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Anthony Kiedis is sitting on top of a camper in Napa Valley.

It’s a sunny afternoon in May at the annual BottleRock Music Festival and fans down below are snapping photos of the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman, who’s posing for the cameras. But the rock & roll legend isn’t here to play a show with his band. Later that afternoon, Kiedis is set to hop on the culinary stage of the festival with Top Chef star and host Kristen Kish, where the two will make an ice cream sundae using Kiedis’ new coffee brand, Jolene.

“[Jolene] was born from friendship and boredom and love for the coffee bean,” says Kiedis, who launched the brand with his friend Shane Powers in May, backstage before he’s on dessert duty. “We were, unbeknownst to us, rolling up on a pandemic, and my friend, Shane Powers, who I’ve known for decades shouted down the sidewalk at me on a beautiful day in Brentwood, and said, ‘Let’s start a business!’ And I was like, ‘I hate businesses.’”

“We tend to talk like this … there’s lots of tone and pitches in our chats — we were having a fun day,” Powers explains.

“And I said, ‘No fucking business,’” Kiedis says. “‘I’m a singer, I don’t want to start a business.’”

TO LAUNCH JOLENE, the friends, who’ve drank coffee together on Thursdays for over 20 years, released two straightforward, delicious offerings that — fan or not — taste like they could put Starbucks out of a job.

Jolene’s first products include its smooth organic black coffee, and Jolene White, an oat milk latte in a can that uses organic coconut sugar and organic coffee that’s less sweet than others on the market. The result is cold brew that you’re going to want everywhere from the front row of a festival to the front seat on your commute to work every morning — a contender for the world’s best canned coffee for music fans.

According to the brand, the team sources its beans from “an all-female co-op in Peru, ensuring that the women farmers who cultivate these exceptional beans receive direct compensation and the resources needed to uplift their communities.” A four-pack of Jolene coffee starts at $17 and $18, respectively, with 12-can, 24-can, and 36-can packs also available to pick up online at the Jolene website. 

Kiedis says he didn’t have Jolene on the road for previous tours before the Chili Peppers’ recent trek wrapped. And while the singer doesn’t warm up with a cold brew before shows because he doesn’t want to get dehydrated, he explains that “tours do not happen without coffee.”

Jolene’s appearance at BottleRock marks a lengthy road ahead as a concert and music festival mainstay: So far, live music fans can find the canned coffee at over 40 venues across 23 different states, including spots like the Gorge Amphitheater and Northwell at Jones Beach Theater, to name a few. The coffee will also make appearances at the Sea.Hear.Now festival in New Jersey in September, along with Shaky Knees fest in Atlanta, and Austin City Limits in October.

When asked about celebrity-backed spirits collabs, Kiedis says they’re “pretty cheesy.”

“There are a lot of celebrity-driven brands,” Powers says. “Find a celebrity, doesn’t matter what’s in [the product], push, push, push. That is not who we are — we are a brand that happens to be owned by a celebrity, but the grinding and the working for many years to get this right and then a really beautiful, organic approach about how to get it out there, is really what’s important to us.”

THE FRIENDS WENT BACK AND FORTH on the product for over five years before landing on the finished coffee. The journey to launching was, as Kiedis puts it, “an adventure mostly full of failure until recent.” To get the cans on shelves, Powers and Kiedis also partnered with John Terzian, the h.wood Group’s founder, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, and Global Brand Equities founder James Morrisey. Now, it’s finally hitting shelves and available to order directly to your doorstep.

“I want everybody in the world to have it once,” Powers says, “and I do know this: Our tagline is, ‘Everything happens over coffee,’ right? And it really is true.”

Powers continues: “I met a girl that I was with for over 10 years – we had coffee. I’ve broken up with girls over coffee. I’ve had some transcendent moments with [Kiedis] over coffee. I’ve sat with my son and my son’s cried and had trouble over coffee. … Everything in my life – the the cool, huge moments have happened over coffee. So if we can provide a coffee for the world, and they sit down and have coffee and somebody figures out that they’re in love, or somebody figures out the weird words to get their script done, or somebody figures out the right way to draw something that makes somebody else sing or makes them happy. We want to create a community around coffee, and I want every single person in the world to have it once – that’s what I want.”

Kiedis also has some dreams in mind for the brand. “My dream is for this beverage to become the coffee of choice for truckers,” he tells me. “So that most truckers, when they get up and they’re like, I got to go, you know, drive to Mississippi, they stop at a convenient mart and buy three or four Jolenes for the ride, but also for this to be the coffee of the Princess of Monaco and her cute little sister.”

A HUMMINGBIRD APPEARS on the front of each of Jolene’s cans, a graphic design contribution from Terzian — and it’s something that’s become a part of Kiedis’ morning routine ever since they launched the coffee. “Every single morning of my life I go into the kitchen, I kid you not, this has been unrelenting — a hummingbird comes to visit me at the kitchen window. I’m getting my coffee cup and this bird doesn’t just pass me — he stops and he stares me down.”

Kiedis isn’t the only one seeing the birds, but Powers says he’s seen them along with others at the brand, including their CEO.

“It’s a symbol of good vibe prosperity,” Kiedis later adds. “You don’t see a hummingbird and say ‘Get the fuck outta here!’ You’re like, ‘Hold on, everyone, there’s a hummingbird!’ Just a good, fast, loving vibration of a bird.”