TOBY KEITH Biography
Toby Keith Biography:
White Trash With Money
Affixing labels to Toby Keith is almost a cottage industry at this point. The obvious definitions include country music superstar, chart-topping recording artist and top-grossing live performer. Less recognized though no less significant descriptions include perennial award winner and nominee, subject of consistent critical acclaim and new label president. Challenging these for prominence are the various characterizations, at times caricatures, pinned on Keith by a mass media that thrives on political divisiveness.
Too often lost in the discussion, however, are the identities without which the rest would not exist: Songwriter. Vocalist. Musician. Producer. Entertainer. Toby Keith possesses, quite frankly, rare musical talent. Prodigious talent, even. It is his music that made him arguably the most visible country artist of this millennium. It is his music that made him such a success. And it is his music that made him a lightning rod for controversy. More than anything, however, it is his music that proves Keith's ability to communicate honestly and directly with millions of ordinary Americans. Of all people, his talent isn't lost on his fans.
White Trash With Money, then, serves as a much-needed reminder of Toby Keith's most outstanding attributes. His approach to creating the album, from the impossibly direct songwriting effort to enlisting a new co-producer, reveals an artist with the self assurance to take real risks. The ever-widening range of sounds and styles he employs show a diversity of influence and little regard for creative boundaries. And the end result is a collection of songs that reveal a deft touch for balancing serious material with a good bit of fun, too.
"Get Drunk And Be Somebody," the album's first smash single, is a good example of Keith's dry humor and observational eye. "A Little Too Late" is bit of straightforward songwriting that enjoys as lavish a production as anything he's ever released. And "Crash Here Tonight," which he calls the most tender love song of his career, shows just how far across the music spectrum he's able to comfortably range.
"This album launches my Show Dog venture," Keith says, referencing the transition from Universal to his own independent label. "It's an honest effort and I'm real proud of it. As long as I can continue making music the way I do, I couldn't be happier. I've accomplished everything else."
That he has. The young man from Oklahoma made a grand entrance in country music with 1993's "Shoulda Been A Cowboy," a No. 1 smash that cut the ice for his double platinum debut album. Over the next five years he released a string of hits including "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action," "You Ain't Much Fun" and "Who's That Man." His career, however, not only failed to progress but backslid as he wrestled with his label.
Eventually dropped by Mercury Records in 1999, Keith signed on with independent upstart DreamWorks and turned his fortunes around almost immediately. A succession of career changing songs starting with "How Do You Like Me Now?!" and including "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This," "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight" and "I Wanna Talk About Me" followed. Finally back to the double platinum sales threshold at which his career began, Keith was poised for a tremendous step forward.
His next single, a reaction to September 11 titled "Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)," was no more or less a singular moment of honest emotion than any of his other songs. The response, however, was quite different. "Courtesy" became an anthem in the war on terror and placed Keith's name at the center of a media debate that had nothing to do with music. Not given to politically correct apologies, he became a target of criticism but wasn't inclined to defend himself from absurd johnny-one-note portrayals. Toby was moving on, and millions of country fans were right with him.
"Who's Your Daddy?" and the Willie Nelson duet "Beer For My Horses" pushed his Unleashed album past four million in sales, while "I Love This Bar," "American Soldier," "Whiskey Girl" and a couple of "bus songs" did the same for his Shock'N Y'all release. Fully established as one of the top touring acts in the nation and with a couple of Entertainer of the Year awards under his belt, Keith had carried DreamWorks to the top echelons of country labels.
But in 2004, DreamWorks was acquired by the parent company of Keith's first label. His next studio release, Honkytonk University, came out on Universal and became his most critically-acclaimed release to date. At the same time, it spawned three hit singles -- the title track, "Big Blue Note" and the multi-week No. 1 "As Good As I Once Was."
Finding again that the label conglomerate structure didn't suit him, Keith negotiated his release from Universal and established Show Dog Nashville, for which his newest album is the first release. Keith's departure from Universal also brings an end to his long run with producer James Stroud. His co-producer for this project is Lari White, an acclaimed singer and songwriter who had a gold country album on RCA/Nashville in the mid-nineties. Though this is White's highest-profile turn as a producer, her relationship with Keith stretches back many years.
