OldiesSong

Greatest Hits Oldies But Goodies Ever

In 2000, right as his 14-million-selling album “Devil Without a Cause” made him one of the biggest stars in music, Kid Rock won full custody of his seven-year-old son and rewrote his entire touring life around a Michigan school calendar. Born Robert James Ritchie, he had spent a decade grinding in the underground before breaking through in 1998. When a Michigan court placed young Robert James Ritchie Jr., known as Bobby Jr., in his sole care after a custody battle with his former girlfriend Kelley South Russell, the rocker refused to hand his son over to full-time nannies or move him to Los Angeles. Instead, he gave his management a strict three-day touring rule. Throughout the 2000s, he booked shows only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, boarding a private plane right after Saturday night’s encore so he could walk through his front door in Clarkston, Michigan, before Sunday morning. From Monday through Wednesday, the wild festival headliner disappeared into the routine of a single father. He stood at the stove making breakfast in a flannel shirt, drove Bobby Jr. to his Clarkston public schools, checked homework at the kitchen table, and sat in the bleachers for school basketball and football games. To keep that promise, he turned down lucrative multi-week tours across Europe, Asia, and Australia during his commercial peak. He held to that schedule for eleven years until Bobby Jr. graduated from high school in 2011 at age eighteen and headed to Belmont University in Nashville, having grown up with his father home every week.

Please scroll down for the video. It is at the end of the article!

When Kenny Chesney texted Kid Rock at six o’clock one morning to talk about tour plans and got an immediate reply, he assumed his friend had been out partying all night.

Instead, Robert James Ritchie was already awake in his Michigan kitchen getting his son ready for school. Chesney joked back that he should keep that quiet so he would not ruin the wild Kid Rock image, yet that 6 a.m. routine had governed the singer’s household ever since a Michigan judge granted him full custody of seven-year-old Robert James Ritchie Jr. in 2000.

Known to his family as Bobby Jr. or Junior, the boy had been born on June 14, 1993, during the lean years when his father was still pressing underground records in Detroit and struggling to pay bills alongside his on-and-off girlfriend, Kelley South Russell. By the time the 1998 album “Devil Without a Cause” moved 14 million copies and turned Kid Rock into an arena headliner, the couple’s split had led to a courtroom custody fight that placed the first-grader in his father’s sole care.

Rather than hiring a staff of round-the-clock nannies to raise the boy while he chased global fame, Ritchie anchored their life in Clarkston, Michigan, about forty miles north of Detroit. He laid down a strict three-day touring rule for his management team, limiting concerts to Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights so he could fly home immediately after Saturday’s final encore and wake up in Michigan on Sunday morning.

From Monday through Wednesday, the performer who built a career on loud rock-rap anthems lived on a public school schedule. He made breakfast, drove his son to class in Clarkston, sat at the kitchen table to check homework, chaperoned school field trips, and took his place in the bleachers for youth football and basketball games.

Holding that line meant turning down multi-week stadium runs across Europe, Asia, and Australia at the height of his commercial earning power. The one time Ritchie briefly tried shifting their home life to California during his mid-2000s marriage to Pamela Anderson, Bobby Jr. came home from his very first day at a Malibu school complaining that the kids there only cared about skateboarding and doing drugs, prompting his father to pack up and move them straight back to Michigan.

Keeping his son grounded in Macomb and Oakland County also shaped how Ritchie worked in the studio. He built his Chophouse Records headquarters and recording complex right in Michigan so he could cut hit albums like 2007’s “Rock n Roll Jesus” and 2010’s Rick Rubin-produced “Born Free” within driving distance of his son’s afternoon practices.

In the spring of 2011, right as Ritchie turned forty, Bobby Jr. completed his senior year at Clarkston High School and graduated at age eighteen. That fall, the teenager packed his bags and moved south to Nashville to study music business at Belmont University, even stepping onto an outdoor stage that November during Tootsie’s 51st Birthday Bash on Broadway while his proud father watched from the crowd.

With his son finally settled on a college campus after eleven years of three-day workweeks, Ritchie overhauled his touring calendar for the first time since 2000. Free to stay on the road for months at a stretch, he launched sprawling summer amphitheater runs, including his 2013 “Best Night Ever” tour, where he capped tickets at twenty dollars across every venue and kept concession prices down for working-class families.

