By Jake Grove
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Kid Rock
Where: Bi-Lo Center, 650 N. Academy Street, Greenville, SC
Cost: $25 - $45
Age limit: 18+

GREENVILLE — He’s been a raunchy rapper and a cowboy, baby. He’s been married (in many different states) and divorced from, arguably, the most beautiful woman on the planet. He’s added rock to the rap scene and rap to the rock scene and even put out one of the most beloved versions of “Picture” with Sheryl Crow (with whom he also was romantically linked).

He is Kid Rock and the city of Detroit, Mich., hasn’t had a more lively resident to call its own. (Sorry, Eminem.)

This Saturday, Kid Rock is putting the rock ‘n’ roll back in his act as this stringy-haired pimp brings his Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Tour to the BI-LO Center in Greenville.

Joined by special guests Rev Run and Dickey Betts, the Kid Rock tour has invaded the Southeast to the delight of fans from all over. Now it rolls through the Upstate, where anyone with the cajones and the cash can pony up for a night with an enigmatic entertainer who keeps redefining himself.

The concert starts at 8 p.m., with the doors opening an hour earlier. Tickets are gonna cost $25, $38.50 and $45 each and are still available through all Ticketmaster outlets, at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling 864.233.2525.

For more info, hit www.bilocenter.com and click on events.

He is Kid Rock, y’all. You better recognize … or some such thing like that.

(Contact)

http://www.independentmail.com/news/2008/feb/27/kid-rock-revives-bi-lo-center/

Rock ‘n’ roll will be revived at the Cajundome
Herman Fuselier
hfuselier@theadvertiser.com

…Kid Rock returns to his usual rock and hip hop element Tuesday when his Rock N’ Roll Revival Tour visits the Cajundome. The concert features Rock’s 11-piece Twisted Brown Trucker Band with guest performances by Rev. Run of Run DMC, Dickey Betts from the Allman Brothers Band.
Tickets are still available at the Cajundome box office and all Ticketmaster locations.

In his normal rock ‘n’ roll environment, Rock, 37, continues to excel and excite. His most recent album, Rock n Roll Jesus, was released in October and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with hit singles So Hott and Amen.

Besides selling more than 20 million records since his 1990 debut album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast, Rock has received notoriety for his rocky marriage with Pamela Anderson and recent off-stage scuffles and legal wranglings.

Rock has also been in the spotlight for his Revival Tour, which critics have likened to an old-style, traveling Motown Revue. The tour stopped Saturday in St. Louis, where Post-Dispatch pop music critic Kevin Johnson described the show as a “high-rollin’, lowdown throwdown of rock, rap, country, honky-tonk and more.”

Rock covered everything from This Little Light of Mine to his own hits, like Welcome 2 the Party, Cowboy, Picture and Bawitdaba. Betts and Rock jammed on Ramblin’ Man and the old school rap flowed with Rock and Run performing It’s Like That, It’s Tricky and Walk This Way.

The crowd warmed up with a patriotic show of U. S. servicemen, the national anthem and Born in the USA.

Earlier in the month, in Rock’s hometown of Detroit, Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band joined the show. Adam Graham of the Detroit News wrote “Wolf was spastic and untethered, and was almost the opposite of Rock, who was always composed and professional.

“Run and Wolf joined Rock on-stage at the closer of the show, and Rock ended the show, shirtless, with a towering Bawitdaba.”

By PETE TATTERSALL
ptattersall@sunherald.com

Fresh off the critical success of his latest album, “Rock ‘N Roll Jesus,” the musical rebel known as Kid Rock performs 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum.

The concert, billed as Kid Rock’s Rock and Roll Revival Tour and sponsored by Hard Rock Biloxi, also features the eclectic talent of Rev. Run and the legendary Dickey Betts, of Allman Brothers fame, who, instead of performing as opening acts, are scheduled to join Kid Rock on stage.

“The concert is two-and-a-half hours of a journey through American music… .It’s most probably, musically, the best tour I think I’ve ever done,” Kid Rock, aka Robert James Ritchie, said this week in a telephone interview with the Sun Herald.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, ”

‘Rock ‘N Roll Jesus’ is Kid Rock’s most honest, eclectic and soulful record to date. It’s his State of the Union, a deeply personal statement…”

“The songwriting’s better. The singing’s better. It’s great musical performances. It’s real. It’s true,” said Kid Rock.

A perineal tabloid favorite, what with his marriage to Pamela Anderson and his recent, much-publicized dust-up with Anderson’s other ex, rocker Tommy Lee, at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, Kid Rock seems to take it all in stride.

His music, meanwhile, has been hailed as an amalgamation of a variety of genres, including country, hip-hop, rock and punk.

“I just love the music. It’s how I was raised. It’s just what I do, what I love… .Everybody’s always looking for an explanation to everything I ever wrote. I’m asked all the time. It’s what I love to do. It’s what I studied. It’s what I’m good at,” said Kid Rock. “I’m like everybody else. I’ve listened to all sorts of music… .I’m open-minded about music. I love it all. As I grew older, I grew to appreciate it even more. You know, why should I have to have Cornflakes for breakfast every day? I don’t want to be narrow-minded. Life’s too f—— short. I want to do everything, experience everything, have a great time, make music, any type of music I want to make. I’m not looking for approval from anybody. I never have… .I want to make music, and have people have a good time. People seem to be liking it.”

Though he hails from Michigan, more than a few think of Rock as Southern-born and bred.

“Dickey (Betts) thought I was from Atlanta…

.I think it’s (because of) my love of Southern rock, of the South in general. I don’t know…

.I say what’s on my mind. I’m very kind to people. Very nice,” said Kid Rock.

A song on his latest album, for example, titled “New Orleans,” is an indication of Rock’s affinity for, and fascination with, the Crescent City.

“I love New Orleans. New Orleans is one of the last spots that still feels like it’s kept its culture intact. Nowadays, you go anywhere in the world and it’s all the same stuff. It’s hard to go somewhere, you know, and experience what that place is all about. Especially, you go anywhere in America and it’s all the same town. There’s a Cosco, there’s a frickin’ Wal-Mart, a McDonalds. There’s this and that, and that’s about it,” he said. “There’s something about New Orleans. There’s just a history there, the culture, the music and the food. And just everything about it is just really, it’s kind of mysterious.”

Though he’s seemed to struggle through the years in search of his place, and success, in the world of music, Kid Rock seems content with his lot in life.

“I’m having a great time. I’m in a great spot. I love life. I’m the luckiest person I know, and the most blessed person on the planet,” he said. “I love it all. Or, quite simply, I wouldn’t do it.”

If you go

What: Kid Rock’s Rock and Roll Revival Tour, also featuring Rev. Run and Dickey Betts, sponsored by Hard Rock Biloxi.

Where: Mississippi Coast Coliseum, Biloxi.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Cost: $23 and $43, plus tax and Ticketmaster fees. Tickets available at ticketmaster.com, at the Coliseum box office, or by phone at 1-800-488-5252.