"Sometimes the worst thing you can do with a friend is get in business with them," Keith says. "You could get two or three songs in, figure out it's not working and that makes for hard feelings when you have to call it off. So I said let's just do two or three demos. We'll listen to some new sounds and guitar players and if we like them we'll move on."
Toby wasn't just happy with the demos for "Can't Buy You Money," "Get Drunk And Be Somebody" and "A Little Too Late," he told White to master them for the album. "I left the studio with the first single and put it right in my promotion staff's hands," he says. "Then we went back in the studio and kept right on going to finish the album.
"Lari's as talented a producer as she is a singer," he continues. "She has an incredible bag of tricks. It wasn't any more freedom -- James always let me do whatever I wanted, but it was a lot of new ideas and a nice change."
What hasn't changed is Keith's approach to putting an album together. "We're not setting out to achieve results," he explains. "We go in honestly. Doing the demos with Lari was strictly to make sure our production partnership was going to work, but I've never done demos. I go in the studio, sit down with an acoustic guitar and say to the musicians, 'Look here.' We dick with it a little bit, they write up a chart and we hit record. I've cut a few songs more than once, but most of the time it just takes one."
That one-to-one ratio holds true in his songwriting as well. Toby wrote 12 songs for White Trash With Money and he recorded 12. The contributions of frequent co-writer Scotty Emerick (who's expected to have an album out on Show Dog this year) is again featured prominently, as is noted Music Row songsmith Dean Dillon. "I had a two day layover in Albuquerque and instead of flying home we got a hotel suite, ate a lot of green chili and wrote five songs for the album," Keith says.
Many of the co-writes with Emerick come from having the writer on the road with him. Not only does he perform as one of the tour opening acts, he also joins Keith on stage to perform the "bus songs" the two write together. "Scotty rides my bus on the tour, so if I get a good idea we can just sit down and write it," Keith says. "If he wasn't around I might play around with it for a couple weeks and eventually write it myself. But when you've got someone around who might spring open that one door that just makes a song fly, all you need is that moment of inspiration and you're off."
That constant immersion in music and the creative process shows in the breadth of sounds on the album. Horns on the single "Get Drunk And Be Somebody." A lush string arrangement that harkens back to the classic Nashville Sound on "A Little Too Late." Subtle passion on the ballad "Crash Here Tonight." The first pounding forcefulness of "I Ain't Already There." A swampy, Dobro-stirred flavor with "Brand New Bow." Three new "bus songs," which have quickly become a favorite with his fans. Each song, each sound defines this moment of his music.
"When 9-11 happened I had a bunch of songs out that had signs of the times running through them," Keith says. "If you listen to that pile of songs now you can kind of tell what was going on in my world at the time. This new album is pretty much a laid back, fun, redneck, rockin' roadhouse group. You can tell last year was a good one for me by listening to these songs."
Read his clips from the past 12 months and you'll see that Toby Keith has been heralded as Billboard's top selling Country artist, positioned in a major national television campaign for Ford, opened his own chain of I Love This Bar & Grill restaurants, filmed his first major motion picture for Paramount and launched a ground-up country label, among so many other milestones and accolades. But for him, and for the millions who will buy his new album, the real story is in the music.
Toby Keith
White Trash With Money
Get Drunk and Be Somebody
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick
I've heard that title my whole life. I'm sure it's been written somewhere, but I've never heard it before. I write a lot of blue collar type songs so I started messing around with it. Me and Scotty were sitting on the bus one afternoon, I told him we've been working our butts off, we ought to get some beer tonight, get drunk and be somebody. He said, I want to write that. I told him I'd already been thinking about it and we wrote it. If it's a hit we can come back with a sequel about getting drunk, waking up with a hangover and deciding tonight I'm gonna go get drunk and be somebody else.
