Kid Rock Receives Approval for Nashville Honky Tonk Sign Featuring Controversial Image

Kid Rock was at the center of another controversy in Nashville, this time over a plan to put a big sign shaped like a woman’s behind outside the Kid Rock‘s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse.

On Thursday, the Metro Council voted 27-3 to allow the singer to put a 20-foot neon sign in the shape of a woman’s buttocks outside the Lower Broadway bar, reports The Tennessean. The sign was made by the Nashville-based Joslin and Son Signs and Mayor David Briley signed the council resolution into law greenlighting its installation.

One of the three dissenting council members, Councilwoman Kathleen Murphy, was not happy with the sign, calling it tacky and going against a family-friendly image for Nashville.

“We’ve worked very hard as a city to become somewhere that is a tourist destination, an ‘It City,’ somewhere that is family-friendly,” Murphy told The Tennessean.

Murphy said the sign does follow the trend of the city granting permission for more aerial encroachments of signs, but added, “This one I feel crosses the line between good taste, family-friendliness, and I think what we would like Nashville to portray to people who come to visit us. If we allow this, what is going to come next? I think we can all use our imaginations there.

The council members who approved the sign said they feared Kid Rock could make a case over infringement of First Amendment rights of free speech if they voted against it.

“If a local government decides to issue regulations that would constrain the contents of a sign, it has to have a specific governmental interest that it is protecting,” Metro Council attorney Mike Jameson advised the council. “Prohibitions on puritan interests or vulgarity has been deemed to be a legitimate government interest but it is fraught with peril in defining what is obscene.”

Jameson pointed out that visitors have to pass the Wild Beaver Saloon and Nudie’s bar to get to Kid Rock’s bar, and those names have already been approved by the city.

The resolution’s lead sponsor on the council was Freddie O’Connell, who coincidentally was the first official to call for Kid Rock to be removed as the grand marshall of Nashville’s Christmas parade in December.

Kid Rock was uninvited to the parade after he called The View co-host Joy Behar a “b–” during a live FOX News interview in which he complained about political correctness. He was replaced with James Shaw Jr., who was hailed as a hero for saving lives during a mass shooting at a Waffle House in early 2018.

The organizers for the Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee Christmas parade later invited Kid Rock to attend their event.

Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Richie, has a home in the Nashville area. After the Christmas parade controversy, he was praised for paying off thousands of layaway items at a Nashville Walmart, totalling $81,000.

Photo credit: Getty Images