BY DAVID MENCONI, Staff Writer

THE NEWS & OBSERVER (Raleigh, NC Daily)

In a twisted way, Kid Rock is the Jesse Helms of rock ‘n’ roll. Like North Carolina’s retired senator, Rock (real name Bob Ritchie) has lots of detractors as well as acolytes. And among the latter, he is beloved for always making it clear exactly where he stands.

So if you’re going to Rock’s show in Raleigh tonight, you probably have a pretty good idea about the R-rated, beer-drinkers-and-hell-raisers spectacle you’re in for. As Rock puts it in his new album’s closing track, he’s a “Lowlife (Living the Highlife).” And if that’s not your thing, it’s best to stay far, far away.

By now, he’s used to it. Ask him to name the best and worst things about being Kid Rock, and he laughs.

“The best thing is the love, and the worst thing is the hate,” he says, calling from a tour stop in Huntington, W.Va. “It’s pretty cut and dried. I’m not a guy where too many people say, ‘Eh, he’s all right.’ But there are people who would lay down and die for me, and others who would not miss me a bit. I’ve gotta live my life and be myself. I try to be respectful where it’s earned, outgoing and nice to the people I care about and anyone who looks up to me.”

Of course, there is that other side, the hate. Last fall, Kid Rock hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts for the first time with his 10th album, “Rock N Roll Jesus” (Atlantic Records), featuring his usual blend of classic-rock riffs, punchline country and angry blue-collar populism. But Rock made fewer headlines for his music than for a pair of altercations.

One was at September’s MTV VMA Awards, where Rock got into a dust-up with Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee over their mutual ex-wife, Pamela Anderson. The following month, Rock was arrested after a scuffle at a Waffle House in Atlanta, after which his mugshot traveled far and wide across the Internet.

“The things in between, things happen and cell phones and cameras are everywhere,” Rock says. “So the news is what you see. It’s the times we’re living in, but it’ll pass. Within five to 10 years, I think people will finally start to say, ‘OK, enough.’ The general sense I see is that people already don’t believe half of what they read. It’s entertainment and they understand that at the end of the day, it’s not credible or newsworthy.”

Meantime, Rock has his “Rock N Roll Jesus” tour, an overt attempt to unite hip-hop with white-trash country and redneck rock. To that end, the show features Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts as well as Run-D.M.C.’s Rev. Run.

Run-D.M.C. always had a streak of rock, going back to the metallic guitars on 1984’s “Rock Box” and the breakthrough collaboration with Aerosmith on 1986’s “Walk This Way.” Still, Run (Joseph Simmons) adopted the title “Reverend” a few years back. It’s hard to imagine a man of the cloth abiding the stripper-pole hedonism of a Kid Rock tour, and some of the language on songs such as “So Hott” (chorus: “I wanna [expletive] you like I’m never gonna see you again”).

Rock says it all works out just fine.

“We’d talked about doing a record together, and he called one day and said, ‘I wanna rock,’” Rock says. ” ‘I know you’re going out on tour and I want to do a few songs with you, get back into that.’ ‘Dude,’ I said, ‘I’ve got this idea for a tour that’s perfect.’ It was to do a rock ‘n’ roll-style revue like the old Motown tours. Kind of a crazy idea, but we stuck with it and worked it out. We cover a lot of ground, everything from ‘Rock Box’ to ‘Walk This Way,’ old-school stuff. It’s super-entertaining.”

As to the post-show extracurricular activities, Run apparently manages to keep his distance.
“He doesn’t judge people, he judges what’s in your heart,” Rock says of Run. “We sit and philosophize and talk all the time. He knows me, my family, my kids — our kids call each other ‘cousin’ — so he knows how good my heart is. I mean, yeah, I’m a single guy, I go out and meet women, drink, this and that. But at the end of the day … I can’t say how he feels, but he does not judge people.”

Speaking of odd-couple pairings, perhaps the oddest in recent memory was at this month’s Grammy Awards. Rock appeared with Keely Smith, the late Louis Prima’s duet partner, to sing “Old Black Magic” — and it was, to put it charitably, a mess. The pairing was not Rock’s idea, but it’s exactly in character with the slot he fills at awards shows.

“It’s been weird like that throughout my career, I’m always ‘that other guy,’” he says. “I was Dave with Sam, singing ‘Hold on, I’m Comin’.’ I was Waylon with Hank [Williams Jr.], I’m D.M.C. And now they call me up wanting me to be Louis Prima singing a swing-jazz song? What? But I’m glad Keely was cheeky about the whole trainwreck, God bless her.

“She didn’t look at the teleprompter, just started talking. And I stared at her and asked, ‘What would you like to do?’ ‘Anything you want, honey,’ she said, winking. Then they started the music and the monitor wasn’t on and it’s not a song that just starts out 1-2-3-4 — it’s in sixths or something. So I knew I was off at the start, there was nothing to do but hope I’d catch up. There was a moment when I was two bars off and just laughing to myself, ‘What the [expletive] are you doing, trying to sing swing jazz in front of the entire world?’”

But as usual, he got away with it. And as usual, the party continued long into the night.

“When it was over,” Rock says, “I said to Keely, ‘After that, I need a drink.’ ‘Oh, let’s,’ she said.”

david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or (919) 829-4759.

Rock will host an official after party in Raleigh, NC after his show at the RBC Center. The After-Party will be held at The Ice Room at The Long Branch Saloon Complex. Come to the show and party with Kid Rock late night!!

By Kevin C. Johnson

POST-DISPATCH POP MUSIC CRITIC
02/18/2008

Say what you will about Kid Rock and his still-viable shtick and silly levels of self-confidence. You have to give him credit when it’s due.

The proud Detroit rocker’s well-executed Rock and Roll Revival tour, which came to the Scottrade Center Saturday night, was a high-rollin,’ lowdown throwdown of rock, rap, country, honky-tonk and more.

Rock’s high concept veered from the traditional concert setup. He fashioned his show as an old-style revue, with acts that might have otherwise filled a couple of opening slots instead coming on and off during his own set.

In this case, those acts were of legendary status — Rev. Run, one half of Run-DMC and star of TV’s “Run’s House,” and Dickey Betts, longtime guitarist with the Allman Brothers Band.

Able frontman Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band, accompanied by a DJ and two female backup singers, got the party started with “Rock N Roll Jesus,” the title track to his new CD. Rock seemed to think he lived up to the title and didn’t mind courting just a teensy bit of controversy, extending his arms out as if he were nailed to a cross.

During his lengthy set, the solid Rock mixed interesting cover choices such as “This Little Light of Mine” with his own classics such as “Welcome 2 the Party,” “Cowboy,” “Picture” and “Bawitdaba.” New material such as the exuberant “Amen” held up just as well.

Another new song, “Half Your Age” (take that, Pam Anderson), included a great comedic guest vocal by Rock’s drummer, Stefanie Eulinberg.

But the real mixing came with the special guests. Betts’ spot was highlighted by his and Rock’s jamming it up on “Ramblin’ Man” and more.

