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MC: Having your Twisted Brown Trucker Band
do most if it had to make a difference, too.
Kid Rock: Definitely. The real difference between
studio players and live players, I think, is a mind
space. The studio cats can play everything because
they’re that good. And your band, you
play good together and do certain things, and
this sound comes out, which is good. It’s not
necessarily about being the greatest players in
the world, but it’s what we do that no one can, I
guess, duplicate.
MC: Earlier you referred to Born Free as
poignant. Is Rebel Soul a return to fun?
Kid Rock: Yeah, it’s a fun record. There’s definitely
some poignant songs on there, too, some
stuff that would be more in line with Born Free,
like “Rebel Soul” and “Midnight Ferry.” That’s
there. But there’s the other stuff, the Kid Rock
songs––even “Cocaine and Gin”––that’s a total
country song, but no one in Nashville would
record that song. “Chickens in the Pen” is totally
Kid Rock shit; even though I’m not rapping in it,
it’s still got the big beats and I’m doing my scream
thing. I can just tell that a lot of this stuff is going to
go over really well live.
MC: Speaking of old-school Kid Rock, “Cucci
Galore” sounds like it could have been on Devil
Without A Cause or something from the ‘90s.
Kid Rock: Yeah, early Kid Rock. That was around
before Born Free, from, I think, right after (2007’s)
Rock N Roll Jesus. I showed it to Rick for Born
Free but he wasn’t interested, so I held onto it.
It was real easy to do, and a lot of fun. We did
the video for it and it reminded me of some of
the old, crazy videos we used to do for “Cowboy”
and “Bawitdaba” and stuff like that. I was looking
around this crazy mansion in Bel Air and there’s
all the ingredients for fun there––girls dancing,
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people on stilts, breathing fire, there’s midgets
everywhere, a pony walking around. I was like,
“Yeah, this is fun!”
MC: Rebel Soul is available on iTunes...
Kid Rock: Yeah. Welcome to 2003, right?
(laughs)
MC: You were a long and notable iTunes holdout.
What changed your mind?
Kid Rock: I still feel the way I’ve always felt. If
you make a good product, people will obtain it
no matter what it is. But I don’t agree with iTunes
when they say all music’s the same price. They’ve
kind of switched away from that a little bit; there’s
different prices on different albums now, but still
the singles are all a buck, a buck-29 or whatever
it is. And it seemed like this was a new way to
present how to have some transparency in the
music business with your record company and all
that...but that didn’t happen. So I held out. Now
I’ve got the deal I want with my record company,
so hopefully this is the beginning of some transparency.
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MC: Was part of the reservation also the fact
that you’re an album artist and iTunes and
other digital outlets, the whole concept really,
champions the song over the album?
Kid Rock: Nah. If I make a good album, people are
gonna buy the album. That’s the end of the story
with anybody. I remember when singles became
big in the hip-hop era and then it went back to
albums with CDs and now it’s back to singles with
iTunes and it’s probably gonna go all streaming in
a minute, so who knows. I’m not gonna fight the
technology. I embrace it like everybody else, but
at the same time I stood up for what I believed in
and I proved my point. I said I wouldn’t hold out
forever, and now it’s just the right time. Eventually
the older stuff will be out there, too.
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MC: You made your first real foray into politics
this year, endorsing Mitt Romney’s presidential
campaign. What was that like for you?
Kid Rock: It was a great experience. I learned
a lot about the whole poop show behind the
political window. I always said I’d never sit there
and preach politics, and I don’t believe I did. I
might’ve slipped a few times here and there when
someone caught me off guard, but it was never
my intention. I leave that to the pros. I’m not going
to be Bruce Springsteen and sit there and tell you
what’s wrong with the country. My main thing in
being there was to pick a side, because I believe
you have to stand for something. I think it’s okay
to disagree, and now that we’ve elected our
president it’s time to move forward and give him
a shot, and if you don’t agree in four years we’ll
be able to do this process again. So many people
have died to protect that, I think it’s important to be
involved in some way. But it was pretty interesting
overall. We had some fun doing it.
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MC: Is it too soon to be thinking about a next
album yet?
Kid Rock: Well, now that I’ve got the new studio
and (engineers) there full time, we’ve got a lot
of videos and live recordings and stuff I’d like to
finally get to. And I’m planning to jump back into
the studio in the next year and put another record
out in the fall (of 2013). It’ll be my last record with
Atlantic, and right now I’m thinking I might do a
record like I’ve never done.
MC: That would be saying something.
Kid Rock: I know. (laughs) But what I’m thinking
about is going out and getting some song submissions
and doing four or five country tunes,
country rockers, and getting a Nashville producer