Toby Keith has been honoured with four prizes at the Academy of Country Music awards. Toby Keith , Classic Or Dud?

Sitting in the parking lot late one night, patiently waiting for sobriety to return, I found this song on the radio, and I laughed until a blazing dove came down from Heaven and did a little tap-dance on my beer-soaked skull.

For that moment, and that moment alone, I dub Toby Keith a classic. I imagine that I would have thought G.W. Bush to be a classic too, if I had met him in his drunken prime. If George & Toby had remained on their barstools, happily oblivious to the world of politics, I'd have a good deal more affection for both of them.

I love this bar,
It's my kind place.
Just walk in through the front door,
Puts a big smile on my face.
It ain't too far; come as you are.
Mm, mm, mmm, mmm, mmm, I love this bar.

I've seen short skirts; we've got high-techs;
Blue collar boys and rednecks.
An' we got lovers; lots of lookers;
I've even seen dancin' girls and hookers.
And we like to drink our beer from a mason jar:
Mm, mm, mmm, mmm, mmm, I love this bar, yes I do!

I like my truck, (I like my truck),
An' I like my girlfriend, (I like my girlfriend),
I like to take her out to dinner;
I like a movie now and then:

But I love this bar,
It's my kind place.
Just toeing around the dance floor,
Puts a big smile on my face.
No cover charge; come as you are.
Mm, mm, mmm, mmm, mmm, I love this bar.
Mm, mm, mmm, mmm, mmm, I just love this ol' bar.

er

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0349/eddy.php

By the way, I didn't see much of the country awards last night, but Big & Rich's performance was COMPLETELY. FUCKING. INSANE. Easily the most entertaining live musical performance I've seen on TV in, I dunno, forever. (Since, what, Funky Four Plus One on Saturday Night Live in '81? Public Image Ltd on American Bandstand in '80? Something like that. I dunno, maybe I'm forgetting something. But still...)

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0244/kogan.php

Don Allred's two cents:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/allred.php

Which song did they do? Wonder if this'll be rebroadcast. I fuggin love these guys right now. Though the songs *may* all be about 30-75 seconds too long. But what to cut out???

(xpost)

SERIOUSLY! I'm especially big on Wild West Show (western epic as breakup metaphor, the plaintive "Hey Ya."s, the imagery, is that Zamfir I hear blowin?, the list goes on), Drinkin' 'bout You...shit. The whole thing. Can't wait for the article, Chuck.

I were very confused.

Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

as no other bar
would contain the many kinds
of types of people

but the radio
is the great big leveler,
there's no cover charge

The Chicks did well last year, didnt expect them to do well this year.

Matos was right about Big & Rich, I have to say.

Anyway, I'm all about Toby's red, white and blue ear monitor here. (Shot was from a show in Afghanistan last week.)

Ryan Adams - Toby Keith rant.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/12l582

Toby Keith is a gigantic cock.

ah, a man with good music and shit politics vs. a man with idk maybe good politics who used to do good music but now is shit.

toby's a much better comedian so he wins.

"Ain't No Right Way" is one of the better political songs of the last decade -- so damn pained!

Should I get Big Dog Daddy next?

man I heard "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" on the radio today & got seriously pumped up---totally effective & fabulous song, despite my ambiguities with the ideal it propounds. They played "Made In America" about an hour later & here I am driving in the heartland in an army town, with soldiers having been sitting in the front of my classroom today as it is each term here, and Keith's got me again; he's very good at what he does!

"Red Solo Cup" has quietly become the sort of inescapable perennial heard at barbeques.

it was released barely 6 months ago, it's just entering its first barbecue season!

Who are you even kidding?

it's an even more try-hard i got friends in low places and not as good

but it's still ok

Went to a party last weekend and the bar stools had red solo cups painted on them, along with lyrics from the refrain.

Heard it three times this weekend in three different places.

"I Love This Bar" >>> "Get Drunk and Be Somebody" >>>>>> "Red Solo Cup"

but who am I kdding

I've never actually heard "Red Solo Cup," but I mentioned it the other day and was mildly surprised that people knew what I was talking about. (The only contemporary country fan I know IRL is my mom.)