Then came Rev. Run’s set, an old school hip-hop party with Rock and Run teaming up for rap classics such as “Rock Box,” “King of Rock,” “It’s Like That,” “It’s Tricky” and obviously “Walk This Way.”

Rock followed the hip-hop segment with an attempt at turntable scratching, but the equipment failed him, forcing him to abandon the segment. He sat in on drums for a minute instead. Such an unscripted concert moment felt positively retro.

Rock has said he can envision his Rock and Roll Revival show becoming a regular thing with different acts figuring into the mix. We say keep them coming.

Prior to the show, the crowd was warmed up all-American style with an introduction of several U.S. servicemen, a crowd rendition of the national anthem and a piped-in “Born in the USA” through the speakers.

kjohnson@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8191

By TIMOTHY FINN
The Kansas City Star

Kid Rock’s “Rock and Roll Revival Tour” will include some old-school hip-hop courtesy of one of Kid Rock’s guests, the Reverend Run of Run-DMC. They also performed at MTV Studios in Times Square for MTV’s “Tila Tequila’s New Year’s Eve Masquerade Party 2008.”

Ten minutes before a phone call is due, an old joke comes to mind: How do you know Kid Rock isn’t really hip-hop? Punch line: His shows start on time.
Five minutes before the appointed time, the phone rings. On the other end, Kid Rock sounds sleepy and groggy, but he’s ready to talk. For 15 minutes. Calling early for a phone interview could also mean that you’re not really rock ’n’ roll, either, except these days Kid Rock is as rock as he has ever been.

His latest album, “Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus,” is a mix of classic rock, hard rock, Southern rock, Heartland rock, country rock plus a country ballad or two. Resemblances to his first and best-selling album, “Devil Without a Cause,” are minor and rare: not much rap-rock and even less macho-pimp braggadocio (and not as much low-brow wit, either). Just lots of heavy riffs and party anthems.

In 2008 Robert Ritchie, 37, has stepped away from his alter-egos. These days he is more interested in showing off the music and performers he grew up with — the sounds influenced by Bob Seger, AC/DC, Skynyrd, Warren Zevon, Hank Jr., Run-DMC.

So when it came time to tour on “Jesus,” Rock decided it was time to turn down the porno, turn off the pyro and just play some taproot music. Sunday night he brings his “Rock and Roll Revival Tour” to Sprint Center, and instead of the flashpots and caged strippers of earlier tours fans should expect a rock ’n’ roll showcase that lasts nearly three hours.

“A childhood friend comes out and talks to the crowd and plays some music for about 15 minutes,” Rock said. “It’s a way of letting everyone know the show’s about to start. Then we kick it off for about 2 1/2 hours. We all rotate on and off the stage and tie it all together with a big finale.”

The “Revival” will include some old-school hip-hop, courtesy of one of Kid Rock’s guests, the Reverend Run of Run-DMC. But it’ll be rap with a Rock twist, thanks to his Twisted Brown Trucker Band.

“A lot of people love hip-hop, but they don’t like the way it’s presented on stage,” Rock said. “Or they just don’t want to go to a concert to deal with the riff-raff that usually shows up.

“What we’re doing kind of reminds me of ‘Hail Hail Rock and Roll’ where Keith Richards puts together that great band for Chuck Berry. … With my band and how we tied it all together, I don’t think Run-DMC’s songs have ever sounded better.”

The Reverend will be one of two guests at Sunday’s show; the other: Dickey Betts, former guitarist for the Allman Brothers. At other tour stops, Peter Wolf of J. Geils Band has been a guest.

“Run just called me one day and said, ‘I wanna rock. I wanna come out and do some shows,’ ” Rock said. “I said, ‘It’s funny you should say that because I had this crazy idea about doing this rock ’n’ roll revival.’

“I wanted a couple of cats to go out with me where none of them has their entourage or their own sound people or tour buses so we can keep the prices down for the fans. And that’s who really wins here. You’re not gonna see another show like this for $40 and $50.”

No one has ever accused Kid Rock of being a diplomat with an even temper. Because of some off-the-field (and online) antics, he has a reputation for being short-tempered and impulsively outspoken.
Three times in the last three years he has been involved in public fistfights, most famously with Tommy Lee of Motley Crue at the MTV Video Music Awards in September. He’s also not shy about dissing whoever or whatever he thinks needs it. Like hip-hop, for example: “There’s just not much great live hip-hop. Most of it sounds terrible live.”

Cracks like that have brought out the haters and their hate mail — “I’m like, ‘Calm down all you white kids with Web sites,’ ” he told Blender magazine. But they haven’t prevented Rock from evolving into a crossover personality who travels freely from one era, genre and scene to another, making disparate pals along the way (Hank Jr., James Hetfield and the Reverend, and even Keely Smith, 75, with whom he sang “That Old Black Magic” at the Grammys Sunday).

You wouldn’t expect to see Toby Keith or Kenny Chesney on BET or MTV or Paul Wall or the Beastie Boys on CMT. But Kid Rock glides easily among all three scenes: He has played live with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Metallica and Phish. He recorded a country duet with Sheryl Crow (“Picture”) that was nominated for a CMA award. His “Crossroads” special with Hank Jr. drew a record 2.1 million viewers to CMT. Later this year Rock will appear on new albums by rappers Lil’ Jon and his buddy, the Reverend.

This knack for mixing-and-matching genres is a product of the two eras of blues that have so heavily influenced him — two very different sounds that, somehow, bring it all back to the various flavors of rock music that his tour showcases.

“When I look back, hip-hop was my blues, too,” he said. “You look at great artists like Petty or Springsteen or Bob Seger or Skynyrd, people I look up to musically: They all have that blues influence. It touched every form of music. I studied all that music, from Chuck Berry and the Delta stuff over to country music and Hank Williams and Fats Domino — all that stuff.

“Today, hip-hop — it’s the same as the blues. It has touched almost every form of music. You can’t turn anything on without hearing or seeing a hip-hop influence, whether it’s music or a video. It’s in the culture.

“So not only do I have the original blues background, but I’m a little one-up on the cats I grew up loving because I have a hip-hop background that allows me to tie everything together and be creatively free to make music that is still me.”

On “Jesus,” the music that ties everything together is rock ’n’ roll in its many colors, flavors and weights — “a celebration of American music,” he said — including a little rap.

“I recommend it to anyone, even if you don’t like me. If you go, you won’t forget it.”

And if you’re going, don’t be late.

Sunday
Kid Rock performs Sunday night at Sprint Center with the Reverend Run and Dickey Betts. The show starts at 7:30. Tickets cost $29.50 to $45. Visit ticketmaster .com (816-931-3330).

Feb 13, 2008 @ 08:01 PM
By CHRIS MITCHELL
For The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON — Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for your rocker pal? This year, ditch the fatty chocolates and expensive roses, and toast the holiday with a few rounds of rock ‘n’ roll sleaze and hip-hop machismo. Good thing Kid Rock’s in town tonight to deliver the raucous goods.

