A Man of His Convictions
Retrieved from www.cbsnews.com
Toby Keith loved Clint Eastwood. I can only guess that a line of snarly-tough authenticity connected the men like 10 lb. test. No two bigger Big Dog Daddies ever lived. The legendary country singer once asked the Academy Award-winning actor, who was at the time working on another movie at the age of 88, “What keeps you going?” Eastwood answered, “I don’t sit around. I get up and go outside. I move. I do things.” And then he added, “You can’t let the old man in.”
Toby loved his good friend’s answer so much that he flew home and turned it into a song. His gift had long been finding needles in the haystack that the rest of us tend to miss. When he finished writing “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” he sent it to Eastwood. The iconic actor loved the song so much that he added it to the soundtrack of the movie he was currently finishing up. When “The Mule” was released, Toby’s song accompanied the poignant final scene. It’s what keeps you staring at the screen as the final credits roll.
“Ask yourself how old you would be if you didn’t know the day you were born…”
Toby released the song as a single in 2019, but it didn’t do much. Country radio didn’t really play it, he said. Spacing and timing are always part of the game.
Toby kept singing. Clint kept acting. The world continued turning, then life threw Toby a curve.
Cancer took root in his stomach, ravaging then receding, then ravaging all over again. He fought it for two-and-a-half years like the outlaw Josey Wales.
“Many moons I have lived…my body’s weathered and worn…”
At the 2023 People’s Choice Awards last October, Toby Keith was honored with the Country Icon award. After being introduced by fellow Oklahoman, Blake Shelton, Toby strode out to a stand-up mic waiting in the center of the stage. In unfamiliar skinny jeans, with his guitar strapped across his shoulder and a cleaned-up cowboy hat casting a flirty curtain in front of his eyes, he began to sing.
“Don’t let the old man in…”
The iconic singer-songwriter-performer who was an oilfield roughneck and a semi-professional football player in his life before this life, was half his normal size. His voice, however, was at-the-edge-of-capacity full. In the audience were some country music legends who he’d dreamed of being like and thousands of hungry artists who had dreamed and were still dreaming of someday being like him. As the crowd of “who’s who” stood to listen, the song sucked in the room.
“I’ve known all of my life, that someday it would end…”
The song had morphed, as the good ones usually do, into a very personal anthem. Toby was locked in a squinted-eye stare-down with the old man at the door. This was his walk-up song.
“Try to love on your wife/ And stay close to your friends/Toast each sundown with wine…”
The following day, “Don’t Let the Old Man In” skyrocketed to number one.
Things of substance seem to have a knack for finding their way. Toby said, “…it [the song] found its home.”
So did he.
Rest in peace, my friend. The world is better because you were in it.