A Little Too Late
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick/Dean Dillon
This is the song on the album that jumps out at me. It's the one you watered and sprinkled fertilizer on in the studio and it bloomed. It blossomed right before our eyes. You like sitting around with a guitar and playing it. It sounds simple, which is a good quality sometimes, but I was not sure when we wrote it whether it was a single or not. Once we got in the studio and started cutting it everyone said, "Man, this sounds ridiculously good." So we went to the point of hiring a string arranger from Argentina to come in to L.A. and put the strings behind it. To me, it sounds like a classic.
Can't Buy You Money
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick
Everyone's heard that saying about how all the money in the world can't buy you happiness. We switched it around and it created a whole new world for us to write about. Another blue collar kind of thing. All I had to do is piece it together. My favorite line is, "We'd save it all up for a rainy day, but it's always sunny." His world's perfect -- his kids, his wife -- it's always sunny but they're broke, broke, broke. He's taking it all in stride and laughing about it.
Crash Here Tonight
Toby Keith
I'd never done a ballad that slow that was that tender. About the closest thing to it was "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This," but even that was still not quite this slow. It's so tender, though, I think it would still sell records.
Grain Of Salt
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick
You gotta have a tequila song. There are some great lines on it I like. "By now you've observed I got a little overserved last night." It's just what it is. Good bar song. My kind of thing.
I Ain't Already There
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick/Dean Dillon
Me, Scotty and Dean holed up in a hotel in Albuquerque for a couple days and wrote about four or five songs. This is a really unique, different kind of song. A songwriter's song. The kind of song only a mother could love. It's a full circle deal between this guy and this girl. A vicious cycle they both keep going back to. He can't wait to get there, he gets there and it isn't very long until they're tired of each other again. Now he's headed home and the only bad thing is he isn't there yet. But only a creator could love that one.
Note To Self
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick/Dean Dillon
This is a real strange song. Dark. People who like it love it, people who like really straight commercial music haven't liked it as much. Maybe more so than the last song, one only a creator could love. But I'm a songwriter so when I get to 12 I quit and call it good. That's always been my game plan. We record until we get to 12. If they suck, they suck. If they're good, they're good. We just live with the results. Probably the darkest song on the album.
Too Far This Time
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick/Dean Dillon
I wasn't going to put this one on the album because I have a song called "A Little Too Late" and this one was "A Little Too Far." It shows off my vocal range when I go up an octave at the end, so the singing experience alone was enough to get it on the album. It'll probably never be a single but it's a good album cut.
Ain't No Right Way
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick/Dean Dillon
This song is a social commentary. It's just about life and how people view the difference between right and wrong. Even if you don't agree with some of the subjects in here, there are people who do. The subject matter is probably a little too strong for it to ever be heard on the radio. We just write them and when we get to 12 we quit.
Brand New Bow
Toby Keith
We put three bus songs on here. Simple little old ditties that you laugh at. Let's tie a bow around the same old thing.
Hell No
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick
Of the three, this could be a single. I could hear it being played on the radio.
Runnin' Block
Toby Keith/Scotty Emerick
You got two buddies in high school and one of them gets a date but she's bringing her sister. You know if she's got her sister with her you're not going to score. So you try to get one of your buddies to block for you. You don't have to do anything with her, you just have to entertain long enough for your buddy to get his shot. It's a pretty bold stab, but it's just a bus song. It's all meant to be taken in fun.
Toby Keith spent the '90s as a solid, workmanlike country star who met with considerable chart success, yet never quite broke free of the neo-traditionalist pack to become a household name like Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson. That all changed in 2002 when he recorded "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," a response to September 11 that became one of country's most highly charged political statements since Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee." The media furor ensured that even people with no knowledge of country music still knew him as "the guy with the 'boot in the ass' song," and helped make Keith a genuine phenomenon. Yet he'd been recording for nearly a decade prior and already had several chart-topping country singles to his credit.