Yes, the lanky, long-haired rebel-rouser is back: with his tilted, black fedora and long, filler cigar jutting from his cocky grin, riding high on brainpan-searing guitar riffs provided by his Twisted Brown Trucker Band.

Sound like your idea of a good time? Enter the three-hour “Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Tour” starring sleepy Romeo, Michigan’s biggest concert-maker and Huntington’s hard-partying surrogate son.

Rock and cohorts make their fourth tour stop in eight years at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena tonight. Each visit has coincided with the release of a new studio album. Tonight’s stop supports his latest long-player “Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus.” Tickets are $45 general admission floor and $39.50 reserved seating.

Along for the bacchanalian ride are a couple famous friends. The Allman Brothers Band’s legendary co-founder Dickey Betts will swap southern rock leads with Twisted guitarist Marlon Young, and the straight-laced (formerly no-laced) Rev. Run of the Adidas-wearin’, hip-hop rhyme-snarin’ Run-D.M.C. brings a healthy dose of Hollis, Queens to our river city.

Billed as a “true revue,” there will be no opening acts. Every guest is integrated seamlessly into the mix, playing off the energy of Rock’s expanded, 11-piece backing band.

On the tour’s first of two hometown stops this past weekend, the Detroit Free Press praised Rock’s “successful experiment in shaking up the mix,” while the Oakland Press called it “an epic night of rock ‘n’ roll.”

“We want to give people the greatest night of their life — the best party, the best music, the best show. And this show does all that and more,” Rock, who is 37, said in a statement issued by his Atlantic Records publicist.

Rock released his sixth album for Atlantic Records in October 2007. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus” features the lead single “So Hott.”

The album was recently certified gold, behind a maelstrom of publicity engagements, including two performances on “MTV’s New Years Eve Spectacular,” once featuring a tour preview of his performance with Rev. Run on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Rock’s latest single “Amen” is an acoustic open letter to listeners about America’s ills and the need to “open up your mind and start to live.” It rests at number-14 this week on Billboard’s Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and is poised to crossover to the country music format with continued video spins on CMT and CMT.com.

For an artist whose appeal is still felt in rock, hip hop, and country music circles, the genre-hopping success of “Amen” will join some of Rock’s previous hits like 2001’s “Picture,” a country-influenced duet with Sheryl Crow and country outlaw Shelby Lynne on the studio and live versions respectively, and darker fare like 2003’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pain Train” and “Jackson, Mississippi.”

Look for “Amen” on the new countdown this Saturday!

(KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free Press)

February 9, 2008

By BRIAN MCCOLLUM
FREE PRESS MUSIC CRITIC

There was a moment in Kid Rock’s bustling, three-hour concert Friday night when you could briefly peel it all back — back past the superstardom, past the grand theatrics, past the country and Southern rock frills that have come to line his music.

Shoulder to shoulder with rap elder Rev. Run, one of three musical guests invited to Joe Louis Arena as part of the Rock and Roll Revival tour, the Detroit star traded verses on an animated rendition of “Walk This Way.” With his band roaring behind them, serving up the linchpin Aerosmith riff that turned the song into a Run-DMC smash, it was as if Kid Rock were, just for a moment, that long-ago kid in Romeo discovering the powerful lure of a seductive rap rhyme.

When it comes down to it, “Walk This Way” was the song that launched everything Kid Rock would ultimately become. At 37, he may have moved well beyond the elementary rap-metal that once marked his work. But everything that hit represented in 1986 — the crashing together of hip-hop and rock, the meeting of swagger and glitz, the repurposing of familiar old components — remains fundamental to his career.

That career path moved on to its logical next step Friday at the Joe, where a rambunctious capacity crowd of about 16,000 gathered for the first in a two-night stand. The Rock and Roll Revival tour marks the latest of Rock’s periodic efforts to enhance his live show: an old-school revue tour featuring guest artists supplying a diverse array of music. In this case, the enlistees were Run, funk-rock vocalist Peter Wolf and Southern rock icon Dickey Betts, all backed in various formations by Rock’s newly customized Twisted Brown Trucker band.

The guests did their thing in short stretches, spliced amid Rock’s own set. Wolf, still wiry and gyroscopic at 61, hopped out for an early performance of his J. Geils Band chestnut “Love Stinks” before returning for a fun 10-minute set that included the wiry “Detroit Breakdown” and “Musta Got Lost,” complete with the charismatic Wolf’s famous stage patter.

A more modest Betts was joined by Rock for a run through the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man,” a shaky number — lighting miscues and all — saved only by the familiar white-lightning tone of Betts’ guitar lead.
After a brief intermission, Rev. Run paired up with Rock to swap rhymes on a handful of old Run-DMC classics: “It’s Tricky,” “You Be Illin’,” “King of Rock” and the crowd-raising “Walk This Way.”

Kid Rock’s long history of area performances, a schedule that has often featured three or four hometown shows annually, has left Detroiters well acquainted with his live repertoire. But this was a markedly different sort of show for the locals — the kind of night when traditional show closer “Cowboy” could get moved substantially forward in the set list.
Rock kept his set’s first half relatively mellow and low-key, as if to reserve some of the audience energy for his guest’s spots. He drew frequently from his latest record, “Rock and Roll Jesus,” allowing the crowd to familiarize itself with the newest members of his road band — most notably Detroit sax man Dave McMurray, who graced “Roll On” with a jazzy soul solo, and Pontiac guitarist Marlon Young, whose fluid, fiery leads were a premium addition to the band.

Rock cranked things up as the show zoomed in to a close, pulling from his standard bag of stage fare before bringing out his guests for an odd if well-intentioned group cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”
It wasn’t a perfect night: The staggering of guest sets kept the show from building a proper momentum, and Rock’s own indulgence in his Rock and Roll Revival imagery — complete with exhortations to fans to exchange greetings of fellowship — often felt clumsy and forced.

But it’s clearly a concept with promise, and Rock’s live show was certainly due for an overhaul. With the right tweaks, the right attention to pacing, he just might find himself looking at a concert approach that will pay dividends well into the future.

PUBLISHED: Saturday, February 9, 2008

By GARY GRAFF
Of the Oakland Press

DETROIT — Forget about what was going on over at Campus Martius Park on Friday night (Feb 8 ) Detroit’s real Winter Blast was at Joe Louis Arena, where Kid Rock, his Twisted Brown Trucker Band and their special guests turned up the heat for an epic night of rock ‘n’ roll.

With a near sell-out crowd in exuberant form for the first of two home town shows on his Rock N Roll Revival tour, the Clarkston-based Rock and company kept the fuse lit for more than three hours (including a 15-minute intermission) with a revue-style outing that incorporated performances by the J. Geils Band’s Peter Wolf, former Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickie Betts and Run-DMC’s Rev. Run. There were also plenty of special Motor City touches, including a run-through of Geils’ “Detroit Breakdown” and a rendition of “Son of Detroit” that allowed Rock to introduce the 10 Twisted Brown Trucker members.

