Kid Rock Vows Not to Play Venues With Vaccine & Mask Mandates: ‘I Won’t Be Showing Up’
Kid Rock assured his fans that they don’t have to worry about showing their vaccine cards or wearing a mask at the dates on his upcoming Bad Reputation tour.
In a four-minute video message on his socials on Thursday (Jan. 27), Rock — born Robert James Richie — said he’s done “all the research” and believes that most COVID-19 precautions will be gone by the time the 25-date outing kicks off on April 6 at Ford Center in Evansville, Ind. “And if they’re not, trust me, you don’t have to worry,” the 51-year-old promised. “You’re going to be getting your money back, because I won’t be showing up either.”
In light of the message on his politically charged new single, “We the People” — the follow-up to November’s equally strident “Don’t Tell Me How to Live” — Rock said he’d be a hypocrite if he played shows with mask and vaccine mandates.
“If you think I’m going to sit out there and sing ‘Don’t Tell Me How to Live’ or ‘We the People’ while people are holding up their f–king vaccine cards and wearing masks, that s–t ain’t happening,” he said, noting that gigs in Buffalo, Toronto “and several other cities we were looking at” were scrapped because of mandates.
“I don’t want to deal with that s–t either and I know that you don’t,” he said, giving a shoutout to the “liberal media” in the expectation that a raft of “clickbait” stories would focus on his anti-COVID protocol stance. The video also touched on the nearly two-year gestation time for Rock’s upcoming 11th studio album, Bad Reputation, and what he deemed the pearl-clutching reaction to his sloganeering singles, with the singer boasting that he’s “un-f–king-cancelable.”
On Monday (Jan. 24), Rock unveiled “We the People,” which opens with him shouting the line, “We the people in all we do reserve the right to scream, ‘F–k you!” He goes on to call out the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by slamming his suggestions on mask-wearing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Wear your mask. Take your pills. Now a whole generation is mentally ill,” Kid Rock sings while mocking the response to the global pandemic that has resulted in nearly 75 million cases and nearly 900,000 deaths to date in the U.S.
He also calls out the Biden administration on the track in the lead-up to the chorus, which repeats the phrase, “Let’s go, Brandon.” The wink-wink expression became a slogan among conservative and GOP groups last year when an NBC Sports reporter said the crowd at a NASCAR race was chanting those words in support of driver Brandon Brown, when in actuality, they were shouting “F–k Joe Biden.”
In other political news, Politico reported on Friday that Rock — who launched an attention-grabbing publicity ploy Senate bid in 2018 — is “being recruited by some MAGA members of Congress” to run for a seat in Tennessee’s 5th congressional district; Rock has an estate in the Nashville area. “Rock joked to a source who’s recruiting him that he’s open to considering a House run because his faux campaign for Senate was so successful in selling concert tickets,” Politico reported, adding that Rock had a phone chat with his friend former president Donald Trump on Wednesday. Trump has already endorsed former State Dept. spokesperson Morgan Ortagus for the seat.
Watch the video below.
