Lainey Wilson and Brooks & Dunn also pay tribute to the late Country Music Hall of Fame member
Brooks & Dunn, Sammy Hagar, and Lainey Wilson performed a tribute to Toby Keith at the 2024 CMT Music Awards on Sunday, backed by members of Keith’s longtime band. Keith died in February at 62 after a long battle with stomach cancer.
Brooks & Dunn kicked it off with a rendition of “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” Keith’s 1993 debut single and his very first Number One hit. Hagar, a longtime friend of Keith’s, followed with “I Love This Bar,” a fitting choice for the tequila and rum impresario, who famously operates a bar in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. “Toby and I closed the Cabo Wabo down a lot more times than probably we even remember,” Hagar said onstage. “It’s hard to get thrown out of your own bar, and we managed to do that.”
Finally, Wilson closed the tribute, belting “How Do You Like Me Now?!” Lukas Nelson and Riley Green introduced Wilson, who threw herself into the performance of Keith’s swaggering anthem, a hit off his 1999 album of the same name.
When CMT announced the Toby Keith tribute last week, Hagar wrote that “I Love This Bar” would be the “appropriate song choice.” Upon the news of Keith’s death, he posted a blank photo with a caption that read “Can’t find the words at this time.” But he soon followed that up with a loving tribute, writing, “I first met Toby in September 2001 in Las Vegas and while I know a lot of people, I don’t have that many friends. I just lost one of them.”
On Thursday, CMT will release an additional one-hour tribute to Keith. He received 30 CMT nominations during his career and won seven. He was the co-host of the awards twice: in 2003 with Pamela Anderson and in 2012 with Kristen Bell. Keith will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in the fall.