Rugged Stuff

Put Some Kid Rock in your Country?

By R. Keith Rugg, 9-06-08

	While Kid Rock might be a wannabe cowboy and a friend to country music, does it make him a country musician?

As much as I like country music (and I really like country music), I’m not quite as hard-core as the gal in The Blues Brothers, who says they’ve got both kinds of music: country and Western.  Instead, I’ll occasionally flip the radio dial over to some smooth jazz, or classic rock, even ambient and new age once in a while.  (Yes, radio dial… the CD player in my vehicle is broken.)

The thing is, I kind of like to have some delineations between the genres.  When I’m listening to country, I want to hear country.  When I’m listening to something else, I don’t want to hear country.  But then, this begs the question, what is country music?  For a long time, my answer to that was- If they play it on the country station on the radio, then it’s country music.  And kind of secondary to that, if a country musican performs it, it’s country music.

So without going into the roots, orgins and evolutions of country and Western, this has given me a working definition of your mainstream, top 40-type country music for the past three decades or so.  And that means there’s a lot of crossover in that group.  You’ve got your pop music country singers like Sylvia and Juice Newton.  You’ve got some bluesy stuff, some hippie and folky stuff, some honkytonk stuff, and you’ve got a whole truckload of Southern rock.

But as I get older (and older and older), I don’t much care for that definition of country music.  I’ve decided that just because Willie Nelson sings All of Me, that doesn’t make it country.  Just because Mark Wills closes a concert with a Bon Jovi song doesn’t make it country.  And (you can insert your own level of emphasis here), just because Kid Rock has a song on the country music charts, doesn’t make it country: And it doesn’t make him a country musician.

Kid Rock’s All Summer Long is getting tons of airplay on both of my local mainstream country stations.  But as another commentator has phrased it, “No way, no how, not in a million years, not under the biggest tent, nor by the broadest definition, can this be called a country song.” Jim Malec, at the 9513 country music blog, says the fact that All Summer Long is so hot on the country charts (as I write this, it has hit No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot Country list), makes him question “whether there’s any style of music country radio stations will not play.” Well said!

All Summer Long is being hyped as both Southern rock and country.  I can see the Southern rock label, because of the sounds and sources of the song… however, this is a coming of age song set in MICHIGAN.  (Yes, sometimes I believe that content, just like character, does count.)

My ornery reaction to hearing this song on my country radio isn’t based on a prejudice against Kid Rock, either.  Oh, I’ll admit that when I first became aware of him- it was probably during his Pamela Anderson days- I felt that he was creepy and distasteful.  But over the years, I’ve developed a reluctant respect for him.  I raised my eyebrows at his and Sheryl Crow’s Picture, and that song’s success on the country side of things, but when I sat down and actually listened to it, I felt it could hold its own on a country station.  And when I was asked to compile a Top 10 Albums of 2002 list for Action Magazine, (all genres), I included Kid Rock’s Cocky, and damned him with faint praise.

God only knows how Kid Rock made it this far, but after blundering away through his first few albums, he’s finally showing some polish.  I wrote earlier in the year that he was trying something new (namely, playing actual music) and I’ll stand by that judgement.

(Just in case you’re wondering, yes, I did stack the deck toward country music on that list.. Out of the 10, three were country albums; Scarecrow by Garth Brooks, Drive by Alan Jackson, and the Dixie Chicks’ Home.)

So I guess the whole point of this posting is nothing more than just me doing a bit of complaining and kvetching.  I want to keep some distinction between the genres of music, and I don’t trust my mainstream country stations to do it.  Yes, Kid Rock is capable of producing some passable country music, and yes, Kid Rock has performed with Hank Jr., and yes, Kid Rock has toured with David Allan Coe, and yes, Kid Rock might be a friend of country music.  But no, that doesn’t mean I want to hear anything and everything he produces being played on my country station. 

What gets me most of all is when Summer Nights comes on my favorite country station, and I hit my preset button to switch to my second-favorite country station, and the same song is playing there, too, at the same time.

I’ve really got to get my CD player fixed.

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