The move to Tennessee also kept father and son close as Ritchie spent more time on his own rural property outside Nashville. In 2014, when Bobby Jr. and his high school sweetheart, Marisa Trovato, welcomed a daughter named Skye, the forty-three-year-old rocker traded his single-parent routine for the title of grandfather, later welcoming a grandson, Rider, and collaborating with his son on the 2022 single “Shakedown”.

All those sold-out summer tours after 2011 had waited until the kid from Clarkston High walked across the graduation stage with his father sitting in the bleachers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKFx0MMqb48

Related Post

Growing up in Oklahoma, Toby Keith never heard his father complain about the right eye he lost during an Army training accident at Fort Sill in the 1950s. Hubert K. “H.K.” Covel Jr. wore a prosthetic eye for the rest of his life and taught his son that serving the country was something a man carried with pride. In March 2001, Covel died in a car crash at age 65, only months before the September attacks and the military tributes that defined the next chapter of Keith’s career. Covel never got to see what his quiet example set in motion. Drawing on his father’s life and the working men who wore the uniform, Keith wrote his 2003 hit “American Soldier,” a song that spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard country chart. Studio tributes were only part of the promise. Between 2002 and 2019, Keith completed 11 USO tours across 18 countries, flying into Iraq and Afghanistan to play nearly 300 shows for more than 250,000 service members. Looking out from makeshift stages at dusty troops in their twenties, he saw the same young men his father had been in the 1950s. When crew members or family worried about the danger of flying into forward outposts, Keith brushed the concern aside. His dad had lost an eye in the Army, he said, so taking on some desert dust and risk to play music for soldiers was nothing. After the final song each night, the six-foot-four singer stood for hours shaking hands and listening to troops talk about home. That devotion brought Keith the 2014 Spirit of the USO Award and the 2021 National Medal of Arts before his passing in 2024. Every trip to the front lines was a son keeping faith with the soldier who raised him.

When Kid Rock walked onto the Grand Ole Opry stage on May 2, 2013, for George Jones’s funeral, he brought an acoustic guitar and a song born from a lesson the country icon had once taught him. Six days earlier, on April 26, Jones had passed away at age 81, drawing thousands of fans and traditional country stars like Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, and Randy Travis to Nashville. Dressed in a dark suit and black fedora near the flower-draped casket, the Detroit rocker looked directly toward the front row where George’s widow, Nancy Sepulvado Jones, sat in mourning after thirty years of marriage. Before playing a note, Kid Rock shared a memory from one of George’s late-career recording projects. He had once offered to write the singer a rowdy track about hard drinking and all-night partying, leaning into the old “No Show Jones” reputation. George gently turned the idea down. Having left that self-destructive life behind after marrying Nancy in 1983, he explained that in his later years he only wanted to sing about peace, faith, gratitude, and the woman who had helped save his life. Taking that correction to heart after hearing of George’s passing, Kid Rock stayed up writing a brand-new ballad titled “The Best of Me.” Alone with his acoustic guitar, he performed the song for the first time at the service, telling Nancy before the televised crowd that while the world got her husband’s legendary voice, she had received the truest part of the man himself. When the final chord faded, the Opry house rose to its feet as Nancy wiped her eyes and nodded back toward the stage in quiet gratitude.

After landing at an outpost in Mosul, Iraq, Toby Keith stepped off a Black Hawk helicopter and saw where ground fire had pierced the fuselage. The incident happened during a USO tour between 2004 and 2005, when northern Iraq was one of the war’s most volatile combat zones. While many visiting performers stayed at large logistics bases in Baghdad or Kuwait, Keith asked to bring his Easy Money Band to remote forward outposts like Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi. Because roadside bombs made ground travel too dangerous, the musicians flew between bases at low altitude and high speed. Before boarding in Mosul, Keith strapped on heavy body armor and a Kevlar helmet over his cowboy hat, holding his guitar case close. Midway through the trip, the helicopter banked hard and jolted. Everyone aboard assumed the pilot was dodging terrain or rough air. Once the Black Hawk touched down and the rotors stopped, the crew inspected the body and pointed to a fresh bullet hole from ground fire. As tension settled over the landing zone, Keith joked that the army ought to hand the cowboys some shotguns so they could shoot back. The pilots and band laughed, and the show went on. Keith brushed the desert dust off his leather boots, took off his armor, and walked onto a stage built from shipping containers to play in the heat for the waiting troops. He later admitted that seeing the bullet hole made his heart beat faster, though he never backed out of the flights that followed. Across 11 USO tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 16 other countries before his passing in 2024, Keith played nearly 300 shows so troops at the farthest outposts knew home had not forgotten them.

