Coming to Spotlight 29 Casino, Friday, June 12th, 2015 / 8pm
By Lisa Morgan
Charlie Daniels didn’t want to talk about his list of over 50 awards that include multiple awards from the Country Music Association, the Academy of Country Music, the Gospel Music Association and even a Grammy. Nor did he mention his induction as a lifetime member of the Grand Ol’ Opry. He didn’t even mention that time all the top stars and two former Presidents paid tribute to Daniels when he was named the recipient of the Pioneer Award at the Academy of Country Music Awards. And we never got around to him being named BMI’s Progressive Artist of the Year in 1979. You will have to Google all the accolades and accomplishments yourself, because there isn’t enough room to write it all here, and he would rather talk about his life today. And sadly, we never got around to talking about the books he’s written and his skydiving hobby.
“When it gets right down to the nitty gritty, I’ve just tried to be who I am,” says Daniels. “I’ve never followed trends or fads. I couldn’t even if I tried. I can’t be anybody but me.”
“Charlie’s love of music is only surpassed by his love of people, especially the American people,” former President Gerald Ford said of Daniels. “He’s traveled this land from coast to coast singing about the things that concern the American people. The Academy of Country Music’s Pioneer Award is presented to a supremely talented compassionate and proud American, and a fair to middlin’ golfer, too!”
When Daniels graduated from high school in 1955 as a skilled multi-instrumentalist (guitar, fiddle and mandolin), he formed a rock and roll band, and hit the road. While in Texas, the band recorded “Jaguar,” an instrumental produced by Bob Johnston, which was picked up for national distribution by Epic. Johnston and Daniels co-wrote “It Hurts Me,” which became the B side of a 1964 Presley hit. In 1969, Daniels moved to Tennessee to find work as a session guitarist in Nashville. Among his more notable sessions, were the Bob Dylan albums of 1969-70: Nashville Skyline, New Morning, and Self Portrait. Daniels produced the Youngbloods albums of 1969-70: Elephant Mountain and Ride the Wind. He toured Europe with Leonard Cohen and performed on records with artists ranging from Al Kooper to Marty Robbins.
Daniels broke through with his own record with 1973’s Honey In the Rock and its hit hippie song “Uneasy Rider.” His rebel anthems “Long Haired Country Boy” and “The South’s Gonna Do It” propelled his 1975 Fire On the Mountain to Double Platinum. Following stints with Capitol and Kama Sutra, Epic Records signed him to a contract worth $3 million, the largest ever given to a Nashville act up to that time. In the summer of 1979, Daniels rewarded the company’s faith by delivering “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which became a Platinum single, topped both country and pop charts, won a Grammy Award, became an international phenomenon, earned three Country Music Association trophies, became a cornerstone of the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack and propelled Daniel’s Million Mile Reflections album to Triple Platinum.
CVW: You’ve accomplished and done so much…what’s left? What would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?
Daniels: (Laughing) I want to catch a 10lb largemouth bass, and I want to shoot an 8 point buck. But you’re probably wanting to know about music. As far as music goes, I just want to keep playing music with my band. I love what I do. I really enjoy entertaining people. The high point of my day is when I go on stage at night. That’s when I shine. I try to save the best part of myself for when I walk out on that stage. I thank God I get to make living doing something that I enjoy so much. I’ve reached a point where I go in the studio pretty much any time I want to.
CVW: Your last album, Off the Grid – Doing it Dillon, came out in 2014. Is there another album in the works?
Daniels: We did a live album down at Billy Bob’s in Texas end of last year that will be released pretty soon. I’ve always got ideas for albums and songs, and all kinds of projects in my head. When I get around to doin’ em, I get around to doin’ em.
CVW: Where do you go for inspiration?
Daniels: Song writing – creative stuff – it’s a God given talent. It’s always there; it just takes something to wake it up once in a while. You get an idea and it lays dormant until it’s ready. I write a lot of lyrics when I go to bed at night and before I get out of bed in the morning. That just seems to be one of the things that work best for me. I am never short of ideas it just takes time to bring them into fruition.
CVW: When you first started playing music, did you ever imagine that your place in music would get so big?
Daniels: My first aim was to make a living playing music. That’s what I wanted to do. And it was a much more involved task in that day than it might seem it would have been. There was no place to play in North Carolina where I was from, or at least there weren’t very many. I had to leave the area and head up to Washington DC and ultimately to Nashville in 1967. Your parameters and what you were trying to do were constantly changing. When you accomplished one thing, you moved on to something else. I’m still doing that now. There are still mountains I want to climb and things I want to do. I’ll never get it all done, I know that. It’s just fun trying. You always have something to get out of bed for in the morning. I get up and I can work on my biography, finish a song I started…I’m never ever bored. If I’m home, I could go ride a horse; I can work or not work. If I don’t work I can go shoot some guns…I haven’t been bored in many, many, years, and that keeps life interesting. I am very much a family man. I get to spend a lot of time with my family. I just have no reason to ever feel like I’m not engaged in something that I enjoy.
CVW: How do you stay in such a positive and energetic frame of mind?
Daniels: Surround yourself with the people that you like and who aren’t going to aggravate you on a daily basis. There are people that are just a drain on life. Every time you see ’em, they’re complaining. That’s especially true with bands and musicians. I don’t have a lot of people in my life that really cause me a lot of trouble. I get a long great with my family, my band, my employees, my neighbors – I try to cut stress out of my life. Life is just too short.
It takes effort. One of the worst and most wasteful things we ever do is try and impress other people. Our home here is built to suit us. It’s full of Hazel’s antiques and my western art, guns hanging on the wall – it’d drive an interior decorator nuts, but we like it. I’ve got a fishing dock, a putting green, a tennis court and a shooting range. Nobody else in the world likes it. They don’t like the way it looks, where it’s at. It don’t make any difference. We are where we want to be and we’ll be content here for the rest of our lives.
That’s the thing with life too- you’ve GOT to follow your own star. Don’t let daddy tell you what to do for a living if you’re not going to be happy at it. That’s a mistake a lot of people make. If I had listened to my folks who had the BEST intentions in the world for me, I wouldn’t be here. If I had not followed my star, I would have been miserable. It’s that way in all of life.
