Meet Toby’s Daughter Krystal Keith
This week’s co-host Toby Keith is proud of his own music, but even prouder of the debut album by his daughter Krystal. He spoke about her with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “She’s doing a fantastic job in presenting herself, and how poised she is, and she’s watched me since she was born, so she knows exactly how to handle everything. She’s gonna be great.”
With that in mind, we sat down with Krystal in the penthouse of her father’s office building in Nashville and talked about her life growing up in music.
Does it seem like a long time getting to this? It feels like it’s been a really long time getting to this. It took 3 years to actually get the album done. Then we got it done, I wrote the single, and we had to move some stuff out of the way to get the single on the album. So it took a long time. That’s why we released the EP. Because it’d taken so long and fans were getting anxious and rowdy. So we put out some music they could have in the meantime. And here we are about to release the album.
You made your debut with your dad almost 9 years ago. Talk about that: We did Mockingbird, it was November 9th 2004, it was definitely an incredible experience. He thought I’d be nervous, but I wasn’t. I just don’t get nervous. That’s when you know you were born to do something. So he was standing next to me, we were about to go on, and told me ‘If you need me or you mess up, just look over and I’ll be there.’ And I said, ‘Right now, you need to be on your x, so get out there.’ I think Vince Gill did the introduction. Afterward he thought I’d be amazed, and I literally pulled my monitors out of my ears, and said, ‘It’s not as big as I thought it would be.’ I was just 19, and on TV I grew up watching awards shows, and I expected a bigger venue and audience. But the coolest thing was Tim McGraw & Faith Hill were in the front row. The curtains opened and I was singing to Tim & Faith, so I knew I had to step it up a notch, cause that’s my audience. It was one of the best experiences of my life and a great story for me and my dad cause he was shocked.
Let’s talk about your early days. How old were you when his first hits came out? I was 7 when Cowboy came out, so life changed a bit. We bought a new house, our first big house, but life stayed the same. They wanted us to have a normal childhood. His fame didn’t register with me until my friends and those around me got old enough to understand what it meant. Then you could feel the change. That’s when it hit me that he did something out of the ordinary.
So your first time on stage, how old were you? He was doing shows from before I was born. The first time I expressed an interest in performing I was 3, it was the 4th of July show, and I have a picture on my phone, I threw a holy fit because I wanted to be up there with daddy! My mom kept saying ‘He’s working, you have to wait’ and I didn’t get it. We sang together at home, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t do it now. So they put me up on one of his breaks, and I was going to sing You Are My Sunshine, because it was the only song I knew, and I froze, I saw the people and I had a little stage fright. I don’t have it now, but that was my first experience.
Did you have bands in school? I performed with bands but usually it was a house band. The majority of what I did was the Oklahoma Opry. Every Saturday they had a show, the band would know the songs, and the acts would do one song each. I’d do once a month there. I was 15 when I started and that was like a show where people came to be entertained. It taught me how to perform to an audience. My whole family would load up in an SUV and I’d enter a competition. They never pushed me, but every show I did, every contest I entered, someone sought me out. They were always OK with it as long as it didn’t interfere with school.
Talk about college. You probably could have gone anywhere for college, but you chose University of Oklahoma, why? I could go anywhere in the world as long as it was in Norman Oklahoma and had Division 1 football. So that cut out the Baptist College, and everything but OU. I applied to five schools, and wanted an audio engineering degree and OU didn’t offer that. University of California has an amazing music program, but there was a reason why I would not like each college, my dad had a reason. So I ended up in Communication with Business. Now I’m glad I did, got to watch my niece and nephew and little brother grow up, didn’t miss anything, so he knew what he was doing.