On April 24, 2008, Toby Keith was halfway through a humorous song at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan when incoming mortar fire sent 2,500 troops running for cover. The outdoor evening show was part of his sixth USO tour, an 11-day trip across Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf. Keith and his Easy Money Band were playing “Weed With Willie,” with thousands of American and coalition soldiers laughing and singing along, when three rounds hit near the airfield and set off the base sirens. No armored VIP transport waited by the stage. Keith dropped his guitar, pulled out his in-ear monitors, and sprinted 100 yards with the crowd to reach the concrete T-wall bunkers. For nearly an hour, the six-foot-four singer sat cramped in the dusty shelter beside young troops, cracking jokes, signing autographs, and posing for photos while helicopters patrolled overhead and ordnance teams cleared the area. Many soldiers assumed the concert was over and the country star would be flown out right away. Once the all-clear sounded, Keith instead had his crew check the power, walked back under the lights to a massive roar, and resumed “Weed With Willie” at the exact verse where he had stopped. Asked about the close call afterward, Keith kept his reasoning simple. The men and women stationed there could not buy a plane ticket home when the alarms sounded, so neither would he. Before his passing in 2024, Keith completed 11 USO tours across 18 countries, playing more than 285 shows for over 250,000 service members and receiving the 2014 Spirit of the USO Award. In Kandahar, that devotion meant walking out of a concrete bunker to finish the show.

When 55-year-old Kenny Rogers began dating 26-year-old Wanda Miller in 1993 after meeting her at an Atlanta restaurant, her parents realized the four-time divorced country star was actually two years older than they were. Charles and Teena Miller were traditional, religious Southerners who worried their quiet daughter would end up heartbroken behind the scenes of a famous life. Instead of leaning on his wealth or fame, Kenny drove out to meet them in Georgia on their own terms, leaving the entourage behind to sit and listen to their fears while promising a steady future for Wanda. Over the next five years, he showed up in plain clothes without bodyguards, drank iced tea with Charles, and respected the family’s rules. By June 1, 1997, when Kenny and Wanda were married on his Beaver Dam Farms estate in Georgia, her parents gave the marriage their full blessing. The very age gap that first alarmed the Millers soon turned them into peers. Because Kenny and his in-laws had grown up in the same era with the same music and memories, they talked like old friends, watched football together, and shared family vacations. Any remaining doubt vanished after twin sons Justin and Jordan arrived in 2004, when the Millers watched a man in his sixties stay up at night caring for his boys and putting home ahead of the road. When Kenny passed away on March 20, 2020, at age 81, Charles and Teena mourned a son-in-law who had spent twenty-seven years proving their daughter was safe in his hands.

Two months before Hank Williams died at age 29, he signed a legal custody contract in October 1952 to make sure his unborn child would never be abandoned. Failing in health and struggling with severe back pain, Hank took full financial and legal responsibility for the baby he was expecting with Bobbie Jett. He arranged for his mother, Lillie Williams, to raise the child, and asked his sister, Irene Williams Smith, to step in if anything happened to their mother. On January 6, 1953, just five days after Hank passed away in the back seat of his Cadillac, his daughter Antha Belle Jett was born in Montgomery, Alabama. Lillie honored her son’s wishes and legally adopted her granddaughter in December 1954. When Lillie died of a heart attack in February 1955, two-year-old Antha lost the only family protection she had left. Hank’s sister Irene and his ex-wife Audrey refused to keep the toddler, placing her in foster care for adoption and cutting her out of the singer’s growing estate. Adopted by Wayne and Louise Deupree and renamed Cathy Louise Deupree, she grew up in Alabama listening to Hank Williams on the radio without knowing the man singing was her father. After learning the truth at age 21 in 1974, she spent years searching for answers until attorney Keith Adkinson uncovered Hank’s buried 1952 custody agreement. Holding the yellowed paper bearing her father’s signature proved to her that Hank had wanted her all along, and rulings by the Alabama Supreme Court in 1987 and a federal court in 1989 finally restored Jett Williams to her rightful place as his daughter and legal heir.

