To be honest, Kid Rock first came on my radar because of disinformation. A few years back, I heard the intriguing rumor that Kid Rock was the grandson of Hank Williams, Sr., who is a musical touchstone for me. I could probably sing “Kaw-Liga” and “Move It On Over” backwards due to the number of times I heard the 8-track cassette of Hank’s songs, which my parents played over and over and over when I was a child on long road trips to visit extended family.

My parents were ex-pats of Kentucky and Oklahoma. They put down new roots in Texas after my father, discharged from the Navy in 1963, was hired by IBM, and our family relocated to the Dallas region. My father was one of many Navy veterans hired by IBM and relocated during the early tidal wave of computer technology that surged across the U.S. and beyond. The running joke at the time was that IBM stood for, “I’ve been moved,” because employees were transferred so often. At one point, my father mentioned he might be sent to Germany! I was disappointed when it didn’t happen.  

 The 8-track cassette of Hank’s music was one of five or so, including the soundtrack of Doctor Zhivago,and The Best of Country 1972, that my family listened to on road trips. I didn’t realize until later that Hank had been deceased for two decades. He died at the ripe old age of 29 on New Year’s Day, 1953, and missed being a member of the 27 Club by two years. He expired in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac Series 62 convertible, which is preserved at the Hanks Williams Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. I could have visited the museum on a later road trip, but a detour wasn’t on the schedule.

The point being, Kid Rock is not related to Hank Williams, Sr. I knew this when I bought tickets to see Kid Rock perform at the Star Lake Pavilion in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania in June 2016. I wasn’t necessarily a Kid Rock fan, but I like his egalitarian philosophy of ticket pricing. Every seat at the concert was $20, plus fees, whether the seat was front row or in the outfield. In addition, Burgettstown was only a short drive away, and I was newly in love. Greg was, and is, a music aficionado of many genres. Concerts made him happy, so I purchased tickets to surprise him.

Can I say the performance was fantastic? Perfect weather for an outdoor venue, excellent company, and Kid Rock put on a great show. He framed the performance with his life narrative. Kid Rock said when he was young, he wrote angry, young man songs like the tracks on his album, Devil Without a Cause, and he performed a few of those. Then as he grew older, married, and became a father, his perspective and music changed. He then confessed he was in a new phase, that of a man old enough to be a grandfather, and still on a quest for meaning and purpose. The songs he performed went along with the narrative. The concert at Star Lake Pavilion felt personal and lucid, like the right stage for a self-aware artist who is ever evolving and growing.

And then we have the other Kid Rock, who punctures my admiration. The other Kid Rock is a professed maskhole, sexist, a racist who defends the Confederate flag, and whose homophobia led him to shoot up cases of Bud Light beer as a protest against Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Since then, Kid Rock has started drinking Bud Light again because, he said, Anheuser-Busch got the message.

Oh, Kid Rock. What happened to you? Your lack of compassion and respect for other people does not demonstrate evolution and growth. This potential fan is disenchanted by your dehumanizing rhetoric. The First Amendment guarantees your right to spout your rabid politics from the rooftop, or on Fox News, which happened recently.

On October 24, 2025, Kid Rock appeared on Jesse Watters Primetime on Fox News and revealed he’s always looking for fresh targets. After provoking the question, “What are you going to be for Halloween?” Kid Rock turned coy and donned a surgical mask.    

“What? (Anthony Fauci?),” Watters asked.

No, Kid Rock said he would be dressing as “a r-word” as he held the face mask over his mug to denote that wearers of face masks are mentally challenged. Or maybe by “r-word,” the Kid meant Republican? Happy as a cracker, the Kid declared, being “a r-word” was the “Greatest costume ever!”

Which reminds me of Hank Williams Sr. again and artists’ fatal flaws. Hank’s primary flaw was alcoholism, which nearly derailed his career and contributed to his death. According to Paul Hemphill in Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams, Roy Acuff once met Hank backstage before a show and warned him of the dangers of alcohol, “You’ve got a million-dollar voice, son, but a ten-cent brain.”

Maybe that’s the problem with Kid Rock. I really want to like him. But maybe he has a ten-cent brain and far too large a platform to be bashing on women, people of color, and disabled people. Plus, he’s running in rude company. If Kid Rock were to give concert tickets away free tomorrow, I wouldn’t attend the event.