At some point, your dad brought you out on tour, and met Mica Roberts, his background vocalist, and the two of you wrote “Daddy Dance With Me?” I did. I was out with him in 2005 because Mockingbird was out, I wanted to do music and didn’t want to go to college. So we went out on the weekends. Me & Mica got close, she knows my dad really well, so when I was getting married I wanted to write a song for my dad, and hit a writer’s block. So I called Mica because she knew the relationship, and she knows things I don’t know. For example Mica told me his nickname for me is Baby Girl. So we put that in the song. We now have 1.5 million YouTube views. We expected it to be big in the wedding world, but it’s bigger than that.
What was his reaction? I think he was in shock. He didn’t react like a sentimental dad. He talked all the way through it. He wanted to know how we did it. For somebody to use all of his people and tools and him not knowing was unfathomable. I pulled it off without him knowing. He said he almost shed a tear, but he was a professional. After he got to the hotel, the emotions rushed forth, and in his words, it crushed him. So it hit right where I wanted it to.
How did it feel to fool him? Oh I tried my whole life to pull things over on him, and I always get busted. So it was pretty gratifying. My mom knew I was doing it, and so did my husband. Actually I recorded two songs, one for my husband, and one for my dad. That was my cover story for each. So I had it thought out well.
We talked to your dad about your new single, “Get Your Redneck On,” and here’s what he said: “The cool thing was I busted my butt and produced an album on her, she’s out working with some of the greatest songwriters in town, and at the very end, she comes in, we’ve got the album in the can, and she hooks up with this young guy and wrote a song, he wrote it, cut it,and produced it in one day. I listened to it, and we put it on the album. They did in a night what took me a year!”
So what’s your response? Well it’s true. It was such a kismet thing. I went into a meeting with Nathan Chapman, and an album isn’t done until it’s out. We thought we were done, and we were ready, and I went in with Nathan and he asked if this was for the next album, and I told him if we write a smash, I’m going to take advantage of it. So we did, and my dad’s reaction, I texted him immediately, and he goes, ‘Stealin’ my hooks.’ And I said ‘You do not have a song called that.’ Then I had to think, does he? Then I called him later, and he said, ‘It’s just a good hook.’ It’s a hook he would have used if he thought of it first. He loved it, and it was perfect. There are people who’d say, she’s only here because of her dad, and this album is a good blend of songs I wrote and songs he wrote and songs from other writers. Mark Wright (President of the record label) said, ‘Hate to tell your dad we’re going to use a song he didn’t have anything to do with,’ and I said, ‘He’ll be fine with it.’ As a dad he’s going to be ecstatic, as a songwriter he’ll be ‘dadgum it you took a cut away from me.’ But as a dad he couldn’t be more proud that my first single is something I accomplished by myself.
His problem was that it took him longer to produce his own songs: He loves having live studio musicians, and he thought Nathan just played it on the computer, but Nathan played every instrument on that song by himself. It’s mind-boggling how talented he is. So it would have taken days for him to do, I got lucky to have the perfect partner in Nathan. We told stories about what we wanted to write, and he played grooves for me. It was 20 minutes of playing around before he had the perfect groove. Then we wrote it.
Talk about writing he title song: Whiskey & Lace: I went in with the song title, had it for 8 months. My co-writer suggested writing it from the point of view of a stripper. We told a few strip club stories, and every story was hilarious. We settled on the name Casey as a Midwest stripper name, and her kid was named Cheyenne. She drives a hot car, cranking Marshall Tucker, she doesn’t want to be a stripper, but it pays the bills, and it’s a great story line, and the perfect album title. I always knew I wanted it to be the album title, because it fits my personality. I’m really girly, but I have an edgy side, I drink whiskey but I’m a country bumpkin. I’m just a normal country chick. So the title couldn’t have been closer to me.
What will December 10th mean? It will go down in the calendar as one of the biggest days in my life. I’ve waited my entire life to have my first album come out, to be able to hold an actual CD in my hands, I’ve had my ‘thank yous’ written for years. The ‘thank yous’ in the liner notes. So I may bake a cake every year on December 10th in celebration of my first album’s birthday.
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