Remembering Toby Keith, Gone at 62

I learned about Toby Keith’s death, as one often does these days, from a Facebook post.

It was from his longtime publicist and my friend Elaine Schock, who said he “passed peacefully … surrounded by his family.”

Keith, who died Monday from stomach cancer, was 62. He’d revealed the diagnosis in 2022. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” Keith said in a recent interview on the Oklahoma City TV station KWTV. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” 

Keith was one of country music’s big-time arena packers of the 21st century. Unlike many in the country field, he wasn’t just a singer; he was also a singer-songwriter, a 2015 inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and a 2021 inductee into Nashville’s Songwriters Hall of Fame. Keith was the creator of fist-pumping pro-USA country hits “American Soldier,” “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” and “Made in America.” And, of course, there were the rousing, party-hearty numbers as “Who’s Your Daddy?” “I Love This Bar” and “Beer for My Horses.”  

VIDEO: Toby Keith feat. Willie Nelson “Beer For My Horses”

He had – take a breath – 42 Top 10 country hits, 32 No. 1 hits, 40 million albums sold and more than 10 billion streams.

Keith was championed by many on the right, derided by those of the left. Was he jingoistic or patriotic? It was an eye-of-the-beholder thing.

I interviewed Keith a few times over the years. I come from that left side and he came from the right (or right of center), but he enjoyed a good chinwag and we hit it off – at the end of it, he invited me to come out to play with him at the golf course he owned, The Belmar, in Norman, Oklahoma. (I never made it.) 

The first time we talked was in June 2010, as he was prepping to headline the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. 

How did this come about?

The Pops made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. 

“They started calling months ago,” Keith said, from a tour stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “I said, ‘I don’t know. I always spend the Fourth of July home with the family.’ And I got to thinking, ‘I get to play with the Boston Pops and play in one of my very favorite cities. I can head out that way or stay at home.’ I can stay home any time.”

Note: The Boston area is oft regarded as pretty progressive and not a country music hotbed. That’s partially true on the progressive side, but it really is a country music hotbed, with WKLB (Country 102.5) leading the charge. 

As to the Pops, if you like your holiday heavy with patriotism, pomp and pyrotechnics, it doesn’t get much bigger than this. The show, of course, ends with 20 minutes of fireworks, something familiar to Keith fans who experience that at his concerts. 

But at this juncture, Keith was focused on the fourth. “The Boston Pops says it all,” he said. “There’s lots of instrumentation, lots of fantastic musicians.”

When it came to song selection, one easy choice was Keith’s 2003 hit “American Soldier.”

“The Pops called and said they wanted to do a grand scale, full-blown version,” says Keith, “and they had some other songs they wanted to stretch out. I said ‘Go for it.’ I told ‘em to learn off the actual recordings and we’ll be fine. I do ‘em to the letter and they’re pros. They sent back four or five songs, but there’s only so much time on TV.”

VIDEO: Toby Keith “American Soldier”

So, “American Solider” and a medley of “How Do You Like Me Now?!” and “God Love Her” had a national TV audience. Keith and the Pops also played “Who’s Your Daddy?” for locals.

As with most of today’s country hit-makers, there was a lot of pop and rock in Keith’s music. But, he said, “I have never ever had a pop hit, not one that kind-of crossed over. So, whatever ‘country’ is today, I’m that.”

In a past life, Keith was a Democrat. He grew up in a family of conservative Democrats. But in 2009, Keith left the party to become an independent. It all stemmed from criticism he got from the left in response to his controversial, post-9/11 anthem, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).”

“I grew up after Pearl Harbor,” Keith continues, “and realized 9/11 was the next Pearl Harbor. We retaliated. Most wars are unnecessary, but we’re in one that is necessary. I knew that we were gonna send troops. If we’re sending volunteers in the army, I’m gonna say ‘I want you to win. I want you to go take care of this so this evil doesn’t have to affect America anymore.’”

The [then-Dixie] Chicks’ Natalie Maines, among others, criticized him for the pro-military, go-get-‘em tone of the song. Keith sang about lighting the enemy up like “the fourth of July.” Maines called it “ignorant.” 

It bruised him a little, but he brushed it off.

“You’re a Democrat all your life and do charity work out the wazoo,” said Keith. “So, because you support the troops, you’re a warmonger? Since when does being patriotic and supporting the troops bring hate from your own party? I’m the fuckin’ bad guy? Where did that come from? I’m ashamed to be affiliated with people who don’t have any more respect for themselves.”

Keith like to stress his brand of patriotism was bipartisan. 

“I don’t care who the president is,” Keith said. “I’m gonna respect him. Doesn’t matter if it’s Clinton or Bush or Obama. He’s the commander-in-chief and our people voted him in.”

