Video: Toby Keith's "Hope of the Rocks" video debuting Friday, first preview introduces characters

Oklahoma country music superstar Toby Keith released today the first behind-the-scenes preview of his music video for “Hope on the Rocks.” The official video is due out Friday.

The first preview introduces some of the characters featured in Keith’s mature and melancholy story-song about a bartender encountering the hurt and displaced folks that drift in and out of our lives. “Hope on the Rocks” is the title track to his new album, as well as his favorite song on his latest annual release.

“There’s so many people in your life that you forget about — and everybody has ‘em — but it’s those people that it’s like there are two or three years and you see them every day. … There’s so many of them that go by the wayside like that that have problems that you don’t know what happened to them,” Keith told me in an interview last month.

“It was a long process. Like ‘Should’ve Been a Cowboy’ I wrote in 20 minutes; this one had to have more thought put in it ‘cause it’s a lot deeper song.”