Robert James Ritchie opened his Michigan front door in late 1993 and found his six month old son sitting on the porch steps. His high school girlfriend Kelley South Russell had left Bobby Jr. and her two other children there before walking away. Ritchie was only twenty two. Before the breakup Ritchie had dated Russell on and off since the eighth grade and had helped support three young children in the house before learning during the split that one of the children was not biologically his. His early music career had already collapsed. Jive Records had dropped Kid Rock after the 1990 debut Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast failed and later releases on the small Continuum label brought in almost no money. He was estranged from his own father auto dealership owner William Ritchie after leaving home in Romeo as a teenager. He was broke and sharing a rented space in Macomb County with drummer and recording engineer Bob Ebeling. He placed Kelley’s other children safely with maternal relatives. A 1994 paternity filing confirmed Bobby Jr. as his son. Then he brought the infant inside and became a father overnight.
With no budget for paid childcare he built his days around feeding schedules and diaper changes. He mixed formula and rocked his baby to sleep in a cramped apartment. While his mother Susan Ritchie his sister Carol and the baby’s godmother watched Bobby Jr. during late night club sets he spent the boy’s daytime naps writing songs and hand packing cassettes vinyl records and t shirts in his living room. To buy formula milk and diapers without signing away his publishing rights he formed his own independent imprint Top Dog Records and operated as a one man distribution company around metro Detroit. He booked shows at suburban bars and small venues like the Ritz in Roseville and St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit. He sold his Fire It Up EP and monthly Bootleg Series cassettes directly out of his car trunk and at record store counters like Repeat the Beat in Royal Oak.
Working alongside underground Detroit rapper Uncle Kracker and guitarist Kenny Olson he began assembling the Twisted Brown Trucker Band in 1994. He blended hip hop turntables with Southern rock guitars and country storytelling. Over the next two years he poured every spare dollar from local ticket sales into White Room Studios in downtown Detroit to record his 1996 independent album Early Mornin’ Stoned Pimp. Because studio time cost money he needed for his toddler at home he bargained with studio owner Bob Ebeling to pay down his recording bill in cash installments after weekend club dates.
Pressing and selling thousands of copies of Early Mornin’ Stoned Pimp himself across Michigan he built a local following large enough to pack three thousand fans into Detroit’s State Theatre in March 1997. The showcase was tailored for Atlantic Records executives Jason Flom and Andy Karp. When twenty six year old Ritchie signed a one hundred fifty thousand dollar recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1997 his first major purchase was a four bedroom brick home in suburban Clarkston Michigan. He chose it inside a top public school district for his four year old son Bobby Jr.
Atlantic released Devil Without a Cause in August 1998. Singles like Bawitdaba and Cowboy pushed the album past eleven million copies sold. Ritchie’s financial scramble ended overnight. Following a ten month custody proceeding in Macomb County Circuit Court that concluded in 2000 a Michigan judge formally awarded Ritchie sole physical and legal custody of seven year old Bobby Jr.
Even at the height of his multi platinum stadium runs in the early 2000s Ritchie refused to hand his son off to a staff of strangers. Rather than sending Bobby Jr. to nannies in Los Angeles he drove the boy to morning classes in Clarkston. He attended parent teacher conferences. He sat on the sidelines at neighborhood soccer games. He coached youth baseball and basketball teams so the boy would never feel abandoned a second time. Behind the wild hard partying persona in the press he built his touring schedule around school calendars and ordinary fatherhood.
Looking back after Bobby Jr. graduated from Belmont University in Nashville and started a family of his own Ritchie credited the late 1993 porch step surprise with saving him from the excesses of the Detroit club scene. Keeping him busy as a grandfather to two grandchildren he said finding a six month old baby on his porch steps in 1993 gave him a reason to stay disciplined when nightlife could have destroyed him. Whenever neighbors in Clarkston complimented the rock star for standing at the edge of a local youth sports field on a Saturday morning he simply asked what else a father was supposed to do.
What else a father was supposed to do