Red, White and Cowboy Blues
Toby Keith brings an outlaw style to a music industry that's gone PC. Got a problem with that?
By Alanna Nash

With 10.5 million albums sold, Toby Keith, 42, has stirred a sensation by reviving country's "outlaw" era. His "Unleashed" album, which debuted at No. 1 in July 2002, still hugged that position a year later and has gone triple platinum. A duet with outlaw icon Willie Nelson, "Beer for My Horses", spent six weeks at the top of the singles chart. And he has the most nominations -- seven, including Entertainer of the Year -- in the Country Music Association Awards, to air at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday on CBS.

One question: Will he win?

A better question: Will he be there if he does?

In May, when Keith won the prestigious Entertainer of the Year prize at the Academy of Country Music Awards show, he was MIA, leaving hosts Vince Gill and Reba McEntire stalling for time. His absence was especially glaring because he had performed early in the same show, with Nelson. "I hated that for him, because he worked hard to get it," McEntire says.

It was another in a series of flaps for Keith. In June 2002, he slammed ABC's Peter Jennings after the anchor nixed Keith's performing, on a Fourth of July special, "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue", the terrorist-baiting hit that explained exactly where America would plant a victorious "boot" in the "body" of the Taliban. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said the song "makes country music sound ignorant. Anybody can write, 'We'll put a boot in your ass.' " Keith shot back: "You've got to be in my league as a songwriter before I'll even respond to you." A feud ensued.

Sitting in his bus before a recent Cheyenne, Wyo., concert that was equal parts patriotism and good old rowdy fun, Keith is plainspoken about his appeal: "My audience wants a big-time tell-it-like-it-is attitude. That's the music I've always tried to make. It's fun being the badass sometimes, you know?"

But in conversation, his explanations for events that brought him critical press seem reasoned and plausible. Like when he discusses the ACM fiasco: "I felt pitiful about it. I did," he admits. Truth is, he didn't think he had a shot at winning and left with Nelson to write a song. In the past several years, Keith has been one of the most nominated but least awarded artists. "I've been, like, 0 for 25," he says, "and I was 0 for six that night. I never expected to get it."

Keith wrote "Courtesy" a week after the Sept. 11 attacks. In part, it was a way of dealing with his grief over the March 2001 auto-accident death of his father, H.K. Covel, 64, an Army veteran who was killed after another car pushed his in front of a bus. The song was so blazingly vengeful that Keith had no intention of recording it. He did so only after his associates and high-ranking members of the military insisted. As a result, even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has sent him a handwritten letter of appreciation.

What's moved him even more, Keith says, is what the song has meant to soldiers. Patrick Miller, a POW from Valley Center, Kan., defiantly sang "Courtesy" to his Iraqi captors. Later, Keith secretly showed up at a homecoming for Miller in Kansas. As the soldier reprised the song's opening bars, his pastor asked Miller if he needed help -- a sign for Keith to stride onstage. They sang it together, and Keith gave Miller one of his flag-motif guitars. "To see big streams going down his face," Keith says, "I just had to hand him that guitar."

Maines inspires a different emotion. He insists that their sparring is no publicity stunt. "I'm angry at her," he says. Willie Nelson, ever the statesman, provides even-handed perspective: "We need him, and we need the Dixie Chicks. They're both right. There is nothing like a good rivalry within the industry. Toby's stand isn't pro-anything, except being able to say what you think."

Any other version of Toby Keith wouldn't ring true. "People seem to really love the attitude he's put into his songs," says Michael McCall, Nashville correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times". "It's so different from what anybody else is doing." And with this week's release of Keith's new album, "Shock'N Y'all", fans will get more of that character. The CD contains what the singer calls his most "rambunctious" material yet, including the incendiary "Taliban Song".

Keith grew up on a Moore, Okla., farm as Toby Keith Covel, the middle child of three. He taught himself guitar and in 1993 had his first hit, "Should've Been a Cowboy". He pursued a respectable but relatively quiet career for several years, until his "How Do You Like Me Now"?! album made him a star in 1999.

The ire in his music overshadows his more well-crafted and sensitive songwriting, including ballads like "Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You". They demonstrate that Keith can be a downright softie. He's been married to wife Tricia since 1984, and they have three children, Shelley, 22, Krystal, 17, and Stelen, 6. "My wife isn't a big music fan, and my kids laugh at my career," he says. "People at their school will say, "Man, your dad's the boss!" And they're like, "Yeah, right. You ought to see him in his underwear.' "

Photograph by Tony Baker for USA WEEKEND