And, of course, there are few other places where a lyric like, “I’m a Michigan boy can you feel that?” has the same kind of resonance. Eschewing the pyrotechnics, dancers and other visual trappings of previous Kid Rock shows, Friday’s concert was a music-focused affair that was also distinguished as the only time all three of the Revival guests have shared the stage. Wolf came on early to sing “Love Stinks” as he tossed roses into the crowd, while 10 songs later Betts joined Rock and Twisted Brown Trucker for the Allmans’ hit “Ramblin’ Man.”

Wolf then finished the first half of the show with a set that began with “Detroit Breakdown” and brought Rock back for the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and the Geils favorites “Musta Got Lost” — preceded by Wolf’s well-known “Woofah Goofah” introduction — and “Centerfold.”

And after the second half opened with “Devil Without a Cause,” Rev. Run and Rock had the Joe Louis crowd jumping and waving their arms in the air (like they just didn’t care) for a medley of Run-DMC gems such as “Rock Box,” “It’s Like That,” “Tricky,” “King of Rock” and the rap group’s hit cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”

Betts sat out the encores, but Wolf, who finishes his tenure this weekend, and Run returned for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine” before Rock and his crew pounded through a show-closing “Bawitdaba.”

Despite the high-profile cameos, however, it was still unquestionably a Kid Rock show, its cocky swagger backed up by a partisan audience that has long embraced Rock as the heir apparent to his mentor, Bob Seger, as Detroit’s king of rowdy, rocking concert experiences. And he didn’t disappoint with a his own slate of hits (”American Bad Ass,” “Cowboy,” “Only God Knows Why,” “Picture”) and well-received songs from 2007’s “Rock N Roll Jesus” — particularly the classic rock-quoting “All Summer Long,” the soulful “Roll On,” the buoyant “Amen” and the pounding “So Hott.”

In the Olympia Room after the show, a ski-capped Rock puffed on a celebratory cigar and accepted compliments for the night shows. Justifiably awed by what he’s designed, he remarked that, “I don’t know what else I could do.”

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Adam Graham / Detroit News Pop Music Writer

At Joe Louis Arena on Friday night, Kid Rock proved he doesn’t need pyrotechnics or strippers to put on a battering ram of a concert.

At the first night of a two night stand of his “Rock N’ Roll Revival” tour — the show repeats at Joe Louis again tonight — Rock left the flames and floosies behind and put his music at center stage.

The result was an electrifying journey through 40 years of American music, filtering through Motown, metal, rock, soul, country and hip-hop, and whatever else Rock and his 10-piece Twisted Brown Trucker band felt like touching upon. Rock has always been a deft genre-skipper, switching up musical styles like a human iPod, but this tour is a whole different animal.

Featuring guest stars Rev. Run (of legendary hip-hop trio Run DMC), Peter Wolf (of Detroit faves the J. Geils Band) and Dickey Betts (former guitarist for the Allman Brothers), this revue-style rock and roll revival is the most musically impressive tour Rock has ever staged.

And Friday may have been the hardest-hitting show Rock has ever put on in his native Detroit. Clocking in at a massive three hours, the concert — Rock’s first Detroit-area arena show since Super Bowl weekend in 2006 — was a praise-worthy celebration of Rock’s unparalleled showmanship. It was brave, bold and brazen, never relenting. It felt bigger than Joe Louis — it was stadium-sized, and could easily play at Ford Field if Rock brings the show back for a summer date.

Rock was clearly elated to be back in front of a packed hometown crowd of 14,500. During “Amen,” Rock said he wanted to try something he’s never tried in concert before, and asked everyone in the audience to look to their right and left and introduce themselves to their neighbors. Sure, it was a little campy, but the communal vibe in the building was reassuring.

For all his forays into country and rock — the set drew largely from Rock’s extensive catalog of hits, as well as a healthy dose of material from 2007’s “Rock N Roll Jesus” — the show hit full tilt when Rock was joined on stage by Rev. Run. Deep down, Rock has always been a hip-hop kid at heart, and he couldn’t hide his elation while duetting with one of his musical heroes.

Wolf, looking like some sort of Johnny Depp character in a Tim Burton movie, performed a number of J. Geils Band hits. Wolf was spastic and untethered, and was almost the opposite of Rock, who was always composed and professional.
Run and Wolf joined Rock onstage at the close of the show, and Rock ended the show, shirtless, with a towering “Bawitdaba.”

At the onset of the concert, the message was laid clear. “Testify, it’s a rock revival,” Rock sang during “Rock N Roll Jesus.” He lived up to his word, and it’s hard to believe anyone walked away unconverted.

You can reach Adam Graham at (313) 222-2284 or agraham@detnews.com.

Watch the ABC News interview with Kid Rock. WATCH HERE

(JIM COOPER/Associated Press)

February 7, 2008

FREE PRESS POP MUSIC WRITER
BY BRIAN McCOLLUM

Kid Rock has made no secret of his mix-and-match sensibility, the one where he takes the punk rock and the Southern rock, and mixes them with the hip-hop.
But he’s never done it quite like this.

On his new Rock and Roll Revival Tour, which drops into Joe Louis Arena for a pair of hometown shows Friday and Saturday, Rock is proudly brandishing his wide-ranging tastes. Less a Kid Rock concert than a classic revue, the show enlists the services of pals such as rapper Rev. Run of Run-D.M.C., vocalist Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band and Southern rock guitarist Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band.

Set lists have been fluid during the tour, which features each of the guests in their own mini-sets, joined by Rock and his expanded Twisted Brown Trucker Band, now sporting a horn section introduced to fans during last fall’s run of club dates.

It might be an old-school concept — the Detroit star says he was inspired by the eclectic road shows that dominated rock’s early days — but in 2008, it’s a new sort of approach. And it’s one that’s custom-made for the iPod era.
“It’s so rare these days to see something fresh and new,” says Rock. “I got so bored with the same old thing. This day and age in music, unless you’re a little kid, you don’t see people listening to the same music all the time. It’s the age of playlists. I’d daresay nobody over 25 has just one single playlist they listen to.”

Rev. Run, a longtime friend, was first aboard, having dropped strong hints that he’d love to hit the road. As the tour came together late last year, Wolf got his call from Rock; the two had been introduced years ago by late Atlantic Records chief Ahmet Ertegun. Then came Betts, linked to Rock via the latter’s ever-growing Nashville connections.
Wolf is a particularly special treat for audiences in Detroit, where his J. Geils Band was a massively popular mainstay in the 1970s.

“It’s kind of an interesting thing: He goes out and does his thing, and then he invites each of the guests out to be backed by his band,” Wolf told his hometown Boston Phoenix newspaper. “In this very corporatized world of rock and roll, he’s into giving the audience their money’s worth, so there’s a similarity there with the Geils Band, even if the styles of music are very different.”

