The follow-up to that disc, Pull My Chain (released Aug. 28, 2001, on DreamWorks Records) furthers Keith's assault on the same-old same-old. From the barroom intimacies of first radio track “I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight” to the swagger of “I Wanna Talk About Me,” from the rockin' title track to the infectious “Sha La La Song,” Keith rubs against the grain of the safe and ordinary: “I'm a big boy, and I can shoulder any criticism I might get for doing things differently. I talk Southern; I sing stone-cold country – my roots are there. But nobody's gonna keep me from making people wonder, 'What's he gonna do next?'”

“I see compromise all the time,” he continues, “and in the end, you lose with that. Most successful people are not afraid, and they don't compromise to please whoever. People in Nashville could take a lesson from that. I played bars for seven years before seven more years of successful albums. But I wasn't accepted as a big gun, wasn't a headliner. Why? I don't know. But my gut told me what I was doing worked, so I didn't change anything.”

Sticking to his guns resulted in How Do You Like Me Now?! being named ACM Album Of The Year. It boasted the #1 Country singles “How Do You Like Me Now?!” and “You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This,” plus the #4 “Country Comes To Town” (Keith's 16th Top 10). Reflecting on this milestone in his career, he says: “I worked hard to get here, but the real work has just started. I have a lot to live up to. I know what I'm supposed to be doing – what no one else is doing.” What no one else had been doing was recordings songs like the royal kiss-off “How Do You Like Me Now?!” In fact, half the songs on How Do You Like Me Now?!, Keith's first album for DreamWorks Records, had been rejected by his previous label. “You should have seen the disgusted looks I got when I submitted that song,” he recalls. “Apparently, girls were the only ones allowed to say that, demeaning the fellas who'd done them wrong. People at the company kept saying, 'What about the female audience? Having the girl in the song cry and you feeling good about it – well, you can't do that.' I told them, 'That happens in real life. Somebody has to do it.'”

James Stroud, a highly respected producer of #1 songs and head of DreamWorks' Nashville division, encouraged Keith to hold his ground (Stroud has co-produced his last three albums, also joining Keith behind the boards for Pull My Chain). Admits Keith: “We wondered, could we be that wrong about the song? I mean, people do get tired of squeaky-clean, sappy, up-tempo ballads, don't they? You can't run a restaurant and serve two items; you have to have variety or people will go somewhere else to eat.”

Not only did “How Do You Like Me Now?!” provide music consumers with a tasty alternative, it went to #1 in the spring of 2000 and stayed there for five weeks. Turns out women all over the country were turning it up. “They loved it,” Keith confirms. “They just flipped the whole thing around and said, 'Hey boy, how do you like me now?' And there was but one ballad on that album; the rest's all rough and rowdy.”

Far from being shunned for swimming against the tide, Keith was subsequently called on to play himself in the CBS TV movie reunion of the “The Dukes Of Hazzard” and star in a series of commercials for the 10-10-220 long-distance telephone service.

The woman in charge of that ubiquitous campaign happened to be a big fan, owning all of Keith's albums. She introduced herself to Keith after one of his shows and opined that he might be right for a new batch of ads. Keith suggested she also contact his buddy Terry Bradshaw, and the commercials were launched. They proved extremely popular and continue this year with another Keith pal, baseball superstar Mike Piazza. Just don't expect Keith to play anyone other than himself anytime soon. “I'm always going to be a country boy,” he says, “and I'm not ever going to fool anybody into thinking I'm someone else.”

Born in Oklahoma City, Keith became interested in country music as a child, idolizing the musicians who played at his grandmother's supper club and wishing he could be like them someday. He began playing guitar at eight, but that's not where his future appeared to be. A sports career seemed more likely as Keith had played football since the age of five. Other pursuits beckoned as well: In high school, he worked as a rodeo hand for the rodeo company adjacent to his parents' farm and was always excited to undertake the requisite road work.

But after graduation, Keith took a job in the oil fields. Initially running steel casing pipe into wells, it looked like he might follow in his father's footsteps and end up an oil-company executive without even having gone to college. He never lost his love for music, though, and formed a band called Easy Money that played local honky-tonks on weekends.

“I'm a fan of songs,” he explains. “If you saw my box of cassettes when I was a kid, it was filled with singer-songwriters, and I drew from a lot of different stuff.” You might not hear it when he performs –”I could sing an Ozzy Osbourne song and it would still come out country,” he quips – but Keith's favorite artists range from Alabama and Merle Haggard to folk-oriented performers like Steve Goodman and John Prine, as well as pop singers like Jimmy Buffett, Lionel Richie and Elton John. (Keith was recently asked by John's famed collaborator, lyricist Bernie Taupin, to co-write and perform the theme for an upcoming TV special about professional bull-riding for which Taupin is overseeing music.)

