By RICK de YAMPERTENTERTAINMENT WRITER
With his 73rd birthday approaching, musician Charlie Daniels (don't call him a Southern rocker) is staying busy.
In recent months he has performed for American troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and as part of Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts (yep, the conservative talk show host staged a tour featuring Daniels, Billy Ray Cyrus, Christian musician Michael W. Smith, Lee Greenwood and that rock star Oliver North).
Daniels just finished recording a Christmas bluegrass album with such guest musicians as Jewel, Aaron Tippin and Kathy Mattea.
But Daniels is perhaps most busy as a writer -- not of songs, but opinion pieces. On his Web site (charliedaniels.com), he churns out two "soap box" pieces a week. "Barack Hussein Obama" (who's often referred to with his middle name) is a favorite target of Daniels' verbal fisticuffs.
Daniels is taking time out from his soap box to perform a Biketoberfest concert Oct. 17 in Edgewater. During a phone interview at a recent tour stop in Joliet, Ill., the fiddler known for such hits as "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and "The South's Gonna Do It" talked about politics and that mythical genre known as Southern rock.
You're very active on your Web site with your "Soap Box" pieces. I get the idea you come from the conservative side of the street.
I find my heart in that camp more so, although I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I don't claim any loyalty to any political stream of thought. Some things you'd think I'm liberal on.
I'm an old dog. I'll be 73 years old this month. I look at things through the eyes of "been there, done that, seen that." That's where I come at it from.
In the past you've written such political songs as "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag" and "In America," and you covered Dan Daley's "Still in Saigon." Have you been tempted to put some of your more recent soap box pieces into music?
Not unless it happens to be something close to my heart and I happen to come up with a song about it. My job on stage is entertaining people.
This other, I do two a week of these soap boxes, these columns. That's Charlie Daniels the private citizen. I get asked about it quite a bit in interviews because I do that and I'm very opinionated. But that's as far as it goes as far as my entertainment life is concerned. When I get on stage, I'm all about music and entertaining.
The other part is basically me exerting my constitutional rights by saying what I believe in and what I'm feeling. It's two different parts of my life actually.
In going over some of your past songs, I was struck by the lyrics of "In America": "We may have done a little bit of fighting amongst ourselves, but you outside people best leave us alone. 'Cause we'll all stick together and you can take that to the bank. That's the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks." I wonder if you still sing that song, and if you still have the same conviction -- we seem very divided in this country these days.
I do sing the song. I have changed the lyrics because it was dated. It was done in the '70s when we had the Iranian hostage crisis.
Here's my idea about patriotism in America. We're pulled here there by political philosophies, fiscal philosophies -- until something happens like the Iranian hostage crisis.
It seemed at that time we were even more divided than now. There was even a clear cut look, if you remember the long hair, the hippie clothes, and of course the rednecks with their white sidewall haircuts. There was a very definite animosity between these two sides.
But when something happened that affected us all, that affected America and the well-being of Americans, then we came together. Same thing happened on 9/11.
It's a shame that it takes something usually catastrophic to touch that nerve in America. Our differences are thin compared to the red, white and blue part of everybody ... if you're not really out on the fringe to the far right or the far left.
You look around and you realize, I didn't vote for the same guy this guy voted for, but he's my brother. We're Americans first and Democrats and Republicans and conservatives and liberals later on.
When it gets down to somebody is attacking Lebanon, Tenn. (Daniels' current home), I'm going to be there, and I'm going to bring every gun I got. You know what I mean? And I'm gonna protect the people who vehemently disagree with me just as much as I am the people who agree with me. That to me is true patriotism in America.
I don't hear the terms "Southern rock" or "country rock" very much these days. Do you feel artists such as Montgomery Gentry, Travis Tritt or even Kenny Chesney are carrying on your legacy, or are they doing something different?
I don't know (laughs). I've never looked at Southern rock as a genre of music. The Allman Brothers were a great blues band. Lynyrd Skynyrd is as pure a rock 'n' roll band as you'll find. Wet Willie was an R&B band. Marshall Tucker had country leanings.
And we were lost out there in the middle of all of them. We played some of all of it. It never really gelled down to a genre. What it gelled down to was a bunch of guys who happened to have successful records at the same time from a fairly close geographical area. We spoke basically with the same accents, we grew up eating the same food, we were raised in the same religious and financial environments. And there was a closeness with the people.
Of course there were some similarities in the music. I think a lot of the kids nowadays that you were referring to were big Lynyrd Skynyrd fans or Duane Allman fans.
If you're asking me did we have an affect on the music, I think so. But as to boiling it down to a genre -- nah, I don't think there is a genre.
On your "Deuces" CD (a duets album and Daniels' most recent work), were people surprised when you covered Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and Stevie Wonder's "Sign Sealed Delivered"?
I've always been that way. My gosh, I did three albums with Bob Dylan back in the day -- "Nashville Skyline," "Self Portrait" and "New Morning." I spent some time with Dylan back in the day and have always been a fan of his. It's not unusual at all for me to do anything.
People always ask me, "What's on your iPod?" Just about anything you want to hear. I got everything from bluegrass to Beethoven. It just depends on what mood I'm in when I pick it up as to what I punch in.
If You Go
WHO: Jam for America Concert with the Charlie Daniels Band, the Lost Trailers and Chuck Wicks
WHEN: Oct. 17, gates open 4 p.m., Charlie Daniels performs at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Edgewater Ranch, I-95 exit 244 (intersection of I-95 and State Road 442), Edgewater
TICKETS: $10 advance, available at all Dustin's Bar-B-Q Restaurants, $15 at the gate; children 12 and younger free
MISC.: Food and drinks on sale at event. No coolers or pets allowed. Patrons may bring lawn chairs.
INFORMATION: 386-322-3600 or online at jamforamerica.com
Leave a comment