Toby Keith
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| Toby Keith | |
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 Toby Keith performs for the troops at the O'Callahan's Cantina at Camp LeMonier, Djibouti, May 31, 2006.
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Toby Keith Covel |
| Born | July 8, 1961 |
| Origin | Clinton, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Genre(s) | Country |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter, musician |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1993-present |
| Label(s) | Polydor A&M Mercury DreamWorks Nashville Show Dog Nashville |
| Associated acts | Scotty Emerick Lindsey Haun |
| Website | TobyKeith.com |
Toby Keith Covel (born July 8, 1961) is an American country music singer-songwriter who has enjoyed commercial success throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Five of his albums have reached number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and he has had sixteen Number One singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. In addition, he starred in the 2006 film Broken Bridges.
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[edit] Biography
Keith was born in Clinton, Oklahoma, the son of Carolyn Joan (née Ross) and Hubert K. Covel Jr.[1] He has a sister, Tonni, and a brother, Tracy. His family moved to Moore, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City) when Keith was young. His grandmother owned a supper club and Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play. He got his first guitar at the age of eight. Keith attended Highland West Junior High and Moore High School where he played on the football team.
Keith graduated from Moore High School and, in 1979, went to work as a derrick hand in the booming oil fields of Oklahoma. He worked his way up to become an operation manager. At the age of 20, he formed the Easy Money band and they played local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry. At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a gig if he was paged to work in the oil field.
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.) After two years with the Drillers, Keith decided to try music full time. 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 and the song received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma.
Also in 1984, Keith married his wife, Tricia. He is the father of three children; Shelley (born 1981; adopted stepdaughter), Krystal (born 1984), and Stelen (born 1997). An avid University of Oklahoma football fan, Keith is often seen at Oklahoma Sooners games and practices.
On 24 March 2001 Keith's father was killed in a car accident on interstate 35. On 25 December 2007 the Covel family was awarded $2.8 million for the wrongful death of H.K.Covel. Elias and Pedro Rodriguez, operators of Rodriguez Transportes of Tulsa, and the Republic Western Insurance Co were found liable as they failed to properly equip the truck with properly working air brakes.
[edit] Career
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In 1993, Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee. Keith 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. Keith had promised himself to have a recording contract by the time he was 30 years old or give up on music as a career. He had already passed that age without any prospects for a recording contract.
Fortunately for 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".
Keith moved briefly to Polydor Records and released his next two albums, Boomtown (1994) and Blue Moon (1996). The albums went gold and platinum respectively. In 1996, 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.
Polydor folded and Keith moved back to Mercury Records (now called Mercury Nashville), and released his fourth album, Dream Walkin' (1997). The album featured a duet with Sting, "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", which had previously been a hit for Sting himself.
Keith began work on his next album How Do You Like Me Now (1999) at Mercury but purchased the rights to the album and moved to DreamWorks Nashville because of creative differences with Mercury.[citation needed] 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.
Keith also began doing a series of television advertisements for Telecom USA for their discount long distance telephone service 10-10-220. Because of the ads and his latest hit album, Keith became a superstar and household name. He also starred in Ford commercials, singing original songs such as "Ford Truck Man" and "Field Trip (Look Again)" while driving Ford trucks.
Keith made an appearance at the very first Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (then NWA-TNA) weekly pay-per-view on June 19, 2002, where his playing of Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett. He would later enter the Gauntlet for the Gold main event specifically to eliminate Jarrett from the match. He would appear the next week, on June 26, and help Scott Hall defeat Jarrett in singles action.
Keith was the subject of the January, 2005 issue of Playboy Magazine'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, Keith parted ways with Universal Music Group- which had since bought DreamWorks- and launched his own record label called Show Dog Nashville. Its first release was Keith's album White Trash With Money, followed by the soundtrack to Broken Bridges. Big Dog Daddy, the album that birthed his single High Maintenance Woman, was released on June 12th, 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"
In the Autumn of 2005, he filmed Broken Bridges, written by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, and directed by Steven Goldmann. This feature film from Paramount/CMT Films was released on September 8, 2006. A contemporary story set in small-town Tennessee, Keith plays Bo Price, a country musician whose career has seen better times. The movie also stars Kelly Preston, Burt Reynolds, and Tess Harper.
In 2005, Keith opened Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and another location in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[citation needed]
Keith is continuing his Hookin' Up & Hangin' Out Tour, sponsored by Ford trucks, in Albany, New York, with guests Flynnville Train, Lindsey Haun, and Miranda Lambert, which wraps up in Hartford, Connecticut
Keith is currently writing a script for a movie based on his and Willie Nelson's 2003 hit Beer for My Horses[1].