Indeed, feeding his own musical needs wasn’t the only motivator for Rock. In a time when many concert fans are feeling a sharp economic pinch, he says, ramping up his show to offer more bang for the buck was a natural move. During the tour’s opening stretch last month, he was particularly struck while visiting Rust Belt cities such as Dayton, Ohio, where evidence of the shaky economy “was just sad.”
Seats top out at $45 for this weekend’s dates with Rock, an artist who has long been heralded in the industry for his price-conscious ticketing.

“I think this way — especially with this economy the way it is — everybody wins,” he says, adding with typically confident aplomb: “You’re not going to get a better show for the money, anywhere.”

But maintaining low prices while adding artists to his lineup left Rock and his team with a decision: Something had to get trimmed. For this round of dates, that means none of the pyrotechnic effects or onstage dancers that have traditionally marked his arena shows. Rock says that by the time he gets to the tour’s summer leg, he hopes to find a balance, maintaining the new special-guest approach while reintegrating some of the old frills.

“The ultimate show for the ultimate fair price,” he says. “That’s what I’ve been looking forward to for the future, where everything I’ve done gets tied together.”

That future could be interesting for Kid Rock. With two albums remaining on his Atlantic Records contract — a standard record and a greatest-hits compilation — he’s looking ahead to a day when he can toy around with new ways of making music.

Rock says his timing has been lucky: His deal with Atlantic, signed 11 years ago and renegotiated after the success of 1998’s “Devil Without a Cause,” allowed him to break through during a time when selling records was still a viable career path — before the Internet sent the music industry scrambling for a new direction.

“I got in right at the end of it all. I couldn’t imagine being a new act these days,” he says. “And I’ll be getting out of my contract at the right time because it seems like it’s going to be three or four years before this all gets figured out.”
Rock’s own set will feature plenty of songs from his recent No. 1 album, “Rock and Roll Jesus ” — material that he says is clicking with audiences quicker than new stuff he has previously presented onstage.

But Rock figures that with his multi-artist revue, he has potentially struck upon a concept that he can ride well into the future, with an ever-evolving series of live shows, albums and video releases.

“Run pulled me over after the first show, he recalls, and said, ‘I understand it now — you’re making sure you can do this forever.’ ”

Contact BRIAN McCOLLUM at 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

Photo by Jeff Schrier/ The Saginaw News

Posted by Adam Graham on Wed, Feb 6, 2008 at 10:32 AM

If you live in Detroit, you’ve seen Kid Rock at least a dozen times. You’ve seen Kid Rock live as many times as you’ve watched Huel Perkins anchor a TV news broadcast.

But you’ve never seen Kid Rock quite like this before.

Rock’s “Rock and Roll Revival” tour, touching down at Joe Louis Arena Friday and Saturday, is a full-scale rock and roll revue, with Rock and special guests Peter Wolf and Rev. Run tearing through rock, metal, hip-hop, country, soul and whatever else they feel like in the two-and-a-half hour show. It’s a big, bad waltz through 40 years of American music, and it features Rock and his genre-mashing best.

I checked out the show Tuesday night at Saginaw’s Dow Event Center, where the crowd was partying like it was still Super Bowl Sunday (don’t those people have to go to work today?). The show was a warm-up of sorts for this weekend’s shows, which will also feature Dickey Betts from the Allman Brothers.

Here are the top five can’t-miss moments from the show. Time your bathroom breaks accordingly (or just wait for the show’s built-in 12-minute intermission).

5. Peter Wolf’s rant. The former J. Geils Band frontman may not be in the best shape of his life — few 61-year-olds can pull off the leather pants look, and even fewer when pairing them with New Balance tennis shoes — but the unkempt wildman, taking tugs of Jim Beam straight out of the bottle, has got a great rant in the middle of the show that leads into the J. Geils Band’s “Must of Got Lost.”

4. “Cowboy” and “Bawitdaba.” Sure, you’ve heard them a million times before, but with Rock’s expanded, 10-piece Twisted Brown Trucker band providing the muscle, the songs have rarely sounded this bombastic.

3. The new stuff. “Rock N Roll Jesus,” “Amen” and “All Summer Long” already feel like Kid Rock staples, and “Lowlife (Living the Highlife)” fits in well with the likes of “Welcome 2 the Party.” (I’m still not sure about the roller-coaster-as-metaphor-for-life “Roll On,” which is a bit of a snooze.) Of course, I once felt like “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pain Train” was a grower, but it — like everything else from Kid Rock’s self-titled 2003 album — has been excised from the setlist altogether, so who knows which songs will survive the cut the next go-round.

2. The closing number. No spoilers here, but don’t miss the pre-encore show-closer when Rock is joined on-stage by his special guests for a surprise cover.

1. Rock and Run’s set. For all his genre mixing and matching, Kid Rock is a hip-hop kid at heart, and his set with Run DMC’s Rev. Run is not only the highlight of the show, it feels like it’s what Rock should have been doing for years. He obligingly plays the hype man and lets Run take the show, and it’s an arm-waving delight to watch the pair tear through Run DMC classics like “You Be Illin’” and “It’s Tricky,” not to mention a riff-tastic “Walk This Way.” For everyone who has griped about Rock’s lack of rapping on his last few records, this is what you’ve been waiting for.

And here’s one to skip:

“Half Your Age.” Kid Rock’s kiss-off to Pamela Anderson is about half as clever as he thinks it is, and performing the song only makes him seem petty in his breakup with Pammy. The song is saved, last minute, by an assist from drummer Stefanie Eulinberg, but can still safely be axed from the setlist and no one would be bothered.

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Kid Rock
Tuesday night in the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel.
Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News
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Buffalo News
Review: Kid Rock is the life of the party
By Jeff Miers - NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC

NIAGARA FALLS —
Take some Ronnie Van Zandt. Add a splash of Ad Rock. Douse liberally with the essence of Bob Seger. Waft a cloud of eau de Ted Nugent atop it all. Shake vigorously. Pour, over ice, while cranking Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” like it’s 1978. Drink till you’re dry.

Oh, by the way, your beverage of choice is known as a Kid Rock.

On Wednesday, Lent was not a concern, as Kid Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band brought their rock, soul, metal, rap, classic ’70s music mash-up to the Events Center at the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel.

It was a party, y’all. Like they used to do out in the woods behind the high school when everybody’s parents thought they were sleeping over at a friend’s house with parental supervision. They drank, they smoked (out in the lobby), and they watched Kid Rock and company testify to the power of the music all of us over — say 33 (I’m being kind) — listened to, loved, fell in love to and forged the outline of the selves we’d become during the latter half of the 1970s.

If you passed me on the street anytime prior to tonight’s concert and happened to ask me what I thought of Kid Rock, I would’ve come across all holier- than-thou, and mumbled something about the crass, refried, gratuitous rebel-yell-ness of it all. Heck, “Double Live Gonzo” was considered an educational guitar manual where and when I come from, and Seger and Skynyrd weren’t worth declaiming about, since we heard them on the radio constantly.

What do I need some Detroit yahoo with a massive attitude and a sketchy hip-hop past for?