"I Love This Bar" is pretty good, isn't it?

Yes. The 2002-2006 period is worth a Spotify playlist.

I love I Love This Bar, whatta melody on the chorus.

i'm not happy about this

stealing the young girls' hearts

for a while he was a Democrat. RIP.

Wow what a surprise he turns out to be a shithead who could have seen it coming

musician who makes bombastic songs for republicans turns out to support bombastic republican president

like, I'm sure it was fun for the people playing 20-dimensional music critic chess with this guy's not-remotely-murky politics (if you qualify as a celebrity, which if you're a musician giving an interview in a major publication you qualify as in this metaphor, the political views you claim in an interview are whichever views will best "activate" and/or placate the fans) but come on

for a while he was a Democrat

Hey, remember Zell Miller?

well, I never gave a shit about his politics, which were obvious from about 1998 onwards. But he still made good records until 2006 so

Paisley said his song "Welcome to the Future" was inspired by Obama's victory.

Paisley's big misstep with that song was always more forgivable to me bc it was just so incredibly weird, like he seemed truly surprised that ppl hated it

not "Welcome to the Future", the uh... other song

Paisley looks like a good dude.

look ma
no hands

RIP

So glad I got to write about him before he went after The Chicks (AKA "Saddam's Angels," in that poster he started waving around on stage). Before that, there was a time:

Village Voice
May 24th, 2002 7:45 PM Issue 22

Toby Keith
Pull My Chain
DreamWorks

Funk upon a time, when the hairy Feminazi darkness spread across the land, it
became necessary for a clown prince to assume the position, a wise fool who
could justify or sugarpie the base ballin' ways of batman to wombman. Thus,
from Jughead's Archie to Meathead's, from Ozzie and Harriet's paranoid Ozzie to
Paranoid's (and The Osbournes') Ozzy: As the wig is bent, it came to be, from
sea to shining sea.
Except in the country which is just called Country, 'cause y'all know where
to find us. We had such a promising premising prince—Garth Brooks—butt after
a while he was hardly ever home. So it was that, from the ranks of
stud-puppets, one must step up to the plate (others gradually
to be sacrificed for the evilcological balance of the herd). One son who would
never stray, just conveniently go 'way (for your beauty rest), and then come
back with grapes peeled like you never saw!
Or so you'd be ready to tell him, this Toby Keith, this Oklahoma! Citybilly,
this formerly oil-refinin', pro (well, USFL) footballa, with eyes, brains, and
pipes under his Jimmie-no-crack-corn (prophylactic) hat. Ready or not, he
comes chuggin' 'round the cloudbank, with his high voice (zero faux-Mexicali
Marty Robbins hair-tonic trills), and his low vibrato (free of Waylonic soft-soap
opry). Nothing forced. He's too busy to belabor a point, much less a note.
Such chuggin', from a John Waite "Missing You"/Puff Daddy "I'll Be Missing
You" (but not Stones "Miss You," not yet) template on his dogtag, also would go
good with fiddles, if he bothered. No banjos either, and there's only one of
him (sob), and he's Homecoming Court-bait like his old tourmate
Shania—therefore he's not quite the Dixie Chicks, but if he were a gal, he'd be called
spunky, and that's close enough. 'Specially since the actual D.C.s are busy in
non-Homecoming court, and anyhow, it just wouldn't work if we didn't hear a big ol'
guy's guy ode-ing up to the joys of submission, for instance on the (burns
like a paper sun and candy rain) title track of his current doghouse penthouse prayer, Pull My Chain.
So of course it's "Pull my chain, Toby Keith!" on his message board now.
Netgals also hijack "I wanna talk about mememememe," from "I Wanna Talk About Me,"
in which a Good Listener just gets taken for granted, as Toby discovers then
erupts over, in a David Puddy way that slays 'em in the whenhouse. He also flows more
rapneck genius than was even dreamt of by Fred Durst (Fred: "B-b-but it was written
by Bobby 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' Braddock! No fair!" True).
When "You Leave Me Weak" (goood depletion) gets followed and swallowed by
"Tryin' to Matter" (bad depletion), and identifying with the artist gets cold,
the ladies have gender lines to scurry back across, if they want 'em. I could
use an escape hatch myself, from recognizing the persistent hopefulness (rather
than the expected Country Western self-pity, served up jest ratt) that makes
"Tryin' " so painful (as I'm sure Tobe knows) (bitch). Hope might also be the
wild hair that makes the faithful married man roar, struttin' about not being
one to "Pick Em Up and Lay Em Down" ("down, down, down," he mutters at one
point). And hope prods the twisting sheets of "Forever Hasn't Got Here Yet" (the
verdict just in: "makeup sex," but not Seinfeld's).
The previous album, How Ya Like . . . ('scuse me, Kool Mo Dee) How Do You
Like Me Now, was a chug-to-glide-to-hover-to-Hova-to-ova (title track, anyway,
livin' inside your radio) airshow of lifelines. This one rocks harder, dreams
paler, rarely in black-and-white; this isn't Pleasantville, it's Burbtown (in
late Spring, we're green and gray, OK?).

