Toby Keith was evidently still writing new music up until he passed away this past February.
While Jamey Johnson was recently talking with Billboard, the country music singer/songwriter revealed that he and the Big Dog Daddy were still collaborating, trading ideas, and sharing phone calls filled with laughter about new music.
The focus of the interview was Johnson and the new things he has on the horizon. The “In Color” singer has a new album titled Midnight Gasoline that’s set to release on November 8th. It’s his first solo record in over a decade, 14 years to be exact, and one that he meticulously worked on that the famous Cash Cabin – Johnny and June Carter Cash’s former studio.
What motivated Johnson to get back into the studio after 14 years? Well, the 49-year-old artist knocked out 30 songs in under a month at the Cash Cabin because Toby Keith’s passing was somewhat of a wake up call. As Johnson described in the interview, the man behind such hits as “I Love This Bar” and “As Good As I Once Was” had effortless songwriting talent, and an incomparable musical memory:
“Toby Keith had one of the most amazing memories of anybody. I mean, perfect recall on lyrics he hasn’t seen or heard in 34 years. Remembers every chord, remembers every word. He could remember names, faces, conversations, ideas, just an infinite stream of memory.
And as a songwriter, he was very picky about phrases he would use. If it didn’t sound like his vernacular, it had to change until it fit right because he wasn’t going to put something in there that didn’t sound the way he would talk…”
It’s that attention to detail that led Toby Keith to have 20 number one hits throughout his career.
And from how Jamey Johnson was talking, there’s a possibility that Keith could posthumously add another number one hit to that list. He and Johnson were still actively working together on new songs up until his death. Jamey just assumed they had more time than they actually did:
“We were working on a song toward the end. I called him up one night and shared a few lines with him, and he added a few lines and we turned around and wrote this whole verse. We laughed a bunch, and it was one of those that I thought, ‘This is great. There’s gonna come a time I’ll get out to Oklahoma or maybe he and I will meet up somewhere at a golf tournament, but we’ll have some time sit down and finish this thing up.'”
Unfortunately, Keith and Johnson never got that chance to link up. On February 5th of 2024, Toby passed away surrounded by his family. He battled hard up until the very end, but ultimately succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 62-year-old.
The news shocked everyone in the country music world, including Johnson. He explained in the interview that Keith always made his battle out to be “something not to worry about,” and that when he passed on, Keith left behind some unfinished songs.
Though the songs that Johnson and Keith were working on are temporarily on hold, Keith’s death inspired Jamey to get back into the studio. It was the sudden and heartbreaking reminder of mortality that drove the “Lead Me Home” singer to crank out another album:
“The writing was already coming back to me, piece by piece, but I still didn’t have any ambitions on making a record. When Toby passed away, it moved everything into high gear because I realized that that was the end of his discography, that we weren’t getting another Toby Keith record. And that’s what drove me to wanting to finish my own discography.
It’s what made me understand that I’m nowhere near done, and so it’s time to get busy. After he passed away, I immediately started talking about this session and started trying to get all the particulars in order. It was time for me to get in the studio again.”
