ET spoke to the 38-year-old singer at CMA Fest over the weekend.
Jelly Roll couldn't be more grateful for his friends in the country music industry.
ET's Rachel Smith spoke to the 38-year-old singer at CMA Fest in Nashville, Tennessee over the weekend, where he gushed over his relationship with Lainey Wilson and shared the significance of performing in front of his hometown crowd.
"It has been awesome dude. I think that’s been the cool thing, I have friends in country. Country music's a big spectrum, and I have friends that range from Dan and Shay to Riley Green, and cowboys like Cody Johnson," Jelly Roll said of how he's been received in the country music world. "If you can get a cowboy like Cody Johnson to like you, you on to something, and Lainey Wilson’s my sister. That’s just my sister."
"That’s how I look at her," he added of Wilson. "And there’s such a kinship with us, and the fact that we're both where we are in our careers, right now, at the same record label, with a song together that’s just on fire, is just -- I told her, I said, 'Man, we'll always look back at this era at the time that we were attached... this will be the golden era for us, this'll be the good ole days."
Wilson had nothing but good things to say about her "Save Me" collaborator when speaking with ET as well, telling Smith and Kevin Frazier Thursday, "Ooh, I love me some Jelly Roll," the CMA Fest co-host exclaimed.
Reflecting on her appreciation for the singer, Wilson explained, "He's got a story to tell, and I'm so thankful that he is in country music."
As for hitting the CMA Fest stage, it's a full-circle moment for Jelly Roll, who shared he was once incarcerated at the juvenile hall that shares a parking lot with the long-running festival.
"The juvenile I was incarcerated in is in the same parking lot of this stadium, and when I say the same parking lot, I mean it's in the parking lot of this stadium," Jelly Roll explained. It's not across the street. You don't get on any street to get there, it's in this parking lot, so these kids are gonna hear me, dude. I know that 'cause I would hear the announcers of the Titans game when I was in there."
"So, this is really big, not only as a country music fan that’s been coming to fan fair his whole life, it's also big as a local boy that I'm playing the local stadium," he said of the 50th annual country music festival. "This is the biggest audience I've ever stood in front of by 2.
"The biggest -- I stood in front of like 25,000 at Louder Than Life, and I think they're saying 50,000 here tonight," Jelly Roll added, touching on his highly anticipated CMA Fest debut. "So, needless to say, I got the got the gotta pee nerves."
There will be a new documentary, CMA Fest: 50 Years OF Fan Fair, premiering July 5th on Hulu, and a special broadcast of CMA Fest airs July 19th on ABC.
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