Kid Rock CD

2003 album finds Kid Rock sounding like he has new role models like Hank Williams Jr. (who is featured on the album) and David Allen Coe. Atlantic.

Personnel includes: Kid Rock (vocals, acoustic, electric, steel & slide guitars, banjo, mellotron, bass, percussion, programming); Billy Gibbons (vocals); Kenny Olsen, Jason Krause (acoustic & electric guitar); Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Marlon Young (guitar); Bobby East (slide guitar, mandolin); Jimmie Bones (harmonica, piano, Wurlitzer piano, organ, background vocals); Johnny Evans (saxophone); Aaron Julison (bass, background vocals); Andy Sutton (bass); Rob Ebeling, Stefanie Eulinberg (drums); Thornetta Davis, Laura Creamer, Karen Newman, Misty Love, Sheryl Crow (background vocals).
Recorded at The Allen Roadhouse, Detroit, Michigan.
Adapter: Kid Rock.
Personnel: Kid Rock (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, slide guitar, steel guitar, banjo, Mellotron, keyboards, percussion, programming, scratches, background vocals); Billy Gibbons, Hank Williams, Jr. (vocals); Jason Krause (guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Kenny Olson (guitar, acoustic guitar); Kenny Wayne Shepherd (guitar); Marlon Young (electric guitar); Bobby East (slide guitar, mandolin); Jimmie Bones (harp, piano, organ, Wurlitzer organ, Jew's harp, programming, background vocals); Johnny Evans (saxophone); David McMurray (tenor saxophone); Larry Nozero (baritone saxophone); Rayse Biggs (trumpet); Stefanie Eulinberg (drums, background vocals); Bob Ebeling (drums); Aaron Julison, Misty Love, Shirley Hayden, Karen Newman, Laura Creamer, Thornetta Davis, Sheryl Crow (background vocals).
Audio Mixers: Kid Rock; Al Sutton.
Recording information: Allen Roadhouse.
Photographers: David Unger; Clay McBride; Dave Dion.
Kid Rock gained his fame as a white-trash rapper, but he retained his fame as a white-trash rocker, using the breakthrough of 1998's Devil Without a Cause to refashion himself as a modern-day blue-collar rocker, as comfortable with crunching bluesy riffs as he is with heartbroken country. The former Bob Ritchie started this transformation on 2001's Cocky, an enjoyably jumbled album that didn't quite take off until "Picture," his straight country duet with Sheryl Crow, was embraced by country radio, reviving the album and even bringing him nominations from the CMA. Kid was already in the process of abandoning metal and, to a lesser extent, hip-hop, so he seized this opportunity to become a full-out rocker and outlaw country singer with his next album, 2003's Kid Rock. Many of Kid's signatures are still in place -- the bragging, the boasting, the songs about sex, fame, and rock & roll, the hard riffs, the self-mythology -- but it no longer sounds like a mix of David Lee Roth and the Beastie Boys (even if the latter's Rod Carew rhyme from "Sure Shot" is lifted for "Intro," just moments after a "So Whatcha Want" reference); it sounds as if Hank Williams, Jr. and David Allan Coe are his new role models. Both Hank and Coe have a similar sense of inflated ego and penchant for name-dropping that borders on self-parody, and Kid Rock follows the same path here, particularly on the numerous rockers -- rockers that range from the heavy, heavy "Jackson, Mississippi" to laid-back, loose-limbed boogies like "Rock n' Roll Pain Train." He wisely plays up the sensitive side of "Picture," too, borrowing from DAC's soul-searching ballads and Bob Seger's introspective numbers. He even revives "Hard Night for Sarah," a song Seger wrote and recorded in 1979 but never released (something that likely wouldn't have happened if he hadn't switched management to Seger's longtime partner, Punch Andrews), and the tune, along with the similarly effective original "Single Father" (inexplicably listed as a bonus track, when there is no other release of the album without it), gives Kid Rock an emotional underpinning it needs, since so much of this is nothing but good-time music. Of course, there's nothing wrong with good-timeRolling Stone (12/25/03, p.107) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Best Albums of 2003"
Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.198) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...KID ROCK is a monster: raucous and clever and unpredictable....This album is proof that Kid Rock knows what he's doing..."
Q (4/04, p.114) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Rock's response is to ease off the hip hop and get back to the '70s, and it works."