Toby Keith Talks Twister Relief

Toby Keith was born, raised, and still lives in Oklahoma.  So when deadly tornados hit his hometown of Moore, he was immediately moved to action.  Toby spoke with Country Countdown USA this week about the rebuilding effort, and his benefit concert taking place next week.

The day after the twister hit Moore, we saw you on TV touring the damage at your sister’s house.  How are things now?  Give us an update. “Fortunately my sister was able to get most of her personal possessions out, we got it tarped up, got a tarp on the roof, the windows boarded up, but 3 days later, it all fell in.  But the insurance company has been good to her.  The people around there are trying to rebuild.  I saw a little boy in the hospital last night who lost his mother.  He’s a little 8 year old guy named Jackson, he’s had major surgeries, but he’s tough as nails.  They’re trying to rebuild his life emotionally, but there were so many people who were injured, it’s just one story out of thousands.  Okies are pretty resiliant, they’ve lived in tornado alley their whole life.  That goes for hurricane people and earthquake people too.  But the roads are open, stuff’s functioning, they had it going and then another one hit 9 days later.  It’s tornado season and every 15-20 years it happens.  Unfortunately for my home town, it was in the bull’s eye.   I’m just lucky to have enough people that want to donate their time, every act’s working free of charge, and we’re going to try and raise some  money for these folks.

The Twister Relief Concert will take place on July 6th in the University of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, and I know it’s a venue that you have spent a lot of time in. “I got old memories of that place, I was raised inside of 10 miles of that stadium, I sold Cokes in that stadium when I was 13.  I literally came down with a neighbor when I was 13, and you had to be 16 to do it, I was a big kid and told them I was 16 and they accepted, so I would sell the first half and try to find a seat the second half and try to watch the games.  So I was grew up right here at this stadium, following my team for all those years, and then have the University of Oklahoma reach out with open arms and say ‘take this stadium and help these people,’ and I made a few phone calls, got Garth Brooks, Ronnie Dunn, Trisha Yearwood, Sammy Hagar, Willie Nleson, Mel Tillis, John Anderson, and we just added Carrie Underwood.  Carrie is working the Opry Saturday night, and we’re gonna hook her up via satellite while we’re doing set changes from one band to the next. She wanted to participate, and we’ve got some other guests that are gonna work between the sets that are going to surprise people that will surprise people.

Will those artists work acoustically or with full band?  “We’re full band.  There will be a mixture with acoustics, somebody comes out and you go ‘wow’ and they’ll do a few acoustic songs while we’re changing sets.  But the people we’ve listed as headliners are all bringing bands in and doing full sets.

Talk about the Verizon texting donation plan. “For your listeners, if they want to help these people out, this is a long term relief plan, I called the Governor [Mary Fallin], had a long talk with her, and she assured me that going through United Way of Central Oklahoma Tornado Relief Fund will keep every dollar localized here.  You can text REBUILD to 52000, you can go to the United Way home page, donate by credit card by calling their number 405-236-8441, or you can find me on the street and give me ten bucks!

 

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