Toby Keith Considered Military Career

Toby Keith will embark on his seventh USO tour this spring, in spite of the ever-present danger faced in the regions where these shows take place. During Keith's last tour, one of his shows was disrupted by a mortar attack at a U.S. military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"I've been all over the world and there's no place that can touch the U.S., so we have to defend this soil vigilantly," Keith tells the Peoria Journal Star. "And we have people willing to volunteer to go put themselves in harm's way for what their government has asked them to do -- the key word being 'asked' here. And so I feel like it's my duty every year to take about 14 or 17 days and go over there."

The upcoming tour will include stops in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And, as it turns out, Keith might have been in one of those countries anyway, not as a performer -- but as a military man.

"If I didn't have it so good here in America, where I live, there's a good chance that I would've, at some point, joined the military and finished my education. But I've had a great life. It's been very fulfilling and very rewarding. I'm living the dream."