VIDEO: Toby Keith “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”

I reviewed the full concert he gave later that year. Some bits from that:

Here are a few of Toby Keith’s favorite things: whisky, bars, beer, tequila, cowboys, women, pyrotechnics, Ted Nugent, his own oversized persona, America and Ford trucks.

At least, that’s the quick take on the hour-and-45-minute concert Keith and his 10-piece band played.

And it all began with a 10-minute-video clip for Ford, featuring Keith, an ersatz KISS member and an ersatz Jonas Brothers vying to be top dog, a contest that gave way to “Big Dog Daddy.” Keith sang that when he walks in, “the joint starts rockin’.”

And indeed, it did: Keith’s music is closer to Lynyrd Skynyrd than George Jones’ or Merle Haggard’s.

Between the plug for Ford and a shout-out to the soldiers, Keith unleashed a rogue-ish set with a country tinge – pedal steel and fiddle under the bombast – that was really full-blown rock – from a strapping, bearded guy in a white-cowboy hat with Oklahoma roots and a Nashville pedigree.

Keith likes it large. Hence, at least seven pyro outbursts and lots of video to help the stories along. His best song, “As Good as I Once Was,” was self-deprecating. On the video, he gets his butt kicked in bar fight, and admits he just ain’t what he used to be.

Mostly, though, he’s full of bravado, ready to drink you under the table.

At the end of the night, Keith rolled out his controversial post-9/11 country counter-attack of “American Soldier,” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which bracketed “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Never apologize for being patriotic! Fuck ’em!” he boomed in his signature close.

In 2021, Keith received the National Medal of the Arts by then-President Trump, the Almighty.

The second time we talked, he was on the phone from Saratoga Springs, NY, advancing an upcoming show at what was then the Comcast Center, a summer shed located in exurban Boston. The tour was called Locked & Loaded.

Forbes had recently ranked the singer/songwriter/superstar as the world’s highest-earning country-music performer. His music and investments garnered more than $50 million in the past decade.

“I’ve been making a lot of money for a decade and a half,” Keith said. He was both brash and matter-of-fact. 

Keith’s current hit was “Made in America,” about a heartland couple who defiantly insist on buying American-produced goods even if they cost more. Keith would be releasing his 15th studio album, Clancy’s Tavern, in the fall. The title song an Irish waltz/country song about a bar his grandmother Hilda owned.

VIDEO: Toby Keith “Made In America”

We were in the midst of a recession and many people in his audience had taken huge knocks. So, I asked Keith, should those in his income bracket be more heavily taxed, as Warren Buffett advocated, to help ease America’s financial crisis?

“I don’t know, but I expect the wealthy to write a check ’cause it’s as bad as it’s ever been,” Keith said. “It would be unpatriotic not to try to save the country. I’m sure people will bitch about it, but if it meant we get to operate in this country and live here another day, then so be it.

“One way or another, before it’s over they’re gonna have to come and take big money from the earners and big corporations to save the country. I’m sure that everybody that has a patriotic cell in their system will say, ‘If it’s gotta be done, it’s gotta be done.’ I’d rather live here and not have as much money than live anywhere else and have twice as much.”

Keith had just turned 50 before we talked. So, there was some rumination about passing that particular milestone.

“The first thought that came to mind was, I can’t believe I made it,” Keith said. “I really can’t. I was around my grandmother’s bar and liquor from a young age, not that I did any of it. But I got plenty of secondhand smoke, and by the time I was 25, I was in bars every night making my living, and then living this lifestyle ever since.”

The title of this [2011] tour and [the previous] year’s LP, Bullets in the Gun, suggested, rather strongly, that Keith liked his firearms. He laughed heartily at then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s line about gun control meaning one should use both hands. Keith was legally licensed to carry and does so where permitted.

“I’m all about good people, licensed and trained, carrying a concealed weapon,” Keith said. “The bad guys are always gonna be carrying guns. There are so many guns in the U.S., and so many bad people that do harm with ’em. If just one percent of the non-felons would go get their concealed-weapons license and carry a gun where they can, one percent puts you in a pretty good position of being somebody that could save a bunch of people’s lives.

“If somebody asked me, ‘Why do you have one? What are you afraid of?’ I’d say, ‘I ain’t afraid of nothing. I carry so I don’t have to be.”

Keith’s final LP, 100% Songwriter, was released in 2023.

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Jim Sullivan

Jim Sullivan is the author of Backstage & Beyond: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats and Rants, which came out in July, and the upcoming Backstage & Beyond: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats and Rants, which will be published October 19 by Trouser Press Books. Based in Boston, he's written for the Boston Globe, Herald and Phoenix, and currently for WBUR's arts site, the ARTery. Past magazine credits include The Record, Trouser Press, Creem, Music-Sound Output. He's at jimullivanink on Facebook and the rarely used @jimsullivanink on X.

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