Colt Ford Says Kid Rock Still Paid Him For Shows That He Was Forced To Miss After Suffering A Heart Attack

Good ol’ Bob.

Kid Rock (whose real name is Bob Ritchie) gets a bad reputation in the media sometimes for his brash comments and unapologetic attitude about speaking his mind. But as somebody who works in country music and hears a lot about artists, I can honestly say that I’ve never heard a bad word about Kid Rock from anybody who’s met him or knows him personally, which says a lot in an industry full of people who are quick to tear others down.

And one of those in the industry who has nothing but praise for Kid Rock is Colt Ford.

Last year, the country rapper suffered a serious heart attack after a sold-out show at the Gilbert, Arizona, location of Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row. The singer/songwriter was rushed to Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, Arizona, where he was considered to be in critical condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Weeks after the medical emergency, the 54-year-old spoke publicly for the first time on the Big D & Bubba Show, detailing the scary event, revealing that he was declared clinically dead three times before being stabilized:

“It’s just been a traumatic, crazy experience, guys. I don’t even remember coming out here to do a show in Phoenix. I died three times. Luckily, my band came out to check on me…they came out to check on me, and then all of a sudden they were like, ‘Oh God,’ and then that is when all hell broke loose.”

This Mayo Clinic out here in Phoenix, if it was going to happen, God could not have had me in a better place. The big doc out here said, ‘I wouldn’t give me 1%, but I give you 0.1% that you’d survive.’ They brought me back. They saved my life. The Lord had more for me to do.”

Obviously it’s been a long road to recovery for Colt, who announced earlier this year that he was finally heading back out on the road and would be releasing new music soon. But Colt was forced to cancel all of his shows in 2024 – something that he admits was a financial burden.

Of course everybody thinks of these artists as rich folks who can afford to do whatever they want. But for smaller artists, even those who have been around as long and had as much success as Colt Ford, they still rely on touring to pay their bills and keep their band and crew employed. So it was a big hit to the wallet when he was forced to cancel his entire 2024 touring schedule, including 7 shows on the Rock the Country tour.

The two-day festival was launched last year by Kid Rock, and the lineup for each of the seven shows in small towns across America featured headliners Kid Rock and Jason Aldean, along with a number of other artists – including Colt Ford.

Well obviously after his heart attack, Colt wasn’t able to perform on the shows. And as he recalled recently during an appearance on the Outside the Round with Matt Burrill podcast, Kid Rock and the festival organizers were forced to try to find a replacement for his time slot:

“He Facetimed me, he’s like, ‘Man, pulling for you, praying for you.’ He goes, ‘They called me, and asked me, we had a little meeting and said ok, who are we going to get to replace Colt Ford?’

He said, ‘I looked at ’em and said well, give me your options. I ran ’em down and I said I don’t know what you’re gonna do, because you don’t have anybody that can replace Colt Ford on that list.'”

So instead of trying to replace Colt Ford in the lineup, Kid Rock decided that he would do it himself, by doing a DJ set of Colt’s music at each show. But Colt admits that missing the shows was still going to hurt him:

“I’m not on Kid Rock’s level. I’m not on some of these guys’ level, the kind of money we make every night. So I don’t need to miss no shows.”

But Kid Rock took care of that too:

“Bob paid me anyway. That’s the kind of stuff that sometimes needs to get out there. He was like, ‘I got you.’ Because he knew that was a big deal for me, and it was.”

I know Kid Rock gets a lot of hate in the media (and as Colt points out, a lot of it’s self-inflicted, though I don’t think Kid Rock really cares), but you gotta love hearing these stories about him taking care of others when they needed it the most – and nobody would have ever even known about it without Colt giving him the praise.

The post Colt Ford Says Kid Rock Still Paid Him For Shows That He Was Forced To Miss After Suffering A Heart Attack first appeared on Whiskey Riff.