Playboy Interview: Toby Keith

At six-foot-four and 240 pounds and with more than 20 million albums sold, Toby Keith is the most imposing presence in country music in more ways than one. Over the past five years nobody in the genre--and few artists in any field of music--has sold more concert tickets, spent more weeks at number one, made more money, garnered more headlines, become embroiled in more controversy and gotten less respect than the hardheaded Oklahoman.

In contrast to Nashville's usual pretty boys singing other people's songs in well-pressed shirts and spotless cowboy hats, Keith is a plain-spoken maverick with a raunchy sense of humor, an independent streak and a chip on his shoulder. He has defied conventional Music City wisdom on his way to 19 number one hits, a dozen best-selling albums and unassailable status as the biggest nude star in country music since Garth Brooks, who petered out several years ago. Keith is the guy who appeared in TV commercials alongside Terry Bradshaw and Mike Piazza; who famously feuded with the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines when she lambasted his flag-waving (and, she said, war-mongering) song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)"; who got into a public spat with Peter Jennings when Keith claimed the ABC anchorman didn't want him singing that song (with its inflammatory couplet "We'll put a boot in your ass / It's the American way") on a Fourth of July special.

Nashville can't ignore Keith--he sells far too many albums for that--but for most of hit career the city hasn't particularly liked him, either. He was too outspoken, too contrary, more in the mold (philosophically if not always musically) of outsiders and rebels such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The city's disdain for its biggest seller was made clear in November 2003: Although he'd been the hottest country act of the year and had garnered the most Country Music Association award nominations--seven--he didn't win a single one. The cold shoulder was so blatant that Alan Jackson felt compelled to apologize for his best male singer award, pointedly commenting from the stage, "I'd just as soon hand this off"

Six months later, though, something remarkable happened. At the Academy of Country Music awards show in Las Vegas, Keith swept his categories, winning four awards, including entertainer of the year, best male vocalist and best album (for Shock 'n Y'All). The ACMs, the newer of the industry's two big awards shows, finally acknowledged what Nashville had been resisting for years: Like it or not, this brazen Okie had become the standard-bearer for a style of music that often tried to put on a milder, nicer public face.

Keith, 43, who was born Toby Keith Covel, grew up in the small Oklahoma town of Moore. He followed his dad into the oil fields after graduating from high school, working as a roughneck until the bottom fell out of that business. He tried his hand at semipro football, then gravitated back to music, leading a successful bar band for several years before Nashville took notice. When he released his first album, in 1993, Keith seemed to be just another polite cookie-cutter act. Not until Keith threw off the conventional repertoire did he truly establish his blunt, hard-assed persona through songs such as "How Do You Like Me Now?!," "I Wanna Talk About Me," "Who's Your Daddy?" and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." Along the way, noted Rolling Stone, Keith "put the grits and gravy back into mainstream country."

Keith, who just released his second greatesthits album, now tours constantly with a high-octane, effects-laden stage show that may be the most elaborate country concert since Brooks's heyday. WriterSteve Pondspent a few days on the road with Keith. His report: "Our interview sessions always took place a couple of hours before the show and always in the location that serves as the nerve center for any country singer worth his twang--the tour bus. His bus is pretty standard: There was usually a guitar on the couch, a parade of crew members and colleagues trooping through and a muted TV monitor tuned to the news. Matter-of-fact, a little guarded and clearly wary of the press, Keith nonetheless can get rolling when the conversation turns to his favorite subjects--and politics is clearly one of those subjects."

[Q] Playboy: Can the latest reports be true? Toby Keith is a registered Democrat?

[A] Keith: Yep. I'm looked on as being this outrageous right-wing nut, but I'm a very conservative Democrat. My dad, who I wrote "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" about, was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. And one of the last things my granddad said before he died was "Go cast my Democratic vote."

[Q] Playboy: Do you usually vote that way?

[A] Keith: Yeah. The governor of Oklahoma's a Democrat. He's one of my best friends, and I did everything I could to get him elected. The governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, is a real good friend of mine. I've had some correspondence with Zell Miller.

[Q] Playboy: Miller is the Democratic senator who gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Republican convention--not exactly most people's idea of a true Democrat.

[A] Keith: People say, "You're one of those Zell Miller kind of guys," and I go, "Yeah." They asked me to come to the Republican convention too, but I think all those celebrities who showed up at Kerry's gig did so much damage to him that the last thing President Bush needed was people like me flyin' in there.

[Q] Playboy: But you did support the president.

[A] Keith: I've never thought Bush is as right-wing and extreme as people believe. He's a family man, a Christian guy. The Republican Party as a whole has a lot of terrible things I don't agree with, so I could be either a somewhat lefty Republican or a righty Democrat. I feel I'm in the middle. And I think the majority of people feel the way I do. Maybe they're the people who don't vote, but I think they're in the middle. They don't necessarily support the Iraq war, but they support the troops and feel we should defend ourselves if we're attacked.

[Q] Playboy: And that's how you feel?

[A] Keith: I'm pro-troops. And after a war starts, I think you have to support the troops. Now, I do think we need to find something in the middle and defend our country without running off and bombing a bunch of people for no reason. But you can't stick your head in the sand and let your only means of defense be denial. We weren't invading Iraq or anywhere else when they blew up the World Trade Center, so that had nothing to do with why they blew it up. They did it because they hate us. And the people behind all that terror stuff, they want Michael Moore dead, too, you know what I mean? They want our soldiers dead, and they want the guys who are pro-peace dead. There's no difference to them.

[Q] Playboy: Did you support invading Iraq?

[A] Keith: I'm pro--war on terror. Whether we should go from country to country, like with the Iraq thing, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to say we should go to war every time somebody says we should, but I'm not smart enough to say we shouldn't be in there, either. Just because I don't think we should be at war, or just because I don't think the math adds up on a certain war, doesn't mean we shouldn't go.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like you're hedging your bet. Does the math add up with Iraq?

[A] Keith: I don't know. This ain't as simple as Afghanistan. We're going to Iraq for what? For terrorism? Have we seen any terrorist training camps? I haven't seen the smoking gun. And they haven't found the weapons of mass destruction. But the second I said in the press that I wasn't sure about Iraq, people said, "He's trying to save his career." What? My career is boomin', buddy.

[Q] Playboy: This past spring and summer you went on a USO tour to European bases and to Afghanistan and Iraq. Were you surprised by what you found?

[A] Keith: You think when you go there that bombs will be going off everywhere, you know? And it's nothing like that. There were people in Baghdad shopping, going to the market. It was bustling. And we've got 20,000 troops walking around on the streets every day, helping civilians. Not that everybody wants us there, but a lot of people do, and a lot of people are glad Saddam's gone.

[Q] Playboy: Did it change your feeling about the war?

[A] Keith: It didn't change the way I feel about it, but it did change some things. I learned a lot over there. I think people have to be cautious about how they get their news. I'd always trusted CNN to be my source and never really thought about it. But now, to me, CNN gives a very liberal, slanted view of the news. I don't feel that Fox always gets it right, but I think it at least makes an attempt to give me a balanced show.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't it more accurate to say that Fox is also biased but in a direction you happen to agree with?

[A] Keith: All I know is that I talked to 15 or 20 generals while I was there. I talked to the commanding officers and the troops, and they all feel in their heart they're doing the right thing. Who am I to say otherwise? The one thing the soldiers kept telling me was, "Be careful where you get your news, man. They lie, lie, lie." So I came back and started watching Fox, and it was more like what I saw over there, a more accurate report of what the soldiers felt was going on.

[Q] Playboy: The song that gave you a reputation as a right-wing nut, as you put it, was "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." You've said you initially resisted releasing that song. Why?

[A] Keith: I knew the people it was written for--the military--would love and appreciate it. But you can't draw the line. You can't say, "I'm never gonna play this anywhere except when there's only military in the room." And the second you play it for liberals, they're gonna be disappointed or outraged or whatever. I didn't want to have to deal with that.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you change your mind?

