Toby Keith - "Big Dog Daddy"

[StevePulaski]

Big Dog Daddy (2007)
By: Toby Keith

Rating: ★★★

Toby Keith's Big Dog Daddy strips away all the risks, the variety, and the weaving in and out between country subgenres back into a reassured, hardcore country singer. Big Dog Daddy is probably the simplest, most straight-forward Toby Keith album I have yet to hear, but that in no way makes it a poor listen. In fact, by being so structurally and tonally basic, it allows for Keith's true talents as a song-writer to come through, with a blend between rollicking country jams and a few more cynical heartbreak songs, unlike anything he has ever done before.

Kicking off the album is its strongest track, "High Maintenance Woman," about a maintenance worker at a hotel who's eye is caught by the gorgeous guest, who says little but boasts a lot, and dually noting she is high-maintenance by her mannerisms and the way she dresses. "A high maintenance woman don't want no maintenance man," Keith sings to conclude the song's chorus, iterating a sad but truthful trait about most women of money and vice-versa. The souls that could manage to take care of us, despite coming from a lower-end socioeconomic/job status, are the ones we're more likely to overlook and shortchange. Similarly, Keith's "Wouldn't Want to Be Ya" concerns a man who travels all across the land, but anxiously awaits to see a flame he shares shots of tequila with in one particular hot spot of his. Despite their connection, the song's title rings in and she reminds him that even though she likes him, she certainly would never want to be him, etching a tiny bit of sadness into an uptempo ditty.

Keith gets surprisingly cynical with songs like "Walk it Off," in which he's talking to the audience like they've recently been through a rough heartbreak and telling them there's nothing they can do about it now, so they might as well just walk alone and walk it off, in an unexpectedly direct manner. "White Rose," another slowburn tune in addition to "Walk it Off," concerns the nostalgia of an old service station that has been closed for years, despite the fact that it's oscillating sign still operates, attracting people to an empty, abandoned station. Keith really shows off his songwriting abilities, concocting an environment that, more likely than not, has been witnessed by the audience of this CD. This kind of relatability and connection to his fanbase is what keeps Keith's longevity going in the music business, in addition to this brooding voice and boisterous style of country music.

The titular track, in this case, while corny, and able to produce a few cringes, still has its moments of being charming, if slight, and the album doesn't start to sound winded until the end, with songs like "Burnin' Moonlight" and "Hit It" (especially) feeling like thrown-together tunes to suffice an already short album. Even with the inclusion of these two tracks, Big Dog Daddy is not deterred too heavily, as the songwriting/singing abilities of Keith still come through with most of the tracks, especially in the sense of giving us a taste of why he has made it so far in such a big, crowded genre.

Recommended tracks (in order): "High Maintenance Man," "Wouldn't Want to Be Ya," "Walk it Off," and "White Rose."