I accompanied someone to a Toby Keith concert once - it was surprisingly entertaining! Much better than the snoozefest that was Rascal Flatts.
Bummed to hear he passed this morning.

Didn't know he was friends with Colbert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZvFqcTVUHQ

yea me explaining to my dad why people were yelling country music lyrics at me before calling me slurs https://t.co/yr290x3pcy

— Arif Hasan, but NFL 🏈 (@ArifHasanNFL) February 7, 2024

Colbert did a skit with Kissinger once too

Toby Keith only sang about dropping bombs on people

true he was only in the propaganda division

obviously though he wasn't alone, it was a weird time. it's a shame bc i'm sure he was better than that. though i wasn't into what i did hear, he seems to be more nuanced than idk big & rich.

more than rich at least. Big Kenny is a bit of a hippie.

"I Love This Bar" is so bad in every way. Just the most pandering obvious shit, I was embarrassed for whoever was singing it the first time I heard it and then I found out it was this guy and I thought "oh, of course." I know, I know, "But it's a hit!" -- but it's like a bloodless Mellencamp, like Billy Joel with a hat on. May his memory be a blessing to his friends and family but I am honestly mystified to learn that anybody who thinks about songs thinks well of "I Love This Bar," which sounds like it was written by a committee with a view to, if everything goes right, maybe opening up a line of bars.

if i've ever heard a toby keith song it was by accident and i have no memory of it, but i still dig reading your old stuff, Don/Dow!! you tongue-twisting speed demon! makes me want to go rite a rok revue.

"I Love This Bar" is so bad in every way. Just the most pandering obvious shit,

Counterpoint: the "mmmm" part gets stuck in my head, and his kind of bar is more egalitarian than what his even more pigfuck disciples would celebrate.

I like my truck
I like my truck
And I like my girlfriend
I like my girlfriend
I like to take her out to dinner
I like a movie now and then

Yessir

sorry, respect

Workin' hard, gettin' drunk

Yeah, like Alfred,I think the early years were his best. But he had his moments later. Chuck Eddy's Voice view of Keith's career, as of 2008:

...Toby’s image is clearly his own fault: When he made the Statue of Liberty shake her fist in 2002’s outrageously rousing “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” (awesome karaoke song, btw), Toby defined himself despite himself, and the self-proclaimed conservative Democrat has been trying to live it down ever since. Except when he hasn’t: He’s currently making a movie somehow based on “Beer for My Horses,” the even more despicable ode to lynching (of “gangsters”) that he sang with Willie Nelson around the same time. Add his camel-jockey cartoon, “The Taliban Song” (“Ahab the Arab” updated for the age when “Turkmenistan” is a very rhythmic word), his obligatory “American Soldier” (about how freedom isn’t free), and his soggy dishrag “Ain’t No Right Way” (implicitly anti-choice and explicitly pro–prayer in public schools), and it looks like we’ve got ourselves some Neanderthal species of nationalist numbskull.