[A] Keith: I played it about three times in six months. See, this is the part of the story nobody even knows about. I wrote that song in September, right after 9/11. I wrote it, sat on it and then played it at Annapolis. It was the biggest song of the night 10 times over. Then about two months later I went to the Pentagon and played a show. And right in the middle of it I gave them a little speech. I said, "This is my version of a patriotic song. I'm the son of a veteran, who was raised to appreciate the flag and all who died for it, and I just want to give this as a gift to you guys." I played it, and again people were crying; people were throwing their fists in the air. And then a four-star general came out and said, "We need that song. Are you going to be putting that song out?" I said, "No, sir," and he said, "Well, I highly recommend that you do. We've got the best equipment and the best fighting men, but we travel on our morale, and that song needs to be heard by everybody who's going into combat." So at the 11th hour we cut it and released it, and seven weeks later it was number one. And then here come those people I didn't want to have to deal with.

[Q] Playboy: Including, apparently, Peter Jennings. You claim you were booked to play the song on a Fourth of July special in 2002 but that Jennings wouldn't allow it.

[A] Keith: Yeah. What made me mad was that once he saw the public was outraged that the song couldn't be on the show, he didn't just say, "We stand behind that decision." He attacked my credibility and said I wasn't even booked on the show. But there's indisputable proof. The last thing they want is for us to break out a bunch of e-mails and show 'em.

[Q] Playboy: What did happen?

[A] Keith: They asked us to be on the show, worked out all the logistics, and then he mouthed off and threw a fit. It was, "Who does this Toby Keith think he is?" and "He's not doing this song on my show." They didn't kick me off; they asked if I'd do a different song. But that song was going to be number one on the Fourth of July. If anybody's tuning in to watch a patriotic show and I've got "Red, White and Blue" sitting at number one, what are they tuning in to hear? You're using my name to get people to watch your show, and they're going to be disappointed if I don't sing that. And I'm not going to look like a fool because of you.

[Q] Playboy: Did that sour your relations with ABC?

[A] Keith: Well, ABC talked to me later about doing a sitcom. I said, "Are you sure you guys want to pursue this? Because I done hammered your ABC anchorman." And they said, "We don't like him either." I guess he's treated enough people ugly that maybe he just needed the right hillbilly to come along and call him out on it.

[Q] Playboy: The song also put you into probably the biggest country music feud of recent years.

[A] Keith: [Sighs] Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: After she told a British audience she was ashamed that George W. Bush comes from Texas, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said the song was "ignorant" and bad for country music. And then you went after her as well.

[A] Keith: Yeah, I did. I disappointed myself tremendously with that exchange. The whole thing ended up a fiasco.

[Q] Playboy: Certainly you helped make it a fiasco when you put a doctored photo of her and Saddam Hussein on the video screens at your concerts.

[A] Keith: Yeah. She caught enough flak without my having to be a part of it. I felt like I lowered myself. I took the bait and went down that road, to the point where people were going, "You guys are staging this." And then when she wore the shirt that read Futk at an awards show, people went, "Oh, we know it's staged now."

[Q] Playboy: None of that was done for publicity?

[A] Keith: We never spoke to each other, not one time. I tried to say hi to her a couple of times, years ago. She wouldn't speak to me. It got to be a big carnival. And then one of my best friends had a two-year-old girl who had a rare children's cancer, and I came home one day and got a phone call that she wasn't going to live but about another week. I just walked into my office with a big pit in my stomach, and I looked down at a country magazine, and there on the cover it said Toby and Natalie, Fight to the Death, or something like that. And it just about made me sick. I made a vow right then. I said, "I'm done with that. I may be stupid and let myself get into other fights, but I'm not gonna be in this one no more."

[Q] Playboy: Do you take any satisfaction from the fact that the Dixie Chicks suffered a backlash?

[A] Keith: No. The bad part about it is that the Chicks were important. They were different, original. They made great music. But I think the American people spoke. It's hard to love somebody for their music when you don't like the personality behind it.

[Q] Playboy: Was that your problem with the Nashville establishment for years? You sold millions of records, but you rarely won any of the big country awards. Some speculated that the industry just didn't care for your image and your personality.

