E-mail a friendToby Keith
airdate June 15, 2007
Superstar Toby Keith is more than busy. Billboard's top-selling country artist in '04 and ‘05, he has been featured in a national TV ad campaign, owns a chain of restaurants, filmed motion pictures, launched a record label and just released a new CD, 'Big Dog Daddy.' After playing football with a USFL farm team, the Oklahoma native decided to focus on music. He did double duty by playing local bars and working in oil fields. Keith has since earned both commercial success and artistic acclaim.
Toby Keith says "It's gone on long enough" in Iraq. (1:56)
Toby Keith
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Toby Keith back to this program. The country superstar is out this week with another critically acclaimed CD called - you got to love these titles, man - "Big Dog Daddy." "Big Dog Daddy." I just love saying it. In just a few minutes, he'll perform a special acoustic performance from the first single from the disc. On June 21, he kicks off a major summer tour in Birmingham, Alabama. More on that in a moment. But first, here is some of the video for the new single, "High Maintenance Woman."
[Film Clip]
Tavis: I guess if I really wanted to get away with this stuff, I'd have to be a country western star as well, but the stuff you get away with. "High Maintenance Woman," "Big Dog Daddy," "White Trash -
Toby Keith: - With Money" (laughter).
Tavis: "With Money" (laughter). The stuff you get away with. How you been, man?
Keith: I've been good. How you been?
Tavis: I'm good. Good to see you again.
Keith: It's good to be back here, yeah.
Tavis: Tell me about "Big Dog Daddy."
Keith: Well, we just finished this album. It's the first one I've ever produced and, believe it or not, this is my fifteenth album. Man, thirty million CDs ago, we were a little studio in Nashville doing "Should've Been a Cowboy" in 1993 and 1994. I look up and it's fifteen albums later, man.
Tavis: Which says what to you?
Keith: Well, just that my dream came true because the only thing, after about three or four years of doing what I had left to do was just longevity. You know, I just wanted to be around, so I'm still here.
Tavis: What's it mean, though, fifteen records into it, to do a project where you have total and complete control over everything?
Keith: Well, freedom is the main word, you know. If I co-produced for years in about the fourth quarter of the game, I'd say, "Okay, here's the raw product. You guys go buff it out and throw all the magic dust on it." This time, I just stayed in there and knocked it out and, you know, made sure I sang my own harmonies on a lot in a lot of this stuff and me and just a couple of other people done all the background vocals, but it really sounds different.
I used a few more acoustic instruments because I did a Christmas album right in front of this and I kind of fell in love all over again with the Bluegrass type instruments. I'm usually just driving guitars and bass and drum, so I've got some mandolin and some fiddling stuff on here.
Tavis: This is a little "Inside Baseball," but how does deciding to go more acoustic on a record like this change your sound, change your style, change what your fans are going to hear on the record?
Keith: Well, I think every song that I used to do - we just did driving guitars, electric guitars, drums and things. So acoustics gives it a little earthy sound like a real down home sound. Some of those songs, to me, feel better. I think it's maturity. You know, you reach a maturity level where you just get tired of everything being balls to the wall, you know.
Tavis: You mentioned a word a moment ago that is a nice segue to where I want to go with this conversation. You mentioned the word "freedom" in regard to this project, but I want to go a little broader with that notion of freedom. You just got back literally a couple weeks ago from Baghdad and Afghanistan. Let me start with Baghdad.
Keith: Okay.
Tavis: Tell me what you saw two weeks ago.
Keith: Well, in talking to the people in charge there, I was there for three or four days this time, it's really bad over there right now, but we are refereeing a civil war. Afghanistan is a lot different. You don't hear Afghanistan as much in the news unless somebody gets killed. The Taliban still crosses the Pakistan border and messes with the Afghani people, but our soldiers are just taking them out as they come across, so we've got that guarded.
One of the colonels said, "In fifty or sixty days, I'm going to feel real comfortable about walking around the cities of Afghanistan eating ice cream cones." That's exactly what he told me. You know, they don't have all the tribal fighting there. They don't have all the different tribes to argue against each other.
In Baghdad, it's different. The Sunnis and the Shiites are just going at it all the time, so you have the different tribal fighting. They're having a civil war there and the insurgents are keeping it stirred up. Congress has gave the military an ultimatum to, you know, show them something by September. You know, it's gone on long enough, so they're going to see what they've got in September.
But the fourth quarter press is on, you know. It's like they're going long and we're having to keep a lot more soldiers out on the streets and on the corners and stuff. Their game plan is to not go out in the daytime and win over the locals and then come back in at night and let the bad guys influence them overnight. We have to stay out in the streets and live with them, what they're saying.
In my opinion, I'm just a songwriter and I just have to view it and ask the right questions and make the best educated guess I can make, but I would say by September, one way or the other, we'll know something's going on. But it's really, really bloody over there right because we have such a saturation of the community.
Tavis: You're just a songwriter; I'm just a talk show host. The difference is, you've been into the region and done at least sixty of these USO tours. I have not done any. I raise that because I want to ask how it is, then, that you square something you said earlier that this has gone on long enough.
Those are Toby Keith's words. With regard to Iraq, it's gone on long enough. Yet you love these troops so that you keep going over there every chance you get to entertain them. How do you square the fact that politically you believe it's gone on long enough and yet you keep going to support these troops?
Keith: Well, you know, like in this song that I'm going to do on this album called "Love Me If You Can," sometimes war is necessary, you know, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm smart enough to know whether we should have went into Iraq or not. I never did say that.
I was smart enough, in my opinion, to say that we should've went to Afghanistan and got the people responsible for 9/11, okay? Well, that's being handled really well. That country is being run and we have that in control, okay?
I don't know why we're in Iraq. I don't know why we went, but I know we've got troops in Kosovo and Bosnia. I know we've got troops in Germany. I know we've got troops in Italy. I know we've got troops in the Philippines and Korea and everywhere. So I just go support them wherever they are. It's really easy for me. I will never apologize for being patriotic and supporting my guys and girls that are proud enough to wear our country's uniform.
Where that gets muddy and fades in is where these hard-core right wing and left wing people either way, as soon as I sing a red, white and blue song about going into Afghanistan and get the people responsible for 9/11, all the right wingers came out of the closet and supported me.
As soon as they found out I was a lifetime Democrat, oh, they backed up (laughter). But I don't get support from my party either, so it's like I'm in the middle somewhere. I'm kind of a JFK guy, but you can't fight all those battles. You just have to stand for what you stand for and let people think what they think.
Tavis: Where and how did this love of military personnel come from?
Keith: My father was in the Army. He lost his right eye in a training combat mission. He was a real hard-core guy. He wouldn't let a stranger grace his doorstep. If you were selling something, he'd run you off. But the second the veteran's organization showed up, they were in the house like that. He flew his flag 365 and, you know, he was old-school.
Believe it or not, as much as a lot of these people hate war, every bit of freedom we've had, we've had to fight for at some point. It might not have been in our lifetime, but we've had conflicts where our freedom was on the line.
Tavis: Because freedom ain't free.
Keith: That's right, baby.
Tavis: Tell me about this tour this summer.
Keith: We start in Birmingham on the 21st and it'll carry through September, I think. Before the year's up, we're going to hit about sixty major cities. That's about all I do anymore. I don't go out and beat it up like I used to (laughter).
Tavis: Well, fortunately, sixty cities means that you got a good chance of catching Toby Keith on tour somewhere this summer. Not that you need any more proof that he's worth seeing, stick around. In a second, you will hear him with a special acoustic performance from this new CD - got to say it one more time just because I love saying it - "Big Dog Daddy," the new CD from Toby Keith. Toby, good to see you, man.
Keith: My pleasure, man. Thanks for having us here.
Tavis: Stay with us. We're back in a moment.
From his acclaimed new CD, "Big Dog Daddy," here is Toby Keith accompanied by Rich Eckhardt performing "High Maintenance Woman." Enjoy, good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
[Musical Performance]
Back to June 15, 2007