But here’s the thing: That handful of songs (a couple of which appeared on a surprisingly funky 2003 album entitled Shock’n Y’All, har har) is pretty much where Toby’s editorializing ends, at least on record. His output is no more limited by his war-machine anthem than Merle Haggard’s was by the comparably opportunistic “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me” when Nixon was president. And not many country artists since Merle have managed a creative streak like Toby’s these past few years—in fact, to my ears, his ’00s output (six albums plus change, including half of 2006’s Broken Bridges soundtrack and a few spare tracks collected on his new 35 Biggest Hits) just might stand up to anybody else’s this decade, in any musical genre.

Go ahead and attribute my fandom partly to biographical coincidence: Toby was born in July 1961, a half-year after me; we both have three kids; we’re both straight white guys who’ve done time in inland suburbia. Then again, I’ve never personally worked an oil field or a semi-pro football field, my grandma didn’t run a supper club, I’m not six-foot-four and 240 pounds, I don’t own a bar and grill in Oklahoma, and I don’t do Ford commercials. But we both apparently cut our teeth on the same Bob Seger and John Cougar LPs, so I’m a sucker for the chili-dog-outside-the-Tastee-Freez heartland-rock riffs he stuck in four songs on last year’s Big Dog Daddy, the first album he produced himself. And where I come from, “water-tower poet class of ’73” is a right pithy depiction of hip-hop’s fourth element, and calling your most ZZ-worthy boogie “Zig Zag Stomp” is a darn clever pun.

It also helps that the big lug isn’t afraid to make fun of himself—for being a bumbling husband, say, or for being a boyfriend who likes his girlfriend but loves his local bar, or for his aging-athlete body not working as well as it used to. His class resentment (in “Get Drunk and Be Somebody” and “High Maintenance Woman,” say) is totally good-natured as well. But where Toby most manifestly trounces the competition is with his singing (and, frequently, talking), which only gets smarter and warmer and more conversational—richer in both his high and low registers—as his career goes on. The song that first made me take notice, 1999’s “How Do You Like Me Now,” had him bellowing like Billy Ray Cyrus in Meat Loaf mode, but since then he’s figured out how to communicate a masculine vulnerability with an easy-as-Sunday-morning soul phrasing equal to Ronnie Milsap or T. Graham Brown, if not quite Charlie Rich (listen to “That’s Not How It Is” or “Your Smile”); his latest move is a Barry White cover with power forward turned jazz bassist Wayman Tisdale. On his best album, 2006’s White Trash With Money, Toby jumped ship from DreamWorks to his own Show Dog Nashville imprint, where green-eyed country-soul convert Lari White surrounded him with Tex-Mex accordions, Western swing saxes, Dusty in Memphis orchestrations, and Dixieland kazoos, coaxing laid-back nuances and big, blue notes out of him that made perfect sense alongside the same year’s Collector’s Choice reissue of Dean Martin’s 1955 Swingin’ Down Yonder.

So Toby’s a bit of a late bloomer: He had six regular-issue albums and a handful of country Top 10s under his belt before his ass-boot woke up the world beyond CMT. The chronological 35 Biggest Hits, for its part, starts off as cautiously (but as competently) as any good Alan Jackson retrospective—the hit about the 18-year-old getting her first upstairs apartment downtown kills me, seeing how I just helped my daughter move to Brooklyn, and “Who’s That Man” and “A Woman’s Touch” employ open space in a ghostly way. And though I hope Mercury canned whoever thought a Sting duet was a marketable concept, even that song makes for a decent divorced-dad depiction. But Toby qua Toby doesn’t really bust out until “Dream Walkin’ “/”Getcha Some”/”How Do You Like Me Now,” beginning 14 tracks in; after that, there’s no looking back. If you’re new to the guy, start with disc two, then check out a few ’00s albums before you shift back to disc one.