Imagine my surprise when Kid Rock and the Twisted Brown Trucker Band put on one of the better rock shows I’ve seen in a good long time on Wednesday night. Believe me, folks, I’ve lived to hate this sort of rehashed, sample-heavy, white-guy-doing-hip-hop stuff. But the Kid turned me around, at least for a few hours. His show was simply stellar. A party, like we used to do it back when.

I never got the memo letting me know Peter Wolf of the J Giels Band would be part of the proceedings, so I nearly fell of my boot heels when the gig commenced with the former Boston deejay’s rapid-fire wama- jama, and a killer Twisted Brown Truckler take on “Love Stinks.” What a treat for these soul-craving ears.

And then there was the Kid, right next to Wolf, as if making the generational torch-pass more than plain for the clearly beer-aided audience. Wow. That was incredibly cool.

Wolf would be back later, as would Rev Run, of RUN DMC fame, during the course of what turned out to be not so much a Kid Rock concert as an opportunity for the man in charge to celebrate the music that touched him as a kid.

The Kid came out on fire, and smoldered throughout. He was part Jim Dandy, Part Steven Tyler, part Eminem, (I didn’t like that part), and a whole lot of parts Seger and Nugent as he rolled his was through a set heavy on the material from his strong-selling “Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus” album. What grabbed me most, however, was the deference he showed Wolff whenever the rubber-hipped man was on stage, and the clear props he showed Rev Run. I’d never have pegged Kid Rock for a class act.

What did we get? An opening salvo of “Never Met a . . . Quite Like Me,” which Kid underscored with some seriously Roth-like leaps. “Lowlife (Living the High Life),” in case anyone had forgotten who they came to see. “All Summer Long,” in case those in attendance needed reminding that Kid is obsessed with his own past, his formative years, the time spent cranking Skynyrd and RUN DMC on the boom-box while yer buddy Steve’s parents were out of the state on a two-week vacation. “Cowboy,” for the nostalgic, the folks who wanted reminding of that time at the turn of the century when rap, metal and country could share the same bed.

Wolf returned later for a show-stopping take on the J Geils Band’s “Must of Got Lost,” and a very Stones-reverent “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” and it was simply killer.

Kid Rock makes his living praising the folks who inspired to him to take up music in the first place.

After Wednesday’s show, I have no problem with that.

jmiers@buffnews.com

photo by: JEFF SCHRIER/The Saginaw News
Kid Rock performs during his concert Tuesday night.


Posted by Sue White | The Saginaw News February 06, 2008
Categories: Entertainment, Top Stories, Tri-Cities

Previous stops in Saginaw found Kid Rock donning the pimp look with a floor-length fur coat, a bad-boy persona, pole dancers and pyrotechnics.

Tuesday, the rocking rapper left that all behind, trusting instead in what we’ve seen in him from the beginning — a true passion for music of all styles — as he made his way back to a sold-out crowd of 6,400 at TheDow Event Center in Saginaw.

Kid Rock also sold out shows here in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

He sang songs Tuesday with titles we can’t print and then led in the reverent “Amen” and its call to “simplify, testify, identify, rectify.” He asked the crowd how Saginaw felt about country music — you know, Nashville — and came back with a cowboy hat and “Cowboy.”

Nothing was quite as it seemed from the moment the lights went down. Supporting acts Peter Wolf of J. Geils Band fame and Rev Run from Run DMC didn’t merely open the show. The veteran rockers wove their signature works into Kid Rock’s night-long mix. Kid Rock was dapper in his white suit as he musically preached the gospel of a “Rock N Roll Jesus” to a rapt crowd and equally swaggering in his stripped-down jeans and white T.

Any concern of alienating rowdier fans vanished as a sea of flicking flames spread across Wendler Arena to the warm sentiments of “Only God Knows Why.” Kid Rock joined Wolf for “Centerfold,” and after a brief intermission, ably traded raps from Run DMC’s catalog with the Rev, including the Aerosmith collaboration, “Walk this Way.”

The encore included Kid Rock, Wolf and Rev Run holding their index fingers high as they joined voices in the children’s Sunday school staple, “This Little Light of Mine.”

It was a true music revival, reminding us of what we loved in Kid Rock, despite the recent spate of sensational reports of drama queens and fist-happy former husbands. He touched on the tabloid tales, warning of what happens when you mess with a songwriter in “Half Your Age” and then answering questions with the spin of the night’s turntables.

The soul-stirring inclusion of David McMurray’s sax was a highlight. Who thought you could improve on “Picture,” the Kid’s duet with Sheryl Crow? You’d have to hear McMurray’s intro to fully appreciate what he brings to the table.



Sometimes, it didn’t even take a whole song; just a few bars from “Sweet Home Alabama” gave his own “All Summer Long” a distinctive depth. Fans danced to the hip-hop and swayed to the gospel.
We experienced Kid Rock in a new way, a three-hour sampler that stripped away the window-dressing and served up the real thing. The closing all-star cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” summed it up best — There’s something happening here, though of what, we’re never exactly sure.

“Welcome 2 the Party,” indeed.

Click Here to check out photos and quotes from Detroit’s own Rock N Roll Jesus!

Kid Rock’s interview from the “Free Beer and Hot Wings Radio Show” (2/1/08)

Listen Now!

Kid Rock will have a special duet performance with Keely Smith on the 50th Anniversary Grammy Awards and will also present the Grammy for ‘Best Rock Album of the Year’. Please tune in.

PUBLISHED: Monday, February 4, 2008

By Gary Graff
Of The Oakland Press

GRAND RAPIDS — A Kid Rock concert? That means dancing girls. Giant Confederate flags. Plenty of pyrotechnics. Until this year.

For his Rock N Roll Revival Tour, supporting his chart-topping 2007 album “Rock N Roll Jesus,” the Clarkston-based rocker has trimmed the glitz and pimp-of-the-nation trappings — the extraneous concert bling, if you will — and has focused instead on the music, with a revue-style spectacle that draws in spirit on the rock and soul packages of the ’60s and winds up being a fresh and engrossing experience for an early 21st century audience.

Rock brought it “home” on Friday (Feb. 1) at Van Andel Arena here, the first of four Michigan concert stops on the tour. Despite a catalog that can support the two and a half hour concert on its own, Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band — expanded to 10 pieces for the Revival trek — were joined by longtime friend Rev. Run of Run-DMC and J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf (former Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts joins the tour starting with the Detroit shows on Feb. 8-9).

Rather than use them as opening acts, however, Rock and company incorporated the two icons into the main show for one long evening of music, a daring and spirited celebration that blew some welcome fresh air into Rock’s well-practiced presentation and created a kind of musical tutorial for the sold-out and exuberant Grand Rapids crowd.

A white-suited Rock had the rightful first word, of course. Following an over-long hype job by Detroit rapper Champtown, Rock and Twisted Brown Trucker kicked things off with a furious “Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus” and “Welcome to the Party,” with David McMurray’s saxophone honks and Larry Fratangello’s musical percussion adding new depth to the Twisted Brown Trucker sound. But Rock didn’t wait long to show off his new strategy, bringing Wolf on to sing the Geils hit “Love Stinks” while tossing roses into the crowd.