[A] Keith: It's not that; it's their agenda. Only a couple thousand people vote in those awards shows, and the big record companies control them. They give it to the people they want to reward. And I'm not their Nashville poster boy. I never wanted to be that guy. I'm never gonna be that guy, and they know it. So I'm never getting the votes from those big companies. I was like one for 35 or something at that one show and three for 40 at the other one. Nobody had a worse win percentage than I did.

[Q] Playboy: And then, last May, you went four for four and swept the big awards at the ACMs. What happened?

[A] Keith: The jester overthrew the king. What finally happened was that the open pool of voters, the people whose votes aren't controlled by the major companies, just reared up and said, "He's gonna win something this year."

[Q] Playboy: In a way, didn't you enjoy being the outsider who was always snubbed? Did it help drive you?

[A] Keith: Yeah. As much as I bitched about it, it was kind of good being in that position. If you win, nobody says anything. And if you don't, people go, "How did you go zero for eight with the year you had?" It was cool that that was the headline the next morning.

[Q] Playboy: So now that you've been accepted, do you need to find other things to motivate yourself?

[A] Keith: Well, after a long enough time of being overlooked, I've still got a bitterness that's hard for me to get rid of.

[Q] Playboy: The last time you got shut out was at the 2003 CMA awards. That was the night three awards went to Johnny Cash, who rarely won when he was alive.

[A] Keith: That was the part of the night that made me be quiet and go away. I respect Johnny Cash. I wish Cash would have won 'em all. But it took his dying to get them to recognize him. I remember when Waylon Jennings was inducted into the Hall of Fame and had his big industry night, and he said, "Y'all didn't want to give it to me then, you're not gonna give it to me now." If you go all those years that Waylon and Cash went without getting any sort of recognition, why on the way out does everybody want to prop you up?

[Q] Playboy: Were guys like Cash and Jennings your musical heroes?

[A] Keith: I liked those guys, but Merle Haggard was my guy. Hag and Willie were my era, and they were the two who probably influenced me the most. And to me, our industry is missing what Haggard and Willie had and what Dolly and Waylon and Hank Williams Jr. had. They all wrote their own songs, they performed, and their personalities backed it up.

[Q] Playboy: You don't see that in country stars today?

[A] Keith: I don't think our industry allows that today. Now it's a "Video Killed the Radio Star" kind of thing. When somebody says, "I found a great singer-songwriter over here," the record companies say, "Yeah? What does she look like?" They want to know what she'll look like on video to make sure they can market her.

[Q] Playboy: You and Merle Haggard recently cut a couple of songs together, which will probably give him the first significant country radio airplay that he's had in decades.

[A] Keith: Same with Willie. When we did "Beer for My Horses," Willie hadn't had a number one record since the 1980s.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think it's right that that's the only way these legends can get on the radio?

[A] Keith: I know they hate it. I know they wish they could be in the mainstream. But I get a lot of airplay, so to take advantage of that and have them with me on a duet really fills my heart with joy. And listeners always come up to them and say, "Man, it's really good to hear you back on the radio."

[Q] Playboy: Is country radio selling its listeners short by not playing those guys more?

[A] Keith: No, I think everybody has a job to do. They're gonna do whatever sells tickets and advertising. I think the labels are probably as much to blame for feeding radio certain types of music. Why should radio be the one to stand up and say, "We need Merle Haggard"? The labels are the ones who dictate what radio receives.

[Q] Playboy: You wrote a song called "Weed With Willie" about your experiences on Nelson's bus. We take it that marijuana's not your drug of choice.

[A] Keith: It's not my bag. I wish it was, I really do. It'd save me a lot of time and effort from being really stressed. But I get very sleepy. I'm not a good party guy, and I don't have great conversations. I just close up--paranoia and all that. It's not my favorite high.

[Q] Playboy: What is? Alcohol?

[A] Keith: Yeah. I'll drink whiskey and beer, but I've never been a drug guy. Not that alcohol isn't a drug, but it's my choice of stimulation.

[Q] Playboy: You have a flagpole in front of your house, just as your dad did.

