In celebration of his new album Drinks After Work, which hits stores Tuesday (Oct. 29), Toby Keith is our Impact artist this week.
Drinks After Work is Keith’s 17th studio album. A diverse release of drinking songs, ballads and life reflection, Keith wrote nine of the album’s 10 tracks, the exception being his first single “Drinks After Work,” which was written by Luke Laird, Barry Dean and Natalie Hemby. It’s a song Keith admits he was hesitant to record.
“It was really different in the studio. I didn’t think I could sing it. It wasn’t the kind of song we usually do,” Keith told Radio.com. “It’s really out of the box for me to do it.”
The deluxe edition of Drinks After Work will feature three bonus tracks, including a version of “Margaritaville” that features Sammy Hagar, and the song “Chuckie’s Gone,” a tribute to Keith’s late bandleader and bass player Chuck Goff, who was killed in a car accident earlier this year.
Keith said he never has a theme or concept to any album he cuts. Instead, he writes all year long and then records the best songs from the pile, a process he likens to raising horses.
“If you want to go to Keeneland and buy the best yearlings and race them at Churchhill Downs [racetrack], you’ve hand picked them,” he said. “I raise mine. Mine are homebreds. If they don’t outrun the other guy who don’t ride and buy his, so be it. But I’ve made it 20 years with my homebreds and that’s the way I run.”
Describing his writing as “what God blessed me to do better than everything else I do,” Keith shared the story behind the twangy “Last Living Cowboy,” a track he described as being “along the stuff that I normally do.”
“['Last Living Cowboy' is] talking about this old man that’s in the modern day and he’s still hanging on to the last century values and fashion, and it’s comical,” he said.
Keith says his song, “The Other Side of Him,” is one fans will get behind. “It’s a songwriters song,” he said.
Meanwhile, album opener “Shut Up And Hold On” just might be his next single. “It sounds like a hit,” he added.
Drinks After Work Track List:
01. Shut Up And Hold On
02. Drinks After Work
03. Before We Knew They Were Good
04. Little Miss Tear Stain
05. The Other Side Of Him
06. Last Living Cowboy
07. Show Me What You’re Workin’ With
08. Whole Lot More Than That
09. I’ll Probably Be Out Fishin’
10. Hard Way To Make An Easy Living
Bonus Tracks
11. Call A Marine
12. Chuckie’s Gone
13. Margaritaville (with Sammy Hagar)
AMPLIFY: Impact Toby Keith is powered by Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital
