Published: August 29, 2024
Why this singer never took her daughter on USO tours
By Movieguide® Contributor
Toby Keith’s daughter Krystal loved singing with her father and begged him to let her join him on his USO tours, but when it came to her safety, Keith drew the line.
“I begged to go, but it was so dangerous. He was acting like a dad,” Krystal Fox said on August 27. “He was like, ‘No, no, this is really important work that I’m going to do, and no, my daughter isn’t here – it’s not like I’m putting you in danger so you can experience this.'”
Serving American soldiers was very important to Keith, who passed away in February. The singer took part in 18 USO tours during his career. Although he was in danger several times, he never stopped singing for the troops.
“Then when I became an artist, I was like, ‘Hey, I want to do these things,’ and he still said, as much as it meant to him and he knew how important it was to him, ‘I can’t imagine my daughter going to Afghanistan now,’ because he had been shot,” she said. “I mean, his helicopters had been shot at. He had been in the middle of a show when mortar fire hit.”
In 2008, Keith performed at a base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. There, mortar shells were fired at him and he and the Crown ran 100 yards to a concrete bunker. They stayed there for an hour, and in the meantime, the affable singer signed autographs and posed for photos.
Keith joked that they were “setting off fireworks. How rude of them in the middle of my show.”
“I actually did it when we had his service, I found a picture… There was an underground bunker, and he had signed on concrete, something like, ‘I’m in the middle of a show and some idiot set off some fireworks during my show,'” Krystal said. Keith had “signed and put the date because they came under mortar fire and had to go underground.”
“I just thought it was super cool and really special to find that. But you know, he loved the USO tours and I wish I could have been on some of them,” she said.
Keith was honored for his service in 2014. The USO presented him with a Spirit of the USO Award.
The day after his death, the USO released a statement saying, “Toby embodied the essence of the USO mission: to always stand alongside our soldiers, no matter where duty calls them. His genuine warmth and generosity endeared him to all who had the privilege of working with him.”
Keith said in 2009:
I also have family back home that freaks out a little bit when it’s that time of year to come here. When we’re gone, we’re here, even after seven years, you still have to be prepared that you’re going to be in a helicopter in a war zone, you’re going to come under fire sometimes. You’re going to be involved in some stuff. But as soon as it gets too hot, I look up and there’s a Cobra or Apache (helicopter) coming to pick us up. … You know they (the military) are going to make sure you’re taken care of.
Although Krystal wishes she could have still made those trips to serve the troops, she is happy for the time she was able to spend with him on stage.
“I was on tour with him. I opened for him since I was 14. I sang the national anthem. Whenever I was on tour with him, I would ask, ‘Hey, can I sing tonight?’ He said, ‘Sure, you can sing the national anthem. You can come out during the song.'”
“So I would either sneak out and do background vocals on a song and nobody knew I was there, it was just for me, or I would go out and sing the anthem before he went on,” she said. “Then when I released my album, we were actually the opening act for several tours.”
When it came to training Krystal, Keith never pushed her one way or the other.
“He never said, ‘Don’t do this or don’t do that.’ He said, ‘You can do whatever you want, but here’s my advice on this, and you can take it or reject it.’ He really let me go my own way and… he rarely said, ‘Hey, I have an idea for you.’ He just always let me come up with my own ideas and run things the way I wanted to run them,” she said.
“Whenever I was stuck or needed advice or a push, I would go and ask, ‘Hey, what do you think of this song?’ and he would give me his advice.”
Krystal recently performed on Keith’s tribute TV special TOBY KEITH: AMERICAN IDOL. The performance was bittersweet, emotional and came with a lot of “pressure.” She hadn’t sung since the birth of her youngest child.
“I took some time off with her, and then Covid came, and then my dad got sick, so I haven’t toured since 2020; my last single came out at the end of 2018,” Krystal said. “I didn’t choose the song; they asked me to do it, and I was really struggling with whether or not I was going to get through it. I figured if I can get through it without crying, if I get all the words right, then I’ll be proud of myself and that’s all I need.”
Movieguide® reported:
After Keith’s recording was played, his youngest daughter, Krystal Keith, sang “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” one of Keith’s newer original songs.
“‘Don’t Let the Old Man In’ is the last song Keith sang on television when he took the stage at NBC’s People’s Choice Country Awards last September,” reported Taste of Country. “He wrote the lyrics for Clint Eastwood’s film THE MULE, but before he died, he admitted that the message of fighting death took on new meaning as he battled cancer.”
“When I wrote it, I didn’t know that I would have to face these words for years to come,” Keith said in his final interview with Taste of Country.
Krystal thinks Keith would be proud of her achievement.
“I hope everyone enjoys it. I think it was a great honor to be on stage with all these people,” she said.
Krystal’s performance aired yesterday on NBC along with those of many other artists, including Jelly Roll, Carrie Underwood, Darius Rucker, Eric Church, Lainey Wilson and Luke Bryan.