Toby Keith was given a boost when he appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. Mr. Keith holds the distinction of being the only musical artist to have received a five star rating from Stephen Colbert on I-Tunes.
It has been announced that Toby Keith will release a third Greatest Hits collection including all his hits from 1993-2005, along with the soundtrack to his new film and a new studio album in 2008. No release dates have been announced.[2]
[edit] Personal convictions and controversies
Keith considers himself "a Conservative Democrat who is sometimes embarrassed for his party." He endorsed the re-election of President George W. Bush in 2004 and performed at a Dallas, Texas rally on the night before the election. Keith also endorsed Democrat Dan Boren in his successful run in Oklahoma's 2nd Congressional district and is good friends with Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
In a January 2007 interview with Newsday, Keith was asked whether or not he supported the Iraq War. He responded with "Never did." He favors setting a time limit on the campaign. He also said, "I don't apologize for being patriotic... If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my [ass] on that, because I'm not going to budge on that at all. And that has nothing to do with politics. Politics is what's killing America." [2]
[edit] The Angry American song
On March 24, 2001, Keith’s father, H.K. Covel, was killed in a car accident. That event and the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted Keith to write the song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)", a song about his father’s patriotism and faith in the USA. At first, Keith refused to record the song and sang it only live at his concerts for military personnel. The reaction was so strong that the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones told Keith it was his duty as an American citizen to record the song.[3] As the lead single from the album Unleashed (2002), "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" peaked at number 1 over the weekend of July 4.
ABC invited Keith to sing "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" on a patriotic special it was producing. However, the host of the show, newsman Peter Jennings, requested that Keith soften the lyrics of the song or choose another song to sing.[citation needed] Keith refused both of the requests and did not appear on the special. The rift gave the song a considerable amount of publicity, which led to many national interviews and public performances of the song.
[edit] Feud with the Dixie Chicks
Keith had a public feud with the Dixie Chicks over the song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue", as well as over comments they made about President George W. Bush on stage during a concert in London. The lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, publicly stated that Keith's song was "ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant."[3] Keith responded by belittling Maines' songwriting skills, and by displaying a backdrop at his concerts showing a doctored photo of Maines with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On May 21, 2003, Maines wore a T-shirt with the letters FUTK on the front at the Academy of Country Music Awards. [4] While a spokesperson for the Dixie Chicks said that the acronym stood for "Friends United in Truth and Kindness," many including host Vince Gill took it to be a shot at Keith ("Fuck You Toby Keith"). In August 2003, Keith publicly declared he was done feuding with Maines 'because he's realized there are far more important things to concentrate on'.[5] However, he continues to refuse to say Maines' name, and claims that the doctored photo was intended to express his feeling that Maines' criticism was tyrannical and a dictator-like attempt to squelch Keith's free speech.[6]
In the 2006 film Shut Up and Sing, Maines admitted that the FUTK shirt was in fact a shot at Toby Keith, after once claiming that it meant Freedom Understanding Truth and Kindness. In an October 2004 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Maines finally confessed that it was indeed an obscene shot at Toby Keith, and that she "thought that nobody would get it."[4]
However, it was announced in March 2008 that Keith and the Dixie Chicks would appear together in a series of television commercials on global warming, funded in part by Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection. The commercials pair well-known public figures, who otherwise would not agree on many issues, to convey messages about climate change. Along with Keith and the Dixie Chicks, television spots will also feature California representative Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, with former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and left-leaning Rev. Al Sharpton paired together with the right-leaning Rev. Pat Robertson.[5]
[edit] Discography
[edit] Notable awards
- Academy of Country Music (ACM) - Album of the Year (2000) How Do You Like Me Now
- Country Music Association (CMA) - Male Vocalist of the Year (2001)
- Academy of Country Music - Entertainer of the Year (2002)
- Academy of Country Music - Entertainer of the Year (2003)
- Academy of Country Music - Top Male Vocalist (2003)
- Academy of Country Music - Album of the Year (2003) Shock'n Y'all
- Academy of Country Music - Video of the Year (2003) Beer For My Horses (with Willie Nelson)
- American Music Award (AMA) - Favorite Country Male Artist (2004)
- Country Music Association - Video of the Year (2005) As Good As I Once Was
- American Music Award - 7-time consecutive nominee as of 2007
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.wargs.com/other/covel.html
- ^ On May 6, 2008, Toby Keith released his "35 Biggest Hits" 2CD set. Toby To Release Greatest Hits CD
- ^ "Courtesy Of The Red, White & Blue: Singer Talks About His Defiantly Patriotic Songs", CBS News, 2003-12-31. Retrieved on 2007-06-05.
- ^ video of Dixie Chicks appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher.
- ^ Global Warming Creates Odd Couples - New York Times Blog.
[edit] External links
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