Toby Keith was born Toby Keith Covel on July 8, 1961 in Clinton, Oklahoma and at one time played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers football team while performing with his first band named “Easy Money”. In addition to being one of country’s best loved singers who, at times sings songs that might be controversial to some, Toby is also an accomplished songwriter and actor. I’ve been listening to Toby since his debut song “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy” in 1993 and have enjoyed not only his songs but his movies as well. He is also a restaurant owner, having opened five restaurants/bars named “I Love This Bar & Grill” after his 2003 hit song “I Love This Bar”.
His new album “American Ride” is a mixture of good country rock and ballads. His songs are written with true feelings of life, love, loss and the everyday trials of life. It’s an album full of songs with old fashioned hard manual work, good ole boy music and music for the heart. The subject matter is of drinking, dancing, military, love and loss and hauling songs sung in Toby’s rich good ole boy voice. Pictures of Toby in your mind (if you’re female!) make you want to smile about the bad-boy, drinking, carousing, but deep-feeling man. Toby is a man women want to shake her head about but love just the same.
We all know Toby is passionate about many things in life: America, politics, the military, his God and Savior and life in general. In this album a deeper and very emotionally tender Toby comes through – the inner man with feelings you would generally not associate with the public persona – this is a Toby that loves and feels deeply and passionately about relationships and people in his life.
The instrumentals are phenomenal and include a lot of great guitar, piano, steel, fiddle/mandolin, banjo, strings, even the Jew’s harp (which has nothing to do with the religion but is considered one of the oldest musical instruments in the world).
The song “Ballad of Balad” is a true tune for the military – for the young men with promises upon enlistment who have dreams of adventure and travel, meeting new friends and getting paid for all of it. The chorus is all about the recruiter’s promises to the possible new recruit and the last two lines bear out the reality of war and true enlistment. This song combines the nature of war with some solider humor and words that only Toby can get by with!
“Cryin’ for Me” (Wayman’s Song) – This song was written by Toby and is a poignant song about life and loss, friendship and the belief of everlasting life. The song is dedicated to two people who were important in Toby’s life: Wayman Tisdale and Noel McFarland. Wayman Tisdale was an Oklahoma Sooner’s basketball star who became a smooth jazz bass guitarist and died at the age of 44 after a 2-year battle with bone cancer. Noel McFarland, bus driver to stars such as Rascal Flatts, Brad Paisley, and Toby Keith died in a motorcycle accident this past summer. The words of this song tell about learning how to live and then learning how to die and missing those people in our lives as they leave us. The crying spoken of in the song is not about the person who has left for better things but for Toby crying for his personal loss of these two men. Isn’t that why we all cry when we lose loved ones – for our loss or for the pain of others who have lost? I know I do.
“Tender As I Wanna Be” is a deeply emotional song about becoming “tenderized” in a relationship. Perhaps the words he sings can be related to by a lot of men who have a hard time finding the way to be tender and close to a woman. He sings about how his woman can kiss his face and make him smile and about the rush he feels as he is moving closer – closer than he’d ever been before as he tentatively makes his way into the relationship. I think this song verbalizes for many men the hesitancy when they start thinking about the woman they are beginning to love.
Toby’s new album is a collection of the macho male balanced with sensitivity and will possibly give you a new look into the heart of Toby Keith.
You can learn more about Toby at www.tobykeith.com and maybe you can catch his next performance. I’ve not seen him in person yet but I’ve been told he is an amazing entertainer.
Calamity Annie
CMTT Music Contributor
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