Jesse Welles rocked Boston’s House of Blues on Friday night for a powerful two hour set of both solo acoustic and 5-piece electric.
Called the musical inheritor of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, Welles has developed a massive following through his social media presence, where he posts work dealing with America, whether it’s ICE (“if you’re lacking control and authority, come with me and hunt down minorities, join ICE”) or Iran (“Sometimes you get out your B-2s and go bomb Iran") or a multitude of other issues of the day. Some say he has singlehandedly revived the protest song.
He’s a man of great energy. “You can’t really wait around for opportunities to show up to you,” he said in a recent talk. His Under the Powerlines tour will bring him to 17 different cities in the month of March alone.
He also knows how to put on a show. The entire Boston evening was tightly paced and well thought out. Whether he’s performing his hit “War Isn’t Murder” or he’s backed by his excellent band covering “Creep” by Radiohead, the audience of young and old is right there with him, even chiming in on a couple of tunes, including his closing rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Jesse Welles is so popular because he’s hit a nerve. He is in fact the modern day Dylan holding a mirror up to a nation that feels it can find neither its way nor its voice. Welles is trying to change that, one show at a time.
