Toby Keith Welcomes Fans to His Hometown in TBS ‘Neighborhood Sessions’

Country superstar Toby Keith is known for both his humor and grit, qualities that don’t come across as a surprise given his background growing up in the resilient town of Moore, Oklahoma, located in the nation’s notorious Tornado Alley.

In a new epIsiode of Neighborhood Sessions, an ongoing series of music specials created by State Farm, Keith introduces fans to a community of people that understand the meaning of teamwork – pitching in numerous times to help each other when Mother Nature destroys homes and farms.

Keith also offers up an intimate performance for his remarkable neighbors, some of which share their powerful stories of perseverance and community living in Oklahoma. Yahoo Music sat down with Keith to discuss the special, airing Friday October 16 on TBS at 10 p.m. ET/PT, as well as a few other key items on his agenda this fall – not the least being this month’s release of new album 35 MPH Town.

YAHOO MUSIC: It’s been 20 years since you’ve played your hometown. Why the big delay?

TOBY KEITH: There’s nowhere to play here! The last time I played here 20 years ago, it was at people’s ranches, private parties and stuff like that.

I think when fans watch your Neighborhood Sessions, the singular thing that will strike those not from Okahoma is – why choose to live in a place where your home can be destroyed any day?

People are like, “why don’t you move?” And I’m like “Where you gonna go, Florida, get in a hurricane? L.A., get in an earthquake?” This is home. And when there’s generations of people living here – the worst man-made disaster in the history of the United States was the Dust Bowl in the ‘30s, and it was here. A lot of people packed up and desperately moved to California, out west to find work. The people who stayed behind – there’s generations, seeds of those Dust Bowl people who are still here. Just losing your house and rebuilding it back is nothing to what they went through in the Dust Bowl. Starvation, no work, laying your head down every night wondering how you’re going to feed your family: That’s way worse than just getting your house hit. So people here are resilient and they’re tough, and they say “Hey, this is home.”

With the divided state of the nation these days, it almost comes across as a fairytale how well everyone in your hometown works together in times of natural disaster. Do people really come and rebuild their neighbor’s houses – multiple times – every time a tornado hits?

It kind of just goes hand in hand – you get hit, everybody comes and helps you pick your stuff up, protect it, get it boarded back up. In 48 hours we’ll have telephone calls back up, electricity – we’re geared up for it. It’s not like Katrina where it took months to figure it out. This place bounces back pretty quick.

What would you like most for viewers who are watching your Neighborhood Sessions to take away regarding your home state?

It’s one of the last states of the union, and right off the bat 30 years into its existence they had the biggest 10-year man-made disaster ever – so bad that the government wanted to shut the state down and turn it back into native land and just say, let the prairie grass grow and let it be a big void here. The people here were persistent enough to stick it out. Crime’s not very big here, people understand right from wrong here. There’s only 3 million people in the whole state, and 200 miles from here is Dallas which has 4 million in itself. So it’s sparse, it’s rural, and most of these people are 4th, 5th, 6th generation Okies and proud to be from here.

There’s also a tremendously powerful musical legacy from Oklahoma.

Again, like I said, Dallas has a million more people than our entire state – and when you look at the players that played in Bob Wills’ band, Hank Thompson, Roger Miller, Reba, Garth Brooks … you just go down the list and you go “wow.” If you go state to state [counting country artists], it’d be a big ol’ number just in this little 3 million population. It’s pretty neat. The people who have come out of here have been very successful. Roger Miller won six Grammys competing against the Beatles, when the Beatles were the biggest name on earth. That made me proud.

Speaking of being proud, you recently entered the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, an award that seems to be very important to you.

It’s not really an award, it’s an honor. But it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, as far as being awarded something goes. There’s so many award shows – some of them are jiust agenda driven, political, voted on by the executives. When your peers rope you in…and this one is all genre, so you might be on the list with anybody. When I looked at the list, I was like of all the country people in this Hall of Fame, there’s only a handful. And I’m looking at the names, and it’s like, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson…I was humble and awed at the same time . I’m sitting there going “did this really happen?”

You just released 35 MPH Town, your 18th album, earlier this month. What’s your secret for your longevity in the field?

I never let my foot off the gas. I write, write, write, write, write. Put out an album a year if I can.

Given the volume of songwriting you’ve done over your career, do you ever feel creatively burned out?

I never have, and the cool thing about it is, writing, my antenna and radar is out every breathing moment that I’m awake. At some point during the day, one, five, six times during the day, something will hit me as a song idea.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Keith, in which he discusses his new music, business enterprises, working with his singer/songwriter daughter, and more.