Getting loud—even a bit blowhard—was the first step. But for years now, Toby’s sincere ballad side has been catching up with his funny rocking side. Even in a genre where vocal aptitude is a prerequisite for career longevity, masterful voices and discernible personalities (especially personalities with hot beefcake sex and a sense of humor and a chip on their shoulder attached) don’t always coincide: Shooter Jennings might match Toby in a war of wits, but he can barely sing a lick, while Toby out-sings squeaky-clean goody-goodies from Travis to Jackson to Strait. And on top of that, though he’s been known to borrow winners from wooden-voiced wordsmiths like Paul Thorn or Fred Eaglesmith on occasion, Toby’s also the rare Nashville star who seems to do most of his own writing.

And again, dude can write. I admire his move-over-small-dog-a-big-dog-daddy’s-movin’-in shtick, and how he does way more songs celebrating one-night stands than somebody married 24 years should be able to get away with—and how they don’t come with angst or a moral attached. He’s the kind of burly old teddy bear who’ll stash his sleeping bag (and dog bowl?) behind your couch and finally remember your early-November birthday in December, when he shows up with a ribbon tied around your present—”Brand New Bow” beat “Dick in a Box” by eight 2006 months. And if he’s playing wing man for a night, he’ll take one for the team, even if it means sleeping with the fat girl.

OK, that one, “Runnin’ Block” (great football metaphor, huh?), is indefensible—or it would be, anyway, if its chorus melody wasn’t so amazing. Like “The Taliban Song,” it’s one of the “bus songs” that Toby sometimes tacks on at the end of albums—a disingenuous escape hatch he uses when he feels like pulling your chain. Not surprisingly, they’re usually among his livelier tracks. So when do we get a whole disc of those? Soon, I hope, unless the r&b album comes first.

Ah thanks for posting that! Great piece.

They did release The Bus Songs in 2017. “Shitty Golfer” is a lot of fun.

Raekwon of Wu-Tang posted a tribute yesterday with a photo of them playing golf together. "One of my good friends"

Make sense. Remember GFK’s pro-war verse on Rules?

This thread is the ILX equivalent of political reporters transcribing the "wisdom" of rural diner patrons.

yeah but you get prime don and prime chuck in the village voice excerpts. you have to look at the bright side.

That kind of writing is exactly why I thought there would never be a place for me in the Voice.

Let's talk about reporters in diners in every thread today challenge

Toby Keith's I Love This Diner

reporters can be eaten in diners too

If we have to drag Merle into this, its worth noting that he changed his views on the war & counterculture over time and didnt hesitate to call songs like "Okie" and "Fighting Side of Me" the work of a dumb ignorant kid.

is that true? he definitely had mixed feelings about "okie" but as far as i remember he proudly defended "fightin' side" to the end. (a fantastic composition and fantastic recording, to my ears, based on a repulsive idea.)

yeah, I prefer it to "Okie."

i thought Okie started as a joke? The story I remember reading once was that they were smoking weed on the tour bus and they passed Muskogee and someone in the band cracked "They don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee!"

the one time i saw him live, about 10 years ago, he was great for the 80-ish minutes of his regular set, then he came back for the encore and the entire arena, not just him, turned into a red, white and blue kick-terrorists-in-the-ass-vote-republican-and-be-christian rally. it was legitimately scary. but those 80 minutes were still great.
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, January 17, 2017 3:48 PM (seven years ago)

everything i loved and hated about toby keith summed in three sentences about 90 minutes. he was a phenomenal and soulful singer and songwriter. he had some deeply problematic ideas. neither of these things cancels out the other.

“Great concert, wonderful memories, shame about the Klan rally at the end but it was wonderful before that”

Leave Kanye alone

"How Do You Like Me Now?" < the press photo of Trinidad James's visible underwear complete w/ noticeable skidmark

sad lol djp

Blogged my favorite song of his a couple of days ago:

This isolation booth I'm in is dark and turning cold

And I reviewed him in the Voice in 2002:

Quiet Desert Storm

frank kogan, as i live and breathe. will wonders never cease. this thread has really delivered the old home week cheer!

yeah it is often difficult in the old home, it's nice when they give us a week.

i'd say it's more like a weak cheer tbh