Keith Urban’s McGraw Near-Miss

Back in  April, Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, and Keith Urban performed their #1 hit “Highway Don’t Care” on the ACM Awards show.  When he co-hosted Country Countdown USA, Tim told Lon that it was “one of coolest moments he’s had on TV.”   But there was one important thing Tim left out of that story.  Keith told Lon that there was something we all missed that night: “When I finish that song, I throw my guitar up in the air.  I don’t know where I’m throwing it, it’s all in the moment.  Tim is standing rock solid, and I sling the guitar, and we walk off stage.  Tim comes over to me and says, ‘Man I felt the wind of your guitar neck in the hairs in my ears.  You came so close to knocking my head off at full speed with your guitar neck.’  Then I thought, imagine if I’d done that, just smashed his face with a guitar neck!  I had no clue how close I was to his head.  I watched it back and was just terrified how close it came to literally smacking him in the head at full speed.  Which would have been a great TV moment, and knowing Tim, he would have held up the rock & roll sign.”

Two months later, the three returned to do it on the CMA Music Fest.  “Yes we did, and Tim stood further away from me, you’ll notice at the end.”

Tell me about that song: “Tim called me and said ‘I’ve got this song, would you play guitar on it?’  And Taylor wasn’t on it yet.  So I put my guitar solo on the track, and didn’t hear her voice til I heard it on the radio for the first time.  Tim’s vision for that song was genius.”

Tags: mcgraw, urban

Category: Audio, VIDEO