Toby Keith Gets Down With ‘Trailerhood’ Residents

Watching Toby Keith's new video, 'Trailerhood,' it's clear that the big guy feels right at home as he plants himself amongst the community of trailer park residents who obviously know the true meaning of a "little piece of paradise right here in the woods."

Toby reached out to real folks when he decided to make the video in support of his current hit single 'Trailerhood,' the first cut from his upcoming album, 'Bullets in the Gun.'

Most videos are peppered with actors and extras when the filming begins on a music video. Some artists have been known to throw in a family member or two here and there, but Toby, who obviously wanted to give the video a touch of reality, went to a local trailer park in Nashville and invited the community to kick back, hang out some laundry, drink some beer, play some poker, splash in rubber baby pool, deal with a tornado warning, and sing along ... as only a trained, trailer-park chorus can do.

"We invaded this little trailer park, and it was a big deal for [the residents] to have a video shot there," said Toby (quote via 'Country Aircheck'). "They were all standing behind the tape. One guy didn't have a shirt on, one kid didn't have any underwear on, one kid was sunburned, and one girl's shirt didn't cover her belly. So I said, 'Why don't we bring everyone over here around this lawn chair and let's sing the chorus together?' And when you see the video, that's how they started their day. No one went back and said, 'Let me go change my shirt' or 'Let me go put a shirt on my kid.' It was authentic."

The Oklahoma native got the idea for the song when he was riding his motorcycle with a couple dudes, cruising in an old neighborhood out in the country where he used to live. "There's a trailer park out there," says Toby. "Somebody said, 'Hey, let's go eat.' We're starting to turn around, and I realize they've put railroad tracks in and blocked the street I wanted to take. So I was going to say, 'Let's go in the trailer park' or, 'Let's go in this neighborhood and turn around.' But instead, I said, 'Let's go in this trailerhood.' And one of the guys said, 'The old trailerhood, huh?'"

The country superstar lived in a trailer park for a couple of years when he was 19 after he moved off his parents' farm. "It was a real nice, gated trailer park with a pool," he says. "I had a lot of fun. There were always guys drinking beer, always a poker game and kids playing ball in the streets. Everybody in my area is a Dallas Cowboys fan, so they're always getting together to watch the games. Then you just go white trash on it with the tattoos, farmer tans, NASCAR and rodeo.

"Everyone knows trailer parks take a beating from tornadoes, so when you talk to people in L.A. they want to know how someone could live in one. What they don't understand is that tornadoes are exciting. Unless it's bulls-eyed right for you, everybody is outside watching them go by. So I brought all these thoughts together and wrote it by myself over Christmas break. I told the guys when we cut it that I wanted to be real original and organic with it; the bass drum going and the bass right there in a simple, marching band kind of feel."

Mission accomplished.