 |
| Toby Keith |
When Dreamworks closed in 2005, Toby Keith founded his own label, Show Dog Nashville, which became part of Show Dog-Universal Music in December 2009. He has released five studio albums on this label: 2006's White Trash with Money, 2007's Big Dog Daddy, 2008's That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, 2009's American Ride and 2010's Bullets in the Gun as well as the compilation 35 Biggest Hits. He has also signed several other acts to the label, including Trailer Choir, Carter's Chord, Flynnville Train, Trace Adkins, Mac McAnally and Mica Roberts. Toby Keith also made his acting debut in 2005, starring in the film Broken Bridges and co-starred with comedian Rodney Carrington in the 2008 film Beer for My Horses.
Toby Keith has released thirteen studio albums, two Christmas albums, and multiple compilation albums. He has also charted more than forty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including nineteen Number One hits and sixteen additional Top Ten hits. His longest-lasting Number One hits are "Beer for My Horses" (a 2003 duet with Willie Nelson) and "As Good as I Once Was" (2005), at six weeks each.
Early life
Toby Keith was born in Clinton, Oklahoma, the son of Carolyn Joan (née Ross) and Hubert K. Covel Jr. He has a sister, Tonni, and a brother, Tracy. The family lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for a few years when Keith was in grade school, but moved to Moore, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City) when he was still young. Before the family moved to Moore, he visited his grandmother in Fort Smith during the summers. His grandmother owned Billie Garner's Supper Club in Fort Smith, where Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play. He did odd jobs around the supper club and started getting up on the bandstand to play with the band. He got his first guitar at the age of eight. After the family moved to Moore, Oklahoma, Keith attended Highland West Junior High and Moore High School, where he played defensive end on a football team.
 |
| Toby Keith |
In 1982, the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed. He fell back on his football training and played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers while continuing to perform with his band. (The Drillers were an unofficial farm club of the United States Football League's Oklahoma Outlaws; Keith tried out for the Outlaws but did not make the team.) He then returned to focus once again on music. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but in 1984, Easy Money began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas. The band cut a single titled "Blue Moon", which received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma.
Career
In the early 1990s, Toby Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee, where he hung out and busked on Music Row and at a place called Houndogs. He distributed copies of a demo tape the band had made to the many record companies in the city. There was no interest by any of the record labels, and Keith returned home feeling depressed. He had promised himself to have a recording contract by the time he was 30 years old or give up on music as a career, and had already passed that age without any prospects for a contract.
Fortunately for Toby Keith, a flight attendant and fan of his gave a copy of Keith's demo tape to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, while he was traveling on a flight she was working. Shedd enjoyed what he heard, went to see Keith perform live and then signed him to a recording contract with Mercury. His debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy" (1993), went to number 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, and his self-titled debut album was certified platinum. Other hit singles included "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action" and "Wish I Didn't Know Now".
Toby Keith was moved to Polydor Records and released his next album, Boomtown (1994), then was moved to A & M Records Nashville, as those two labels merged and released Blue Moon (1996). The albums went gold and platinum, respectively. In 1996, Toby Keith was also featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 performing a cover of their 1963 hit "Be True to Your School" with the Beach Boys themselves providing the harmonies and backing vocals.
 |
| Toby Keith |
The first single off How Do You Like Me Now?! failed to make the Top 40 on the country charts. However, the follow-up single, which was the album's title track, went on to spend five weeks at number one, helping boost the album's sales to double platinum.
In 2002, Toby Keith released the Unleashed album which included hit singles, "Who's Your Daddy?", "Beer for My Horses", and "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue".
On November 9, 2004, Toby Keith released a remake of James Taylor and Carly Simon's "Mockingbird", a duet with his daughter, Krystal. They performed the song on the 2004 Country Music Awards. The song reached top 25 on the charts.
Toby Keith was the subject of the January 2005 issue of Playboy's Playboy Interview. That year, Keith toured with rock guitarist Ted Nugent, whom Keith met in Iraq while they were both performing in USO-sponsored shows for the coalition troops.
On August 31, 2005, Toby Keith parted ways with Universal Music Group — which had since bought DreamWorks — and launched his own record label, Show Dog Nashville. Its first release was Keith's album White Trash with Money, followed by the soundtrack to Broken Bridges. Big Dog Daddy, which featured his single "High Maintenance Woman", was released on June 12, 2007. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, his third album to reach this feat, after Unleashed and Shock'n Y'all.
Toby Keith recorded a duet with Jimmy Buffett, "Piece of Work", which was featured on Buffett's album License to Chill.
 |
| Toby Keith |
In July 2008, Toby Keith released a single, "She Never Cried in Front of Me". An album, That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, followed on October 28, 2008.
In 2009, Toby Keith toured the U.S. with fellow country star Trace Adkins on a tour known as America's Toughest Tour. The concert series was kicked off on June 18, 2009 at PNC Bank Performing Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Toby Keith did a free show earlier in the day at Asbury Park's famous Stone Pony.
Keith's thirteenth studio album, American Ride, was released on October 6, 2009.
In 2010, Toby Keith performed on another USO tour, this time in South Korea.
A studio album, Bullets in the Gun, was released on October 5, 2010.
A new studio album, Clancy's Tavern was released on October 23, 2011. One of its songs, "Red Solo Cup", became a viral hit and gave Keith his biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #17.
In December 2011, Toby Keith was named "Artist of the Decade" by the American Country Awards.
