Why This Singer Never Took Daughter on USO Tours
By Movieguide® Contributor
Toby Keith’s daughter Krystal loved to sing with her dad and pleaded with him to take her on his USO tours, but Keith drew the line when it came to her safety.
“I begged to go, but it was such a dangerous thing. He went into, like, dad mode,” Krystal told Fox on Aug. 27. “He was like, ‘No, no, this is really important work I’m going to do, and no, my daughter is not — It’s not something where…I’m going to put you in danger so you can go experience this.’”
Serving America’s soldiers was very important to Keith, who passed away in February. The singer went on 18 USO tours over his career. Even though he experienced danger several times, he never stopped singing for the troops.
“Then as I became an artist, I was like, ‘Hey, I want to go do those things,’ and he still, as much as it meant to him, and he knew how important it was for him, he was still like, ‘Hard pass on my daughter going to Afghanistan right now,’ because he had been shot,” she said. “I mean, his helicopters had been shot at. He had been in the middle of shows when mortar fire came down.”
In 2008, Keith performed at a base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mortar fire came down, and he and the crown ran 100 yards to a concrete bunker. They stayed there for an hour, and in the meantime, the friendly singer signed autographs and posed for photos.
Keith joked they were “’shooting off fireworks. How rude of them in the middle of my show.’”
“I literally have, when we had his service, I found a picture…There was an underground bunker, and he had like signed on concrete, something about like, ‘I’m in the middle of a show and some idiot set off some fireworks during my show,'” Krystal said. Keith had “signed it and had the date because they were taking on mortar fire and had to go underground.”
“I just thought that was super cool and really special to find. But, you know, he loved the USO tours, and I wish that I would have been able to go on some of those,” she said.
Keith was recognized for his service in 2014. The USO gave him a Spirit of the USO Award.
The day after his death the USO released a statement that said, “Toby embodied the essence of the USO mission: to always stand by the side of our service members, no matter where duty may call them. His genuine warmth and generosity endeared him to all who had the privilege of working alongside him.”
Keith said in 2009:
I’ve got a family back home too, that starts to freak a bit when it gets to this time of year to come over here. Once we’re gone, we’re over here, even after seven years, you still have to get your mindset that you’re going to be in a chopper, in a war zone, you’re going to come under fire sometimes. You’re going to be involved in some stuff. But the second that it gets too hot, I look up and here comes a Cobra or an Apache [helicopter] to take us on in. … You know they (the military) are going to make sure you’re taken care of.
Though Krystal wishes she still could have gone on those trips to serve the troops, she’s glad for the time on stage she did have with him.
“I did spend time on tour with him. I opened for him from the time I was 14 on. I did the anthem. Anytime I’d go out on tour with him, I’d be like, ‘Hey, can I sing tonight?’ He’d be like, ‘Sure, you can go do the anthem. You can come out during this song.’”
“So, I’d either sneak out and do background vocals on a song and no one ever knew I was there, it was just for me, or I would go out and do the anthem before he went on,” she said. “Then, when I put my album out, we actually were the opening band for several tours.”
When it came to coaching Krystal, Keith never pushed her one way or another.
“He never said, ‘Don’t do this or don’t do that.’ He was like, ‘You can do whatever you want to do, but here’s my advice on it, and you can take it or leave it. He really let me carve my own path and…he rarely was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea for you.’ He just always let me come to my own ideas and lead things the way I wanted to lead them,” she said.
“When I got stuck, or I had, kind of needed some advice or needed a push, I would go in and be like, ‘Hey, what do you think about this song?’ and he would give me his advice then.”
Krystal recently performed in Keith’s tribute TV special, TOBY KEITH: AMERICAN IDOL. The performance was bittersweet, emotional and a lot of “pressure.” She had not sung since she gave birth to her youngest child.
“I took off time with her and then Covid hit, and then my dad got sick, so I haven’t been back on the road since ‘20; the end of 2018 was when my last single came out,” Krystal said. “I didn’t choose the song; they asked me to do it, and I really struggled with whether or not I would be able to get through it. I was like, if I can get through it without crying, if I can get all the words right, then I will be proud of myself and that’s all I need.”
Movieguide® reported:
After Keith’s recording played, his youngest daughter, Krystal Keith, performed “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” one of Keith’s recent original songs.
“‘Don’t Let the Old Man In’ is the last song that Keith performed on television when he took the stage at the People’s Choice Country Awards on NBC last September,” Taste of Country reported. “He penned the lyrics for Clint Eastwood’s THE MULE film, but before he died, he admitted the fight-off-death message took on new meaning as he battled cancer.”
“When I wrote it, I didn’t know that in the next few years that I was going to have to be looking those words square in the face,” Keith said in his final interview with Taste of Country.
Krystal believes Keith would be proud of her performance.
“I hope that everyone enjoys it. I think it was such an honor to be on that stage with all of those people,” she said.
Krystal’s performance, along with those of many other artists including Jelly Roll, Carrie Underwood, Darius Rucker, Eric Church, Lainey Wilson and Luke Bryan, aired yesterday on NBC.
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