Keith was born Toby Keith Covel in Clinton, OK, in 1961 and grew up mostly on a farm in Moore, near the outskirts of Oklahoma City. He took up guitar at age eight, inspired by the country musicians who played at the supper club his grandmother ran. He listened to his father's Bob Wills records and fell in love with Haggard's music. He worked as a rodeo hand while in high school, and after graduation, he found work in the nearby oil fields. In the meantime, he formed the Easy Money Band and played Alabama-style country-rock in area honky tonks. After about three years, the oil industry hit a major downturn, and Keith turned to playing semipro football for a USFL farm team, even trying out (unsuccessfully) for the short-lived league's Oklahoma City franchise. Following two years as a football player, Keith decided to focus on music and adopted a much more rigorous touring schedule. He cut a few records for local indie labels, and his demo tape eventually found its way to onetime Alabama producer Harold Shedd, who helped Keith land a deal with Mercury.
Keith's self-titled debut album was released in 1993 and made him an out-of-the-box success with its chart-topping single "Should've Been a Cowboy." Three more songs from the record -- "Wish I Didn't Know Now," "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action," and "He Ain't Worth Missing" -- made the Top Five, and the album sold over two million copies. "Who's That Man," the lead single from his second album, Boomtown, was released in late 1994 and became his second number one; Boomtown hit stores in early 1995 and went gold on the strength of further Top Ten hits "Upstairs Downtown" and "You Ain't Much Fun." Keith followed it later that year with the holiday record Christmas to Christmas and returned with the proper album Blue Moon in 1996. Its first two singles, "A Woman's Touch" and "Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You," went Top Ten, and the third, "Me Too," gave Keith his third number one, also helping the album go platinum. Released in 1997, Dream Walkin' marked his first collaboration with prolific producer James Stroud, with whom he would work regularly from then on. "We Were in Love" and the title track were both Top Five hits, as was "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying," a duet with Sting. However, Keith longed for an even bigger breakthrough, and he was growing dissatisfied with Mercury's promotional efforts. In 1999, he left the label and followed Stroud over to the Nashville division of DreamWorks.
Keith's label debut, How Do You Like Me Now?!, appeared in late 1999 and started to bring him the wider recognition he felt poised for. The title cut went to number one on the country charts and brought him his first Top 40 pop hit; its follow-up, "Country Comes to Town," went Top Five, and "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This" also hit number one. Overall, the album had a rough, brash attitude that helped give Keith a stronger identity as a performer. It was also the first to bring him those long-desired major industry awards, when in 2001 the Academy of Country Music named him Male Vocalist of the Year and named How Do You Like Me Now?! its Album of the Year. In the meantime, Keith became more visible in the mainstream media, making cameos on Touched by an Angel and in a Dukes of Hazzard TV reunion movie as well as co-starring in a series of telephone commercials. Later in 2001, his follow-up album, Pull My Chain, became his first to top the country charts and also his first Top Ten pop album. It spun off three number one singles: "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight," "I Wanna Talk About Me," and "My List."
Keith was already a burgeoning superstar when he recorded "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" in the summer of 2002. A raging response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the song struck a fierce chord with aggressively patriotic listeners, while others condemned it as knee-jerk jingoism. The whole controversy came to a head when ABC News anchor Peter Jennings objected to Keith's scheduled performance on a network Fourth of July schedule. Keith was axed from the guest list, and the ensuing media flap proved to be a publicity coup. Meanwhile, the song went to number one on the country charts and crossed over into the pop Top 25. All of this set the stage for Unleashed, which sold like hotcakes upon its release later in 2002, debuting at number one on both the country and pop charts. "Who's Your Daddy?" was a number one country hit, and the Willie Nelson duet "Beer for My Horses" also made the country Top Ten.
In 2003 Keith released Shock'n Y'All, which despite its title was chock-full of enough rough-and-rowdy hits to once again connect hugely with heartland America. Honkytonk University followed in May 2005, the same year that Mercury released Chronicles, a collection of three of his biggest albums: Toby Keith, Boomtown, and Blue Moon. After departing from Universal and longtime producer Stroud, Keith established his own company, Show Dog Nashville, and in 2006 released the label's first record, the number two hit White Trash with Money. A year later he released Big Dog Daddy, the first album to be produced by himself, and also a holiday album, A Classic Christmas. Steve Huey, All Music Guide
TOBY KEITH lyrics and albums