When Beverly Lambert was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2021, her daughter Miranda had to honor previously booked concert dates while her husband, Brendan McLoughlin, stayed behind in Texas to drive his mother-in-law to her hospital treatments. Beverly has always been at the center of Miranda’s life, helping her through difficult childhood years and later co-founding the MuttNation Foundation with her. After Beverly underwent surgery to remove the tumor and began a demanding schedule of chemotherapy and radiation, Miranda faced the guilt of singing for large crowds while her mother was in treatment. Brendan, a former New York City police officer who had married Miranda in 2019, stepped in so she would not have to carry that worry alone. Far from the city streets where he grew up, he stayed with Miranda’s parents in Texas, pitched in with the heavy chores around their property, and drove Beverly along the long roads to her radiation appointments. While Miranda was out on the road, Brendan sat in hospital hallways waiting through the sessions, looked after Beverly’s daily meals and rest, and sent regular updates so his wife could get through her shows. His steady presence helped keep the family calm through the hardest weeks of recovery. By October 2021, Beverly was strong enough to cheer from the crowd at a benefit concert at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth with Brendan watching over her, and she later rang the hospital bell to mark the end of her treatment. Looking back on that season, Miranda shared publicly that watching her husband care for her mother through cancer showed her the true measure of the man she had married.

When Alan Jackson carried his suitcases back through the front door in early 1998 after four months apart, moving back in was the easiest part of saving his eighteen-year marriage. Denise Jackson had leaned on her Christian faith to welcome him home to their daughters, Mattie, Ali, and Dani, rather than filing for divorce after his confession of infidelity. Rebuilding trust required months of intensive marriage counseling, forcing a guarded Southern man who usually hid behind his white cowboy hat to sit in a therapist’s office and talk openly about his depression, selfishness, and the pressures of fame. Forgiveness did not erase the hurt overnight. In those first months back together, Denise still felt a wave of anxiety whenever Alan’s tour bus pulled out of the driveway or the phone rang late at night. When old anger surfaced and she broke down in tears, Alan did not make excuses or walk away, choosing instead to sit beside her and take full responsibility for the pain he had caused. To prove his commitment went beyond words, he overhauled his career schedule in 1998, cutting back on long tours, skipping Nashville backstage parties, and putting Denise’s peace of mind ahead of music industry awards. Counseling also helped Denise realize she had built her entire identity around her husband for years, allowing both of them to start what they considered a second marriage on healthier ground. They began dating again like teenagers back in Newnan, Georgia, taking quiet drives without bodyguards and talking for hours over private dinners. Nine years later, with Alan’s full blessing, Denise shared the honest story of their 1998 counseling and recovery in her 2007 New York Times bestselling memoir, “It’s All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life.”

At the height of his Nashville fame in late 1997, Alan Jackson walked out of the home he shared with his high school sweetheart and spent four lonely months learning what his success was actually worth. Alan and Denise had been together since meeting at a Dairy Queen in Newnan, Georgia, in 1976, long before the hit records and sold-out arenas. After eighteen years of marriage, the strain of constant touring and Alan’s confession of unfaithfulness finally broke their trust, leading to a quiet separation that lasted into early 1998. While Alan lived alone with all the comforts of a country superstar, Denise stayed home raising their three daughters, Mattie, Ali, and Dani, leaning on her faith as she took off her wedding ring. Away from his family, the freedom Alan thought he wanted quickly turned into an empty silence that no CMA trophy or crowded stadium could fill. Four months into the separation, he let go of his pride, returned to Denise, and asked for a chance to rebuild what he had broken. He cleared his schedule so they could sit through intensive marriage counseling together, facing the hurt directly rather than hiding behind his career. That painful winter reshaped his music first on the 1998 album “High Mileage” and later in his 2003 ballad “Remember When,” which looked back honestly at a love that nearly fell apart before finding its way home.