I can definitely relate to Toby Keith’s beef with the media and the record industry. While do industry-types feel the need to define everybody and everything. If you do “A,” you must be a “Y.” Some people are very simple, while others are extremely complex. Further, people have a right to do what they please as long as they are not breaking any laws. Everybody is not interested in being a puppet.

Keith was at the Country Music Television offices last week to promote “Honkytonk University,” his new CD out Tuesday, the same day he’s up for the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year award.

At 6-foot-4, the former oil field worker, rodeo hand and semipro football player doesn’t so much enter an office as take it over. He’s candid and talkative and doesn’t seem to mind stepping on toes — anyone’s.

This day, he’s still sore about a February report in Rolling Stone magazine that referred to him as “the king of ultra-patriotic country” and said his 2004 concert tour — which brought in $27.7 million, second only to Shania Twain in country music — earned “mostly red state dollars.”

“The truth is — and we looked it up — we made a lot more money in the blue states,” says Keith, 43, wearing a weathered straw cowboy hat and yellow Western shirt. “We did more shows in the red states, but we made a lot more cash in the blue states.”

Keith feels he’s been unfairly portrayed by the media and his critics as a hardcore right winger. While he’s backed the American troops in his songs and supported President Bush’s re-election, he describes himself as a conservative Democrat who doesn’t always agree with the administration.

Back in Oklahoma where he and his wife of 21 years, Tricia, live with their three children, he’s campaigned for Democratic candidates including Gov. Brad Henry.

“I get brushed with this big, gigantic red, white and blue brush. But I don’t mind,” he says. “I look good in red, white and blue.” … The new album, “Honkytonk University,” has a harder country edge. There’s an old-school duet with his musical hero Merle Haggard, “She Ain’t Hooked on Me No More,” and a mid-tempo tune called “Big Blue Note” about a guy who finally comes to peace with a Dear John letter. The second single, “As Good As I Once Was,” is a rumination on growing older and wiser….source