Man and myth

Full of surprises, Toby Keith isn't even a Republican

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 26, 2006 at midnight

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Toby Keith has some news for the music world.

"I'm not saying this to be facetious, but it's true and it's sad - rock 'n' roll is dead," he says. "I never thought I'd live long enough in my life to hear that."

Songwriters and singers, he says, are having to gravitate toward country music to get anything heard.

"You've got so many artists trying to move to Nashville and find their format," he says. "Sammy Hagar is a good friend of mine, and when he puts an album out, he has to call it 'classic rock' because there's no rock 'n' roll format to send it out to. There's a big void."

And country might be able to fill that.

"The new Bob Seger album (Face the Promise) - I haven't heard it yet, but if it's anything like he did before like Fire Lake or You'll Accompany Me, that's the kind of stuff that plays on country now," he says.

One problem: "Country won't play you. Bon Jovi has to do a duet to get on there. There's a huge void in the listening world that country can fill," he says.

Keith finds himself in a unique position. He's won awards for his songwriting, singing and albums, he sells in the millions and he left the major labels behind at the height of his powers to release his music on his own record label, Show Dog Records.

And he wonders whether, in that position, he can help get music to fans in a way that goes beyond the usual demographic marketing to which commercial radio is a slave.

Just returned from Cabo San Lucas, where he was filming a fishing show for ESPN, Keith comes to Red Rocks on Wednesday. "It's controlled chaos," he says of his hectic schedule, "but not anything I can't handle."

Having his own record company for both his own music and that of artists he's signed is liberating, Keith says.

"Not too many people get the opportunity to do that. You seldom outlive your record deal, careerwise. They're usually life and a day," he says. "I never did renegotiate. I tried one time and they made me an offer that was terrible. I just went and got to the end of my albums, turned it all in and said: 'You know what? I'm going out there on my own. They can kiss my . . . ."

Music isn't all that's going on. His first feature role in a film is playing a broken-down country singer in Broken Bridges, out earlier this month.

He thought a movie would be no sweat. He's never had a problem staring down a camera.

"I'd done 50 videos and about that many commercials. I always sell right down the pipe," he says. When he found out he'd play a country singer, "first thing I said right off the bat is 'This isn't much of a stretch.' "

His acting coach told him he couldn't be more wrong; the character in the film abandons his family and spirals downward.

"This guy's unsuccessful. He has never taken care of his kids. He ran away from responsibility. He drank himself into a career coma," Keith says.

And when he got to the set, he found a whole new set of differences from his video work. "The camera becomes a fly on the wall. Other people have lines besides you. You have to let go of what you really do and be true to the script."

Still, he was able to draw on his background - years of moderate hits before becoming a superstar - to inform his role.

As a country artist who has a song called Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) as one of his biggest hits, Keith gets pigeonholed, but the truth is more complex. He's a lifelong registered Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and later voted for George W. Bush. He gets mad when the media says things like "Most of his money was made in the red states," as one magazine claimed.

"That's not even close to the truth. The truth is, I do 70 shows a year, half of them in blue states," he says, noting that his biggest markets include Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

"It comes with the territory," he says. "When you support your troops, people automatically think you're a Republican. When you're antiwar, people think you don't support the troops. That ain't the case, either. It's such a hard-core line these days. I'm not a very political guy. I just support the troops and I'm very patriotic."

Such misunderstandings also go around his personal life. Keith has quite a sense of humor, as he demonstrated in a recent appearance on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report where he talked about Willie Nelson's pot use on his tour bus. The show got more mileage out of the bit a few days later when Nelson got busted in Louisiana.

Those who know him can't miss his sense of humor, he says, but then, even with massive success, few people know much about Keith beyond his hard-driven image.

"When you have a top-selling album that sells 4 or 5 million, that's just scratching the surface," he says. "You can (anger) 299 million people. If you can get 1 million of them to like what you're doing, you've got a platinum album."

And ultimately "there's not a dang thing you can do about it," he says. "Just because you sing a red, white and blue song or one about ménage a trois and drinking and carrying on - it's what they use as fuel."

What matters most to him, he says, is the songwriting awards he's won in recent years.

"The greatest gift God ever gave me was my songwriting. Creating a song is my best talent," he says. "That's the most precious award I have."

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

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