is a cover of John Fogerty's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain," so that really doesn't count.
And the cut with 1,085,368 streams is...
"United Health."
Ah, now you understand, now you know why people were e-mailing me. That's how hungry the audience is for something in this vein, that speaks to life in these United States, something that can be labeled "protest."
And Welles certainly sounds different from the Spotify Top 50, and he's not in a war with another singer and...
What was the name of that guy they name-checked in the debate? You remember, that guy from Tennessee... Oh yeah, Oliver Anthony, with "Rich Men North of Richmond." He and his song caught the zeitgeist and now he's promptly disappeared and I'd be stunned if he had another hit.
Will it be the same for Jesse Welles?
Now after I started getting e-mail about "United Health," there was a story in the "New York Times":
"Jesse Welles, a Folk Musician Who 'Sings the News,' Is Turning the Page - The 30-year-old known for strumming his guitar to tunes about hot topics is releasing a new album, "Middle," that avoids current events."
rb.gy/1mnzy0
But isn't current events the only reason people are paying attention?
And then last week "New York" magazine weighed in:
"Will the Revolution Start at a Jesse Welles Concert?"
shorturl.at/z33x5
Now what this tells me is the second writer wanted to get on the bandwagon or...
This wasn't spontaneous combustion, Jesse Welles has a good PR person.
I'll go with the latter. Because almost nothing gets in the "Times" serendipitously, unless it's already mega-successful.
So like I said, I checked Welles out and his voice...
But then I decided to give the new album a go.
And what I thought was this was a not-so-good Elliott Murphy record.
Elliott Murphy would have been much bigger today, because like I said above, a hit is not absolutely necessary, unlike back in the day.
And it's not only Elliott Murphy, there were a number of singer-songwriters who got pushed by the machine that fell through the cracks.
But those days were different, because you had to buy the album. And if you did, you listened to it over and over and came to know it and usually like it.
If I played Welles's new album "The Middle" over and over would I come to enjoy it? Yes. There's definitely something there.
But is Welles the great white protest hope? The new Dylan?
Even Bruce Springsteen wasn't the new Dylan.
So is there just a delay and Wellesmania is right around the corner?
Or is Jesse on his way to becoming an Americana fixture who doesn't translate outside that world but makes a good living.
Now my belief is most of the people who e-mailed me about the United Health song were more excited about the fact that someone was addressing the topic in a magnetic video than they were by the song itself.
Check it out here: shorturl.at/BH2Ir
For the record, the video only has 670k views in two months, this is no "Rich Men North of Richmond."
So I don't think Jesse Welles is on the verge of taking over America, becoming an icon.
But once again, the volume of e-mail I got about him evidences an incredible hunger for someone who fits this slot. And this slot is not being satisfied in the Spotify Top 50.
It's kind of like the early sixties, there were hit records, and then the Beatles came along and wiped out everybody on the radio other than the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons.
That's the moment we're in.
But what we get our rap wars and brands and commerce when people are hungering for soul.
Listen yourself, let me know what you think.
open.spotify.com/album/66esRfCq1pX9ofsg4wwp3Q?si=fEzZAqgySp2bLm7gi7TmqA
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