Jelly Roll makes it a habit to visit jails and detention centers, both at home in Nashville and in cities across the U.S. while he’s out on tour.
But this time around, during a visit to Arkansas as part of his Beautifully Broken Tour, his wife Bunnie Xo went to jail along with him.
Of course, they weren’t inmates themselves — the superstar couple were there to visit the men and women incarcerated at Pulaski County Detention Center, a facility located in Little Rock.
“I went to jail today — willingly,” Bunnie explains in a recap video she posted to Instagram, providing commentary on the special moment over clips of Jelly cracking jokes and performing for the crowd.
“Look how sweet these babies are,” she says, over video of the inmates roaring their excitement to see the couple walk into the room.
It seems there were some big Jelly Roll fans in the facility: They sang along with him as he performed his hit, “Save Me.”
“Today was absolutely chicken soup for the soul, man,” Bunnie comments. “To be able to bring smiles to their faces at probably one of the lowest times of their lives means everything to me. And they all had the best personalities.”
She also put a spotlight on Jelly’s commitment to doing good, especially for underserved communities and incarcerated people.
“I have to say, man, the most attractive thing about my husband is his heart,” Bunnie comments.
The trip to the detention center wasn’t the only way Jelly gave back to the Little Rock community during his time in the city: He also opened up a tab at Gus’s Chicken, a downtown fried chicken restaurant, for anyone in town to come down and get a free meal.
The backstory behind the free fried chicken has to do with Jelly’s history of playing the city. The restaurant is right next to a venue called the Rev Room, which Jelly played “probably 20 times” during the early part of his career, and he always ate at Gus’s on those show days.
Jelly was proud of all the tickets he sold to those shows at that point in his career — but now, he sold out the arena in town. He decided to open up a tab at Gus’s to celebrate, and to serve as a message of inspiration to all the artists currently playing those smaller Little Rock venues.
“To all y’all artists playing Sticky’s, and playing the Rev Room — I played Sticky’s 10 times, I played the Rev Room 20 times. Keep playing, baby. Keep playing, baby!” Jelly says in a video message on social media.
Jelly Roll still has a few dates left on his Beautifully Broken Tour. the trek will wrap up in Charlotte, N.C. at the end of October.
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