[A] Keith: Yeah, but I've got a car dealership flagpole. I've got one of those big 75-footers out on my ranch. His flagpole was an old piece of two-and-seven-eighths tubing that he painted white and cemented in the ground. And it didn't have a rope on it, so you couldn't tend to the flag every day. He flew that sucker 365, man. It'd get tattered, and he'd go get a new one.

[Q] Playboy: He was a role model for you in a lot of ways, wasn't he?

[A] Keith: Incredible. He had so much integrity and was such a John Wayne--type figure. There are 10 commandments in the Bible, but he had only two: lying and stealing. And he said, "If you don't do either one of them, you'll cover those other eight."

[Q] Playboy: A man who liked things plain and simple.

[A] Keith: In my life he was the last of the old school. I love old-school people: the things they stand for and the way they're so pissed off at the way the world's being run today. I love to sit around and listen to them. I think a little of that leaks out in me.

[Q] Playboy: Was your father the reason you went to work in the oil fields right after high school?

[A] Keith: Yeah. He was a 35-year oil-field vet. When I was 18 there was no military draft. If there had been a draft, there was no doubt John Wayne would have made me go.

[Q] Playboy: And the oil field was a substitute for the military?

[A] Keith: It was my way of finding a place to grow up. The oil field is rough--everything can kill you. You're working around heavy iron, it's moving fast, it can snatch you up, and there's blocks and tackles and hydraulic tongs and pipes spinning. There are a million ways to get hurt, and every time you get hurt you're gonna get hit hard. There's no soft landings, no round edges. You've got to dig in and be a man.

[Q] Playboy: Were you playing music when you weren't working?

[A] Keith: Yeah. I would carry a guitar behind the seat of the pump truck sometimes. And then on breaks and stuff I'd pull that guitar out and work on a song. Most times I just got laughed at, you know? "You gonna sing us a song, pretty boy?"

[Q] Playboy: When did you start writing songs?

[A] Keith: I probably wrote my first song when I was a teenager, 15 years old or so. And there was a little garage band I joined when I was about 17 or 18.

[Q] Playboy: Did you listen exclusively to country music?

[A] Keith: No, I bought all kinds of stuff, man. Al Green, Lionel Richie, Huey Lewis, the Eagles, Bob Seger. I've always said that if you sat down Tom Petty, Bob Seger, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and me--if I was fortunate enough to be in that guitar-passing party--and we were all playing our own stuff on an acoustic guitar, it would sound pretty much the same. Aside from McCartney, it would all just sound like American music. And a lot of his would too.

[Q] Playboy: When did you discover girls?

[A] Keith: I think in fifth or sixth grade it was pass a note, hold hands, everybody had to have a girlfriend on the field trip. Sex and all that other stuff came when I was in my middle teens. Sports was so big in my life that I had girls around, but they weren't as important as sports at the time. But there came a time when they were, you know?

[Q] Playboy: Was football your main sport?

[A] Keith: I played some baseball and basketball in grade school but mostly football. I played it all the way through the semipro league, when I was 22, 23. I was trying to get into the USFL, but it folded, and I knew I didn't have a chance in the NFL.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Keith: I was too big and slow to play linebacker and not big enough to play lineman. I was kind of a tweener. I played defensive end, and if we were playing somebody who didn't have big offensive linemen, I played great. But once in a while I'd run into a 300-pound tackle and get my ass whipped.

[Q] Playboy: Was playing in a band a better way to make a living?

[A] Keith: Well, we got to be one of the top regional acts. But I remember our first gig outside Oklahoma. It was in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and we drove there in two pickup trucks with camper shells and a trailer and about $200 to our name. We got there, and a hurricane had just hit. The town looked like a bomb had gone off. They stuck us in a hotel with no power, and that night the National Guard came in and shut the club down because there was a curfew. The owner gave us $500 instead of $1,500, and we drove all the way back to Oklahoma. And I thought, Man, if that's the way it's gonna be, maybe we shouldn't be doing this.

[Q] Playboy: You married at this point, right?

[A] Keith: Yeah. I had two little girls, too. But my wife was always supportive. She laughs at people now when they say, "Doesn't he work too much?" She says, "No, he don't work enough."

