Toby Keith will sing some of his hits at Foxwoods on Thursday and Friday nights.

AP / Jeff Christensen

 Toby Keith makes it sound easy.

The country star, who’ll be playing at Foxwoods Thursday and Friday, hit the top of the country chart and number 2 in the pop chart with the album “American Ride” last month (the title-track single hit the top of the hot country chart and the pop Top 40 earlier in the year). But there’s nothing new about that: Keith’s been putting out a chart-topping album a year for six years running now, and he says the process pretty much handles itself.

“It’s pretty much whatever you wrote last year, go in and record it,” he says over the phone. “I don’t really have much setup on it at all. . . . I keep (songs) on the computer, and whatever comes up is what we record. And when we get to a point where I say it’s done, it’s done, and we put it out.”

Since 2006, Keith’s been on his own label, Show Dog Nashville, and he says the beauty of going it alone is the ability to make your own decisions. As an example, he says, he pulled “Lost You Anyway,” the third single from last year’s “That Don’t Make Me a Bad Guy” album, from the radio as it was still number 10 on the country charts to make way for “American Ride.” “I said, [“Lost You Anyway”] is just a turntable hit. Even if it goes to number one, it’s not something I’m going to be playing five years from now. That album’s done; I’ve got a new one coming, and a tour coming up.” Within a couple of weeks, the switch was made, and “American Ride” hit number one on the country charts by the time the disc came out. “You would never get that done that fast at a label.”

Keith says the idea of the song, seemingly a list of complaints about the state of the country, is to point out the silliness of how cable news and entertainment have morphed together into “a world of headlines.”

He recalls the kerfluffles over the Y2K problem, SARS, swine flu, border security and more, “on and on and on about what all is bad. And the story seldom matches up. It’s just a rating war — right hates left; left hates right — and it’s like, ‘Isn’t it funny how we wake up tomorrow and the sun comes out, and the world keeps turning, and America is still existing, and it’s still the best place to live in the dang world,’ you know?”

The second single is “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song),” which sees Keith collaborating with modern jazz and fusion players Dave Koz and Marcus Miller on a pop ballad honoring the memory of Wayman Tisdale, who became a jazz bassist after his NBA career.

It seems like an unlikely friendship, but Keith says his and Tisdale’s Oklahoma roots brought them together: They met at a Sooner basketball game, and it turned out Tisdale was a fan. Soon, they were hanging out together regularly, both on a personal and a musical level: Keith sang on Tisdale’s “Rebound” album, and Tisdale played with Keith on the latter’s Super Bowl special

“Then he lost his leg, and I’m hanging with him in his hospital room,” Keith says. “Then he started fighting leukemia, and I’m hanging with him in his hospital room. And then we lost him. He was one of the greatest people I’d ever met in my life. . . .

“He was a fan of all music, and he was a great guy. He never fell into any of the pitfalls that a guy in music or the NBA can fall into.”

Keith still heads to Afghanistan and Iraq for two weeks every spring, playing to American troops stationed in the Middle East, and says that as far as he’s seen, the morale of the troops is as high as ever.

“If you catch a division, and they’re on a big mission, like to clear out Sadr City or Fallujah or something, you can see that they’re tired. But 99 percent of the time, I never see (a difference). Maybe it’s because they know I’m coming, and they get excited and they know that it’s going to be an easier day than they’re used to having, but I never see low morale as an issue.”

And he says the trips are rewarding to him too. “You have no idea. You’re on a field trip. The geography lesson, the history lesson, the knowledge that you pick up . . . it’s just unbelievable how well-trained and efficient [the troops] are.”

He calls the rules the American troops work under “craziness.”

“Our guys literally drive down the streets, protecting and securing, and they are not allowed to shoot under assumptions. They have to be shot at to shoot back. So they will drive around all day, trying to draw fire, and as soon as they draw fire, they can fight back.”

If someone shoots at an American, and the soldiers go looking for their assailants, Keith says, “and go behind the rocks and see six guys, and they drop their guns and walk off, there isn’t one thing you can do about it. They have to be armed. Even if they leave their guns there and walk off, they’re free to go, because they can say ‘Those aren’t our guns, and we were just hiding behind this rock.’ It’s craziness to watch.”

Keith turned from a country music star to a front-page lightning rod when his “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” hit in 2002. Since then, he’s been in public feuds with The Dixie Chicks and been asked to explain comments he’s made in the controversy.

Those controversies have ebbed over the years, and Keith is relieved. “I think it’s difficult to continue to take someone out of context. The right takes me out of context; the left takes me out of context. When you continue to do that, it finally makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

While his feelings about the war in the Middle East are well known, there’s a lot that people don’t realize, he says. The revelation a couple of years ago that he’s a Democrat was one of them.

“They paint you as an extreme righty, and then they find out you’re a lifetime Democrat. And then you say there should be some kind of national health care for a working mother with three kids . . . then the right gets upset at you. There’s nothing political to me about protecting yourself, about supporting the military.”

He calls the political back and forth “a verbal civil war” and says it’s at its height, whereas in his youth American political factions had much to agree on. But he says that drawing flak is part of the life when you’re well known.

“You talk about Paris Hilton, you’re gonna find haters. You talk about Jesus Christ, you’re gonna find haters. You talk about President Obama, you’re gonna find haters. President Bush? Haters. . . . You can’t flatter yourself and think you’re the only one.”

rmassimo@projo.com