Toby Keith's new album Clancy's Tavern is in stores now!

No matter where he is, on the road here in the states or on USO tour stops around the world, Toby Keith is constantly generating new song ideas and writing with his trusted group of collaborators. In fact, since 2005, Toby has released a new studio album each year. Clancy’s Tavern, in stores now, features eleven sharply written new songs full of hard times, lonely bars, good times, lively bars, loyalty, love and a full cast of classic characters.

Toby has long been a master of taking relatable, everyman themes and working a new angle subtly into the mix. I need to hear a melody/ That’s sad with three part harmony/ A barroom jukebox symphony, he sings on the country/blues “I Need To Hear A Country Song.” With a hummable lyric and blue-collar analogy to classical music, Toby cleverly maneuvers through standard lonesome country music themes. Toby wrote or co-wrote ten of the eleven songs on the album, and Clancy’s Tavern is full of these smart hooks. Toby’s songwriting is expressive and tight, and on the album’s first single, number-one hit “Made In America,” he slides a line into the chorus about perception after extolling the virtues of buying American. He ain’t prejudice, he’s just, made in America, he sings matter-of-factly.

The title Clancy’s Tavern comes from Toby’s grandmother, the same grandmother from his 2005 hit “Honkytonk U” that told his story of growing up as a barback and playing with the band when she’d let him. On this record, the title-cut pays homage to his grandmother and the bar she owned in Fort Smith, Ark. The song, in ¾-time with a slight Irish folk melody, has a comfortable feel like the neighborhood tavern it celebrates, a place for the welders and the drivers/ and the old nine to fivers and the regular joe’s of the world. Barroom settings emerge in other songs, like “Just Another Sundown,” a lonely, traditional-leaning song where nylon and steel string guitars echo each other with sad melodies.

Not all the drinking songs on Clancy’s Tavern take place in bars. One song makes it a mission to honor the backyard, keg party companion known as the “Red Solo Cup.” The hilarious and infectious song (written by Jim Beavers, Brett Beavers, Brad Warren and Brett Warren) draws on the absurd; calling the plastic party cup identified with draft beer and drinking games the Abbott to my Costello and the Fruit to my Loom between a good-timin’, party-hearty chorus.

Watch the video for “Red Solo Cup” »

The deluxe edition of Clancy’s Tavern features four live tracks performed by Incognito Bandito, Toby’s bar band, at The Fillmore in New York City. The tracks are all covers that include strong renditions of Waylon Jennings’ “High Time (You Quit Your Low Down Ways)” and Three Dog Night’s classic “Shambala.”

The album title evokes a barroom, and many songs take different angles to explore the theme. Others like the uptempo, lovesick honky-tonk “Tryin’ To Fall In Love” or the seedy, Cajun-influenced “Club Zydeco Moon” stand in nice contrast. While Toby acknowledges that there is a pattern to his album release schedule, Clancy’s Tavern stands out as a clever and engaging record that at the end of the night will have listeners ordering up another.

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