But music remained on the sidelines as Keith spent three years in the oil fields. Then the industry hit a slump, plunging from 1,400 wells working the area to just 80. About the same time, the United States Football League (USFL) was forming, and the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers became a farm team for the league's Tulsa Outlaws. “I missed playing football so bad,” Keith says. “I wished I'd kicked my butt in high school and gone on to play in college. So I tried out, and I actually made the cut.” At 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds, he played defensive end for two years, still managing to play with his band, where size was also an asset: When a fight broke out in the bar, he'd put down his guitar and jump offstage to restore order.

His physical displays on the football field would be short-lived, however. With the USFL on the skids, Keith found himself taking stock of his life. He was blessed with a wife (Tricia) and daughter (Shelley), and there was another little girl on the way (Krystal), but now two careers had come and gone. Keith recalls of his moment at the crossroads: “I said to myself, 'Know what? I should draw from my strengths, and that's singing and writing. Either I should give it up, get a construction job, or go for it' – even though everyone said you can't make money doing that and success is like finding a needle in a haystack. They were right, but I never let that stand in my way. I attacked it all head-on. It doesn't matter how much talent a horse shows in training; if it doesn't have heart and desire, it will not win.”

Keith had the heart and desire. For seven years he and Easy Money worked the road for 51 weeks each and every year. “I wasn't going to give up. I was too hardheaded,” he says matter-of-factly. “But you can be writing great songs and the industry doesn't necessarily find you. If fate doesn't lend a hand, you can be that bar jock the rest of your life and nobody will give a damn. What kept me going was people coming up and saying I was a really good writer. It made me feel I could be onto something.” He also had a demo tape, and he knew that if someone would just listen to it, he'd be on his way.

In 1992 a record-company executive finally did – and told Keith to go back home and climb back on his tractor because the songs were not “Nashville quality.” But that very tape later helped him get signed to Mercury Records, via former Alabama producer Harold Shedd, and every song on it eventually made it to an album (some of them to #1). Keith's self-titled 1993 debut disc scored three #1's and a Top 5 hit: “Should've Been A Cowboy” (#1), “He Ain't Worth Missing” (#5 ) and “Wish I Didn't Know Now” (#1), with “A Little Less Talk And A Lot More Action” reaching #1 as the album cracked the Country Top 20. Toby Keith remained on the charts for a year, earning platinum certification in the process.

Album two, Boomtown (1994), went Top 10 and gold, yielding two #1's, “Who's That Man” and “You Ain't Much Fun,” as well as two Top 10 entries, “Upstairs Downtown” and “Big Ol' Truck.” After a 1995 Christmas album, Keith hit again with Blue Moon (1996), a Top 10, platinum conquest. It featured another song from that first demo, “Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine On You” (#1), along with “A Woman's Touch” (#6) and “Me Too” (#1).

Stroud became Keith's producer with the gold, Top 10 Dream Walkin' (1997), which spun off “We Were In Love” (#1), “I'm So Happy That I Can't Stop Crying” (#2, Keith's Grammy-nominated duet with Sting) and “Dream Walkin'” (#1). Even his Greatest Hits, Volume One (1998), also Top 10 and platinum, unleashed a new hit, the Top 20 “Getcha Some.”

Despite this success – a total of 13 Top 10 singles and five gold or platinum albums in six years – Keith was underrated and overlooked when it came to naming Country's superstars. “You can make it in this business on sheer talent and determination,” he offers, “but nobody goes over the top without a record label 100 percent behind them, saying, 'You're our guy.'”

Keith got that commitment in early 1999 when he signed with DreamWorks. “Because of what went on before, getting signed by James and all the good things that have happened since then mean that much more to me,” the songsmith allows. “In addition to the other honors bestowed on How Do You Like Me Now?!, the ACM nominated Keith for more awards (nine in six categories) than any other artist: Entertainer Of The Year; Top Male Vocalist; Album Of The Year (as artist and co-producer); Single Of The Year (as artist and co-producer) and Song Of The Year (as artist and writer) for “How Do You Like Me Now?!”; and Video Of The Year for “You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This.”

Now Keith has realized another lifelong ambition with Dream Walkin' Farms, a thoroughbred breeding and training facility near Oklahoma City. But its arrival is only the latest in Keith's ongoing outreach to the people in his community. Though he didn't trumpet it, he bought and personally loaded and delivered rescue equipment in his pick-up immediately following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In 1999 he performed a benefit concert after devastating tornadoes hit town.

His deep roots in Oklahoma City are not the only reason he stays there, however. “If I lived in Nashville, too many people would bring me songs and it would be too easy to get complacent and lazy,” he says. “It's like horses – you have to run them or they'll never separate themselves from the pack.”

Keith has surely, finally, done that himself. Not surprisingly, he uses a horse-racing analogy to muse about what may happen next in country music: “You can go to the Kentucky Derby every year and lose and no one pays you any attention. But if, all of a sudden, you get it right and your mares start winning, the other guys come over to see what you're doing right.” A big smile crosses his face and he laughs, “Nashville's probably already looking for a Toby Keith clone.”

Indeed, it seems a lot of folks like Toby Keith just fine now.

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