Wolf would return at the end of the show’s first half, joining Rock for the Geils smash “Centerfold” and a Motown medley of the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go” and the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” before recreating the “Woofah Goofah” rap that led into “Musta Got Lost.”

Rev. Run’s moment came not long after the show’s short intermission, when the Fedora-wearing rapper and Rock worked through a medley of the Run-DMC hits “Rock Box,” “It’s Like That,” “Tricky,” “Illin’,” “Here We Go” and “King of Rock” before finishing with the group’s hit treatment of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” Wolf and Run were back for the encores, too — a swampy take on Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and a trio rendition of the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine.” Rock’s repertoire did not get lost amidst the festivities, however.

Concentrating on the “Rock N Roll Jesus” album, he and Twisted Brown Trucker worked through “Lowlife,” the buoyant next single “All Summer Long,” “Half Your Age,” “Amen” and “So Hott,” as well as a devastating version of the soulful ”Roll On” which featured McMurray. The old hits were there as well — “American Bad Ass,” “Cowboy,” “Only God Knows Why,” “Picture,” “Devil Without a Cause.”

In the spirit of the night some changes were made there, too. “Cowboy” still broke into Waylon Jennings’ “Theme From the Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys)” but eschewed the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Cowboy” as the usual introduction. And on “Three Sheets to the Wind” Rock did not take his habitual turn playing every instrument, instead showing off only his turntable skills via a Q&A session with DJ Paradime, answering the latter’s questions with well-chosen song selections.

By the time Rock and Twisted Brown Trucker roared into the traditional show-closer, “Bawitdaba,” it was clear that this had been anything but a typical Kid Rock show. He hasn’t entirely reinvented the wheel, but Rock now rolls with a refreshed energy and a renewed vision, only enhancing and improving upon what’s made him such a stalwart performer prior to this.

Never one to shy away from trouble, Detroit’s Kid Rock is the latest in a long line of roughneck rockers

By Jeff Miers / NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC
Updated: 02/03/08 8:42 AM

Detroit’s Kid Rock performs Wednesday at the Seneca Events Center in Niagara Falls.

It takes some brass to name your album “Rock N Roll Jesus.” But then, brass is something Kid Rock has never lacked. For a decade now, he’s been firing from the hip, shooting off his mouth, and fostering a rock-cowboy “from trailer park rags to arena rock riches” mystique. Brief, turbulent celebrity marriage? Check. Public displays of drunkenness? Check. Mega-platinum success? Check.

Tenuous connection to right-wing “family values,” guns, Hank Williams Jr. and Ted Nugent? Check. Messianic complex? Check.

Kid Rock filled a niche when he arrived during the final whimper of the ’90s, one that only seems to be widening as he gets deeper into his career: A few months back, Rock’s latest effort, “Rock N Roll Jesus,” hit the top slot in the charts, temporarily booting Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic” from that position. It was his first album to reach No. 1.

Love him or hate him — and few seem to fall in between the two extremes on the subject — Kid Rock is huge.

As Rock prepares to invade, appropriately, the Seneca Niagara Casino Events Center on Wednesday evening, the time seems ripe to ponder the former Bob Ritchie’s place in the roughneck-rocker lexicon, and to wonder just how long this Kid might stay in the picture.

Beastie brat

Kid Rock is an unlikely success story. Raised in Detroit, the home of meat and potatoes rock ’n’ roll, Motown and the MC5, Rock started out as a Caucasian hip-hop casualty. He managed to summon the attention of New York frat-hop trio the Beastie Boys, grabbed some ink in their Grand Royal magazine, and was soon nurturing a buzz based on his ability to blend the “drunk college kid” highjinks of the Beastie’s “Fight for Your Right to Party” with elements of Metro Detroit hip-hop and greaser-metal.

From the beginning, Rock posited himself as a rebel outsider with a patriotic “don’t tread on me” streak a mile wide. “I ain’t straight outta Compton, I’m straight out the trailer park,” rapped the renegade, in the process contrasting himself with the gangster rappers of his day, though clearly, he owed them a significant stylistic debt. “Devil Without a Cause” arrived while rap-metal was staking its claim, and on the strength of the annoyingly catchy pig-Latin of “Bawitdaba,” sold some 12 million copies. Rock was no longer a failed white rapper. He was rock royalty.

Smartly, as it turned out, Rock immediately began distancing himself from his rap-rock brethren, abandoning the ship just as it began to sink, by breaking into Southern rock, country music, classic ’70s-style rock and a hybrid of all of these with his increasingly sing-rap delivery acting as the common denominator. He slipped his old skin quickly and with stealth. Albums like “Cocky,” a VH1 Crossroads special with Hank Williams Jr., performances for American troops stationed overseas, via the USO, and a much-ballyhooed, mildly controversial appearance during the halftime bacchanal at Super Bowl XXXVIII — Rock performed wearing what appeared to be a poncho stitched from an American flag — cemented the man’s public image as a lovable rogue who favored Budweiser over champagne and strip clubs over Hollywood red-carpet events.

Rock started his career looking and sounding like a slightly less pimped-out Vanilla Ice. A few years into the new millennium,

his transformation to masculine, no-nonsense Southern-rock loving soldier was complete.

Rock’s rap sheet

Kid Rock has never shied away from trouble. Much of the time, it seems, he’s courted it. Here’s a few of his “greatest hits.”

• In February 2005, Rock was arrested on assault charges, after clobbering a DJ in a strip club in Nashville. Never one to be kept down — even by a million-dollar lawsuit, filed by the post-clobbering strip-club DJ — Rock bounced back within weeks, inducting his hero Bob Seger into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and sitting in with Lynyrd Skynyrd, another of his musical idols.

• Rock and actress Pamela Anderson wed in July 2006. Their marriage lasted five months.

• Rock spent Christmas 2006 performing for U.S. troops in Iraq. He later claimed, via his MySpace page, to have witnessed the death of nine soldiers during his stay.

• In January 2007, Rock teamed with the original bad boy of rock ’n’ roll, Jerry Lee Lewis, for a performance on “The Tonight Show.”

• Rock and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee got into a fistfight during the MTV Video Music Awards in September 2007. One supposes the fight had to do with Anderson, to whom Lee was also once married. Rock was charged with misdemeanor battery, but Lee later dropped the charges.

• On the same day his “Rock N Roll Jesus” debuted at No. 1, Rock and his longtime manager Ed Andrews parted ways.

• In October 2007, Rock followed an Atlanta concert with a trip to a nearby Waffle House, where Rock and members of his band got into a brawl with a reportedly drunken customer. Rock was arrested on battery charges. (That’s right — Rock got into a drunken fight at a breakfast joint! Whoo-eee!)

• Last month, Rock and his band performed at the General Motors Style Car and Fashion Show in Detroit. During the event, Rock’s new clothing line, “Made in Detroit,” was displayed. Muscle cars, muscle shirts and Kid Rock — a marriage made in heaven (or Detroit).