[Q] Playboy: Were you playing original songs in the bars?

[A] Keith: Sometimes. You know what's funny, though, we played "Should've Been a Cowboy" in the bars, and nobody cared. Original songs in nightclubs usually go over like a turd in a punch bowl. We'd do a Garth song and a George Strait song and a Bob Seger song and an Eagles song. Then we'd drop in one of mine, and all of a sudden the dance floor would empty. But the second it hit the radio it was like, "Oh yeah." That's the way people are. We need to be told what to like.

[Q] Playboy: Your career got off to a great start with three number one hits from your first album, but things slowed down over the next few albums.

[A] Keith: Yeah. About 1995, 1996 and 1997 I wrote some great songs, industrychoice stuff. People at the record company were saying, "These are great. These'll take you to the next level." But I didn't feel like they were me. They weren't impact songs. They wouldn't release the stuff on the album that I thought would work great for me and my fans. They said, "Oh no, those will offend people." And I was saying, "But these songs you've got here don't mean anything to anybody. They're just like everybody else's songs."

[Q] Playboy: A few of your early songs, like "You Ain't Much Fun (Since I Quit Drinking)," show some of the attitude and sense of humor of your later stuff.

[A] Keith: See, that song got to number two on the charts and stayed there for several weeks. A few radio stations resisted it. The second it didn't go to number one, the record company was like, "Okay, you got that out of your system. Now let's move on." With the next album, they put out three stinking ballads in a row as singles. Two went number one, and one went top 10.

[Q] Playboy: What's wrong with that?

[A] Keith: Well, they believed that going to number one with those singles was building my career, but I was like, "You gotta leave a mark." I left a bigger mark at number 18 with "Getcha Some" than I did at number one with "Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You" and "Me Too." Those are songs people never even remember.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you left Mercury Records and moved to DreamWorks?

[A] Keith: It was do or die. I had the best album I'd ever made in my life, and I turned it in and they rejected it. We were at a point where I had an entire staff that didn't believe in me.

[Q] Playboy: That was the album How Do You Like Me Now?!

[A] Keith: Yeah. I finally said, "If you guys think this sucks, why am I here? Why don't you just drop me?" Thinking that was ridiculous, because all they'll ever do is shelve you, make sure nobody else can have you--record deals are for life and a day, and they're never going to let you go. But they got together and said, "He's right." And they let me go.

[Q] Playboy: Since then your albums have been a lot brasher, ruder and funnier than they had been.

[A] Keith: I knew right then--somewhere around 1998 or 1999--what kind of music I wanted to make. And I just put both feet down and said, "This is it. Deal with it." I don't know how many weeks we've spent at number one with singles since then, but it's ridiculous. More than 40 or 50 weeks since 2000 we've been number one, I'd bet.

[Q] Playboy: Your visibility increased tremendously when you did a series of TV ads for the 10-10-220 long-distance service. Is it true that was the only way you could get on TV?

[A] Keith: At the time my problem was that to make it to the top level of our industry you have to appear to the masses as one of the all-stars. And our all-star game was the awards show. If you're nominated, you get to perform on the show. But I had never been nominated for a friggin' thing, so I wasn't getting any television. So my manager and I made an effort to find some television. And 10-10-220 made all the sense in the world. I did eight or nine of those things for them, and that allowed me to reach the mainstream people country radio doesn't reach.

[Q] Playboy: Another way to reach a non-country audience would be by getting into acting, as some country singers have. You were signed to DreamWorks until the company sold its music division to Universal last year. Did you ever talk to the heads of the company--Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen--about branching out into movies?

[A] Keith: I never met Geffen or Spielberg. I met with Katzenberg a lot, but it was all music-related. There was never an opportunity there. When I signed with DreamWorks I was told I was going to feel the synergy, but I never even got a soundtrack. Here we were selling 4 million records a pop, and somebody wasn't sharp enough to grasp that they had one of the hottest-selling artists here. Why weren't they trying to create some other ways to bring money to the table? That didn't happen one time. No movie offers, no television, no jack. I don't think they had a grasp on what their music business was doing.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any interest in acting?

