Toby Keith Gears Up for Incognito Performances

Toby Keith has a secret identity. He and a group of studio musicians can be found several times a year popping into a bar and performing under the alias of the Incognito Banditos.

"I was in the studio the last couple of years doing work on my albums, and the session players are just hoppin' all year long," Toby explains to The Boot. "They're the greatest players on the planet, and I heard one of them talking about being out with Delbert McClinton. Somebody else goes out with Mark Knopfler when he's touring. I asked them, 'Do you ever just want to go out to a bar and do cover songs?' And they said, 'All the time!'

"So I said, 'What if we formed a band that you weren't side guys in it? We're just a group, and we play blues and blues country covers -- old favorite roadhouse cover songs, the songs we grew up playing and loving. We'll just show up at a bar in New York City and freak people out, and get to do what we want to do at a bar for a while instead of playing amphitheaters and arenas?' And they said, 'We'd love it!'"

Toby came up with the name Incognito Banditos, and the musicians liked it. He also came up with a couple of ground rules as to what the band would perform. "We all want to play blues and country blues, so that's the first qualification. The second one is that we don't play something you'd go in a bar and hear the local band cover. We do something you'd hear on a classic country blues or country oldies station. The first thing that came to mind was 'Sundown' by Gordon Lightfoot, and everybody went 'We love that song!'"

Among the other tunes the band does are 'Mexican Blackbird' by ZZ Top, 'Chug a Lug' by Roger Miller, 'Waymore's Blues' by Waylon Jennings and '11 Months and 29 Days' by Johnny Paycheck. Toby says he does a bluesier version of Jack Greene's 'Statue of a Fool,' and they also perform Three Dog Night's "Shambala' and Johnny Taylor's classic 'Last Two Dollars.' Performances might also include Tony Joe White's 'Polk Salad Annie' and Bill Withers' 'Ain't No Sunshine.'

"The one song you might hear in a bar is 'Nightlife' by Willie Nelson, but we had to include that one!" Toby says. "So now you can come out and you hear this fantastic road house band playing. We don't advertise, it's just word of mouth because the Internet will fill the room.

"We knew we wouldn't make a lot of money because the bars are not as big as what we're used to playing. We do it more for us than the people listening, but they do get a kick out of it. The first time we played was at the Filmore in New York City. It's the funnest thing I've done in my whole career. It's absolutely a breath of fresh air; we really step on it. It's spit-in-the-floor blues."

Toby and his friends do five or six shows a year as the Incognito Banditos. At any given time the band can include guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, saxophone, harmonica and pedal steel. You can hear four cuts from their show at the Filmore on the deluxe edition of Toby's album 'Bullets and Gun.' With 2011 still young, there's a good chance the Incognito Banditos might be slippin' in and out of your town in the near future!