Toby Keith tries to avoid left-right political debates

By SCOTT MERVIS

The country singer has found some time to do another movie.

For the Dixie Chicks and other haters, there’s been a whole lot of Toby Keith not to like. The big, strappin’ Oklahoman has cranked out six albums over the past six years — five of which debuted at No. 1 or 2 on the Billboard Top 200 — and another one is due in September.

Not only that, this week fans can see him on the big screen in “Beer for My Horses,” a film he co-wrote. That’s all in addition to being one of country music’s most consistent summer road warriors.

Where’s he find the time?

“We’ve cut it down,” he says of the touring. “We only do 60 cities. That leaves me 300 days a year to do something else” — just to put a grin on the face of all the folks who like him and irritate all the folks who don’t.

Of the forthcoming album, Keith is pretty low-key — “That’s second nature to me. Whatever I wrote last year is what I recorded this year” — but he’s particularly excited about one ballad that he says, “is different than anything I’ve ever done, that kind of has a pop quality to it.”

The movie seems to be more his baby at the moment. In 2005, he played against type as a country star down on his luck in “Broken Bridges.” In “Beer for My Horses,” named for one of his songs with Willie Nelson, he plays a small-town deputy sheriff trying to break up a crystal-meth ring and win the heart of an old flame. It’s a mix of action, romance and wacky comedy, the last part courtesy of comedian Rodney Carrington and a dog with gas.

“The whole thing’s about the toast,” Keith says. “When I was a kid growing up in the Southwest I worked for a rodeo company. There was an old man who had an Old West original toast: ‘Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.’ If you bring the spirit of that forward and say the police force or the sheriff would ride out and get the bad guy, bring him to justice and salute the ones who helped you, that’s what the title is about. So, we wanted to do the comedy to tip our hats to the old Burt Reynolds movies, and we wanted our characters to be strong and have the toast be a thread that runs through the movie.”

Nelson has a small cameo. The wildly outspoken Ted Nugent, whom Keith met while performing for the troops in Iraq, has a bigger part as, of all things, a mute deputy with an array of weaponry. When you’re in the presence of Nugent, you know he’s around.

“Oh, yeah. Ted’s a whacko, man,” Keith says. “I was really concerned about Hollywood meets Ted Nugent, with their extreme difference in philosophies. Everyone came away finding him charming. Ted’s a good friend of mine, and Ted’s not a hater. Yeah, he’s got a strong agenda and he carries a gun, but he’s never pulled it on anyone. He can be dangerous if you try to tread on him. But he doesn’t bring the hate to the table. He’s so fun, he kept everybody in stitches.”

The piece of video we’re not going to see from Keith is the much-anticipated global-warming commercial with the Dixie Chicks, part of Al Gore’s campaign to pair celebrities who don’t see eye-to-eye on other issues.

Keith says he’s a “right-wrong guy,” not a “right-left guy,” and doesn’t see the reason for politics in issues such as gay marriage and global warming.

“If the world needs savin’ and the polar caps are melting, shouldn’t we all check in and see if we’re destroying this sucker? Al Gore heard me say that and said, ‘We’re going to get some people on opposite ends of confrontation, like Rosie and Donald Trump and put ’em on the TV.’ I said, ‘I’m in, but good luck gettin’ them to do it.’”