[A] Keith: You know, I've tried several times to be interested in that, but every time the right part comes along it gets screwed up for me in the end. I've been called for things, but I'll never read again. Because in the end they're going to he to you. If Billy Bob Thornton or somebody shows up with a part for me and I can just go in and do it, I'll be there. I think my commercials and my videos show I can do it. But I'm not gonna go stand in line with a bunch of people dressed like me trying to get a part.

[Q] Playboy: Do the mainstream media treat country music badly?

[A] Keith: They do. I get treated pretty fair at those all-genre awards shows. But I watch our other artists, and I think country as a whole gets looked down on as some kind of ancient pastime that shouldn't be out on the market. It really bugs me that country gets cast aside like a bad stepkid, and country artists get tired of getting treated like that. It's just complete nonsense.

[Q] Playboy: Have you considered trying to make records that could cross over to pop radio?

[A] Keith: No. I can't even fake it, you know? I'm just straight country. They can't even remix my singles and make 'em sound pop enough to get played. Faith, Shania and the Chicks all get across-the-board play. They get play on AC, pop and country. I get just country. And still, you know, I had one of the highest-debuting numbers, first week, over the past 15 years. Think about that. In a day when downloading has affected music by 30 percent, for a straight country act to scan almost 600,000 units in a week and top the pop charts with the great albums that were coming out that week is almost impossible. What would have happened if there was no such thing as downloading? You can't even imagine what it would be like if I was getting AC and pop play.

[Q] Playboy: Does downloading hurt you much?

[A] Keith: It doesn't affect me the way it affects the little guy. It bothers me that it's there, but at the same time I've got income in this business coming from everywhere, so I don't have much to (concluded on page 177)Toby Keith(continued from page 68) bitch about. The little guy who writes the songs is the one who gets hurt--the starving artist trying to hit that one golden home run, and he Finally hits it and makes 30 percent less than he would have made in the past.

[Q] Playboy: But you could also point to young artists who rely on downloading as a way to get exposure for their music.

[A] Keith: Sure. It depends on where in their career you ask somebody. If you ask somebody who's got a lot to be downloaded, like me, you'd probably get an answer like "It's wrong, it's stealing." If you were to ask a rock group out of, say, Sacramento, trying to be discovered by getting their song downloaded on the Internet, they wouldn't care. But I guarantee you, the second they hit it big and their lifestyle changes and they start living off that income, they'll probably change their minds.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the Internet has changed the business significantly?

[A] Keith: It is changing, big-time. I don't know how long the CD is going to be around, how long music stores are going to be the way to get your music. The bad part about it is that we all want to sell albums. But if it gets down to where it's all sold on the Internet, people will buy just the songs they want, and the rest of the music will never get heard. It'll go back to a singles market, like it was in the days of 45s.

[Q] Playboy: Are you worried about the effect of the changes?

[A] Keith: I'm fine. You can't be all you can be forever. And I have a great career right now. If it all went away tomorrow, it'd be okay. I wouldn't have any more money or any more songs on the radio, but at the same time I could have retired years ago. I do it because it's fun. I do it because this is what I do best.

[Q] Playboy: Early in your career, did you have a financial goal you wanted to reach?

[A] Keith: Yeah. I remember in 1992 or 1993 saying to my first accountant, "Man, if I could ever get to $5 million, I'd be hard to find." And he said, "No, if you get there, you'll want more than that." And he's right.

[Q] Playboy: What sorts of goals do you have remaining?

[A] Keith: I don't have any. I've achieved every goal I've ever set. My only goal now is just to endure. I take a tremendous amount of pride in doing everything my way now. Everything's on my terms. Even if my next album flops--if we don't debut at number one and we sell only a bucketful of records--it's what I wanted to do, and I'll live with that. I'm never gonna conform to some machine and say, "Y'all tell me what to do next."

I'll drink whiskey and beer, but I've never been a drug guy. I'm not a good party guy. I don't have great conversations. I just close up--paranoia and all that.

I finally told Mercury Records, "If you guys think this sucks, why am I here? Why don't you just drop me?" They got together and let me go.