In his latest interview with Rolling Stone, Kid Rock opens up about hunting, music, guns, and even Beyonce. Check it out…
Ten miles outside town on a two-lane county road, just past the trailer park and across the street from Hank Williams Jr.’s place, there’s a driveway with a poster that says “Re-Elect Sheriff Russell Thomas.” Beyond a gate, a dirt road winds around a small lake, past a “Don’t Feed the Hippies” sign, leading to a brown double-wide trailer (WiFi password: Troublewide). Kid Rock stands outside puffing a cigar, his ponytail spilling out of an orange hunter’s hat. “Welcome to L.A.!” he says, meaning Lower Alabama. “I thought you were coming yesterday. We got our days screwed up. We cooked fuckin’ chitlins!”
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Rock heads across the road to his huge barn, a man cave decked out with a pool table, a full bar and a safe stocked with guns: a .22 rifle, two custom .45 pistols with ivory handles inside a case marked “American Badass Set,” and a semiautomatic with a silencer. “Guys with the president carry this,” he says. “You have to get these pre-1985 with a silencer. I bought it when Obummer came into office, because I’m thinking, ‘What if he fuckin’ bans guns?’ ”
Rock loads a few of them into one of his four-wheelers and we head into the woods, cruising his ragged dirt roads. He’s installed several cameras in trees to keep track of wildlife from his barn: deer, coyotes, bobcats — and lately, feral hogs, which have been damaging his property. He points out a torn-up stretch of grass. “A nice green field — they fucked it all up,” he says. Then we reach the clearing with Rock’s badass surprise: a small cage trap containing three fat, wide-eyed hogs. They wandered into it this morning, lured by the corn inside. “See that?” he says with a grin. “We’re about to do some murderous shit.”
Rock, whose real name is Bob Ritchie (most friends call him Bobby), fell in love with Pike County on hunting trips with Hank Williams Jr., a local hero thanks to his rowdy anthems and unabashed conservative politics; his father, country pioneer Hank Williams Sr., is buried about 35 miles away, in Montgomery. Two years ago, when Hank Jr. mentioned that a neighbor’s neglected property was for sale, Rock agreed to buy it sight unseen. “Great people, man — just small-town America,” Rock says. “If World War III breaks out, you know where I’ll be.” There’s a nearby landing strip for his private jet, so he can easily travel to his houses in Michigan, Malibu, Nashville (where he also lives out of a double-wide) and Florida. “No security,” he says of the strip. “Just drive a pickup truck onto the tarmac, leave your keys in the car, get on the plane.”
Hank Jr. taught Rock the lay of the land. “The snakes around here are bad news, and this area really has a lot of them,” says Williams, who is 65. “You gotta know what the hell you’re doing down here. You don’t put your hand under a boat. We’re not having pizza over on Long Island.”
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“Beyoncé, to me, doesn’t have a fucking ‘Purple Rain,’ but she’s the biggest thing on Earth. How can you be that big without at least one ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ or ‘Old Time Rock & Roll’? People are like, ‘Beyoncé’s hot. Got a nice fucking ass.’ I’m like, ‘Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big tits.’ Doesn’t really fucking do much for me.”
