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How Jesse Welles' folk protests songs struck a chord with millions

WXPN/NPR

These days, when songwriter Jesse Welles posts a clip of himself playing acoustic guitar on social media, millions of people watch. Over the past few years, he's become a genuine sensation by sharing socially conscious songs online, often in the woods near his home in Arkansas.

Welles started playing guitar as a kid and first appeared on World Cafe in 2018 with his band, Welles. But after a stint in Nashville, he moved back to Arkansas and began questioning whether he should keep making music at all.

Jesse Welles talks about the moment he realized he couldn't walk away from songwriting, and we'll discuss his new album, Masks Off.

Set List

  • "Meet the New Swamp"
  • "Won't You Come Out Tonight"
  • "Technopagans"
  • "This and Not Some Other Way"
Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).