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Not anytime recently, mind you. At least a decade ago. However, his recent tour seemed to attract every single solitary person from the age of 25 to 40 in this town to his concert. People around here love him, and to be honest, I’ve never understood why.

I’ve come to realize, it’s not his music - because I like his music. It’s not really anything to do with him.

It’s everything to do with that “meeting Kid Rock episode gone wrong” night of my life, way back in the day. Let me set the scene for you…

It was me, Rachel and I think Amy. We were headed to New Orleans to the House of Blues to see our beloved Phunk Junkeez (whom we were more than a little bit obsessed with, and saw an obscene number of times that I won’t even mention). It never mattered if we got to their concerts early or not, as long as we were in the building when they took the stage. We had mucho practice at manhandling our way to the front of the crowd and being front and center. We never, ever failed at this task.  And yes, I’m quite proud of this accomplishment.

However, we got to this particular concert a little bit early. Early enough to see the opening act, which was some punk ass redneck wanna-be rapper that called himself Kid Rock. I was not impressed. I do not even recall hearing his music. His presence simply made me want to roll my eyes, and visit the lady with the toiletries in the bathroom to see if she had any good loot.

The concert went on, it was a success as usual. We were front and center, I believe Rach touched the Soul Man’s leg that night and therefore, she was in heaven. We had much to drink, and more fun than ever. Man, those were the days. When the concert was over, naturally we had no plans to go home - for crying out loud, we were in the Quarter. Look out Bourbon Street, here we come!!

On the way OUT of the House of Blues (it’s kind of an alley way) there was some guy handing something out. It was dark, so I couldn’t see much more than his silhouette until we were up close. Of course if they were handing out something for free, I wanted to see what it was. Well, this punk ass fella hands me a cassette tape. Remember those? haha. I crack me up….

You know the single style casettes, wrapped in the thin cardboard and shrink wrapped. He handed it to me, and my meeting / conversation with Kid Rock is as follows:

Me: What is this?

K.R.: It’s my demo tape.

Me: Who the F are you? (sorry y’all, I was like 22 and way drunk and severely uncensored)

K.R.: (standing a bit taller, and poking his chest out rooster style) I’m Kid Rock!

Me: Never heard of ya.

K.R. (something to the effect of …) Have a listen to the tape, you might like it…

Me: (busted out laughing) Yeah okay, whatever.

I couldn’t NOT laugh because Rachel was in hysterics right next to me from the point where I asked who the F he was - she did that a lot, she would laugh and leave me to struggle through conversation. I miss her crazy ass.

So we continue on our merry way down Decateur Street and there are a bunch of construction workers building/renovating the building that was to become Bubba Gump’s. They started with the cat calls, which is typical. I called one of them out, had a few choice words for him, and his attitude changed a bit. He hollared to ask where we were coming from, I said a concert at the House of Blues. He asked if it was any good, I said one band was. He asked about the other one, I said it was some punk then said “Here, see for yourself” and TOSSED HIM MY KID ROCK DEMO CASSETTE TAPE.

I just knew then that I had no use for it. Now I wish I had it, just because it was proof that I met Kid Rock when he was nobody. But you see, I thought he would remain nobody…

Two months later, I saw a familiar looking punk on MTV, and realized… it was Kid Rock.

Who’s laughing now?

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