Toby Keith is ready to return to performing. The 61-year-old revealed in June that he was battling stomach cancer, but now says he is ready to hit the road again, hopefully in 2023.
“I’m thinking about getting back to fighting shape,” Keith tells CMT. “I need a little bit of time to just rest up and heal up. It’s pretty debilitating to have to go through all that, but as long as everything stays honky-dory then we’ll look at something good in the future.”
Keith quietly dealt with his cancer diagnosis for several months, before finally deciding to share it with the world.
“Last fall I was diagnosed with stomach cancer,” Keith said when the news was announced. “I’ve spent the last six months receiving chemo, radiation and surgery. So far, so good. I need time to breathe, recover and relax. I am looking forward to spending this time with my family. But I will see the fans sooner than later. I can’t wait.”
Earlier this month, Keith was given the BMI Icon Award, in recognition of his numerous contributions in songwriting. The Oklahoma native was honored with musical performances by Carrie Underwood and Eric Church, along with his frequent collaborators, Dean Dillon and Scotty Emerick.
“When you get older and you look back at your cassette tapes or your CD, it’s like everybody that rocked country, R&B, whatever it was, the artists that I had were songwriters,” Keith said as part of his acceptance speech. “They weren’t artists that covered music. They were songwriter/artists. Something in my gut, down in my core, said that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t know if I’d make it as an artist, but I knew if I wrote as good as the next guy, that somebody might sing one of my songs.”
Keith returned to the stage for a surprise live performance at Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in Lexington, Kentucky on November 4.
“It was good!” Keith said of his performance (via Country Now). “I was over there for Breeders’ Cup. I’m an ambassador… one of the ambassadors of the Breeders’ Cup and we had all gone to dinner and they kept asking me. Jeff Ruby’s got a lot of Steakhouses and I’ve known him a long time.”
It took some persuading before the country music superstar agreed to take the stage, unaware of how much that one performance would go viral.
“Finally, late in the night, [Jeff] came over and he’s like ‘look, everybody in there is wanting you to get up. You and me have done ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay’ at three of my bars, this is my fourth one. Let’s make the grand slam.’ I said ‘I don’t know’ and finally everybody was like ‘Go do it.’ … I did it, and it was on Good Morning America, it was all over the internet, it was on Billboard. It’s just one of those things, but it was really nice to see if [I] had any power in vocals left and we did alright.”
Updates to Keith’s touring schedule will be posted here as available.
Read ‘Toby Keith: 11 Things to Know About the Patriotic Singer’ here.