There's always time to talk a little
Toby Keith . The world lost the Big Dog Daddy back in February, and shortly after his passing, countless tributes poured in to honor Keith's career and all of the great things he did both in music and outside of it. One of the most heartfelt tributes to Toby - and I know it sounds weird saying this - was when
Jason Aldean took the stage at the 2024 ACM Awards. There was some skepticism from country fans when they learned that Aldean would be taking on the weight of a tribute to Toby Keith, but all of those doubts were silenced when the "She's Country" singer got into his stripped-down acoustic version of "Should've Been A Cowboy." For years, we've all drank and partied to that very song, and somehow Aldean turned it into a heartfelt tune that probably had a lot people in tears. The performance even garnered a supportive message from the Keith family that was posted on Toby's social media shortly after Jason Aldean paid tribute to the Big Dog Daddy: https://twitter.com/tobykeith/status/1791292480240968065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1791292480240968065%7Ctwgr%5E4fcb49de0ed8aff3947cc03102a40b6503acdc28%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whiskeyriff.com%2F2024%2F05%2F17%2Fjason-aldeans-stripped-back-shouldve-been-a-cowboy-tribute-to-toby-keith-was-the-surprise-highlight-of-the-acm-awards%2F Though it's been a couple of months since that moment, Aldean hasn't talked all that much about it, until he joined
The Bobby Bones Show earlier today. It was while the country star was on the phone with the show for an interview that Bones asked a very intriguing question about the mental space that Aldean had to get in for the tribute performance:
"You did the Toby Keith tribute, I was going to ask... I don't know where you need to be mentally to have a good performance there because obviously it was sad. A lot of us knew Toby in different ways, and you had a relationship with Toby. Do you want to actually be feeling it? Or (do you) want to not feel it so you can pull off a performance?" That's a great question. And Jason Aldean gave an equally great answer, explaining that though he felt the loss of Toby Keith as he was called upon to sing "Should've Been A Cowboy," it was more important to present the fully together, stripped-down performance than show emotion:
"Yeah, I think it was a little bit more of (pulling off a great performance). I felt like Toby deserved a great tribute for the career he had. I knew it was going to be a big night for his family and people that were going to be there. To be honest, I just didn't want to mess it up. I wanted to go out and give him a send off that he deserved. Especially with us kind of changing the song up, you just don't know how people are going to take that. You know what I mean? If they're going to like it, not like it, or whatever. So for us, it was trying to do something cool and different and something to honor him and his family. His wife texted me that night after the show which was really the icing on the cake for me. If (she) approved, I'm cool." If he got the stamp of approval from Tricia, that pretty much says it all. In regards to how people received it, Jason didn't really get all that wrapped up in the response. As he explained, he and his band had an idea in mind of how they wanted to honor Toby Keith, and then they went out on stage and did it:
"I felt like we nailed it the way I wanted to do it. Now whether or not people were going to like the version? I don't know. But I felt like what we were trying to do, I accomplished that and felt really good about the version that we did." You can hear more from Jason Aldean in the interview below: https://youtu.be/yNO_0aV5kHU?si=i8fQIxD44aPnXL2H&t=90 And if you wanted to cue up Aldean's touching performance of Toby Keith's all-time-classic song, you can click on the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B4nR-CgMVA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whiskeyriff.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
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