Before Jelly Roll sang “Almost Home” with Craig Morgan at the Grand Ole Opry in 2022, he told the audience where he’d once sat to hear it. It was the seventh row. He’d been out of jail only a short time when he went to see Morgan, and he remembered crying as Morgan sang.
In a later interview with Joe Rogan, Jelly Roll explained why he’d worried about missing the song that first night. He said he’d gone to the Opry alone, wearing an ankle monitor, and had to be home by nine. If Morgan was the last act, he figured he’d have to leave before he got to hear the song he’d listened to in jail. Morgan came out and sang it while he was still there.
The phone call Craig Morgan got on the road
At his Opry debut in November 2021, Jelly Roll told the audience what it had meant to hear Morgan sing from that seventh-row seat. Morgan was on the road when someone called and told him to look up the performance. He watched Jelly Roll explain what the song had meant to him in jail and describe the spot where he’d sat after his release. Morgan later recalled asking his managers to get in touch with Jelly Roll after he saw the clip.
When both men appeared on the Opry in 2022, Jelly Roll sang “Save Me” and “Son of a Sinner” in his own set and stayed to hear Morgan. Before starting “Almost Home,” Morgan told the crowd about the phone call and asked them to welcome Jelly Roll back out.
What Craig Morgan put in the frame
Before they sang, Jelly Roll recalled sitting in the seventh row and thinking he wanted his own music to make people feel the way Morgan’s had made him feel. He mentioned that his wife was in the audience, then brought the story back to the kid who’d listened to the song in jail.
“That kid is standing next to Craig Morgan.”
After the duet, Craig Morgan told Jelly Roll he knew how much the song meant to him. He handed Jelly Roll the handwritten lyrics in a frame. He’d signed them, too, and told Jelly Roll to hang them beside his gold and platinum records.