Country rock pioneer and part-time Durango-area resident Charlie Daniels was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Oct. 16.
Daniels and his wife, who live near Nashville most of the time, have a house in the Durango area, and they’re here for a couple of months in the winter.
I had the chance to talk to Daniels a few days after the induction ceremony, and what struck me immediately was how humble and genuine he is.
Q: First of all, congratulations on getting in to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
A: Well, thank you, I’m very humbled by the whole situation; it was very unexpected.
Q: Really? You’re Charlie Daniels!
A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I know, but that’s ... there’s a difference in all the other things, all the other accolades and that sort of thing in the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s a closely kept secret who even votes on these things, who’s the panel, who even votes on it. It rotates every three years, and the process is, from what I understand, kind of long and laborious. You never know when your name’s going to be brought up or not. So you just don’t know; it’s completely unexpected when it happens.
Q: So when you got the call, what did you do?
A: I actually didn’t get a call. I was lured down to the Country Music Association offices under false pretenses. I thought I was supposed to go down there and take a publicity picture. And when I got down there, Sarah Trahern, president of CMA, walked up to me very casually and conversationally said, “I know you think you’re here to take a picture, but you’re actually here to be told you’re going to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.” And my first inclination was, “Did she really say that or did I just imagine she said it?” And when I realized she did say it, it was a very emotional moment for me, and it’s been emotional ever since. We finally got it done this past Sunday (Oct. 16), and I’m still pretty much zinging from it, you know. It’s still just an incredible thing to have happen to me.
Q: Were you nervous at the ceremony?
A: I was not really nervous ... if I had to pick one word that described my whole experience – of course, I was excited and that sort of thing when I first found out – I would say “humility.” Because the people who hang on those walls ... I’ve been listening to country music all my life and I’ve got a lot of heroes hanging on those walls, on the plaques on the walls, and to think they would put my name there with theirs, with the people that I’ve admired and emulated and loved so much through the years, it’s a very humbling experience. So if I had to pick one word that would describe it, I would say “humility”; I feel very humble about it. And Country Music Hall of Fame does such a great job of presentation; they have presenters that they get ... I had Brenda Lee, I asked her to do my induction; and they had, we had Trisha Yearwood and Jamey Johnson and Trace Adkins, and a fiddle player named Andrea Zonn played “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and it was just, you know, it was pretty incredible. It was an entertaining evening. It was an emotional evening, it was an honor.
Q: Do you consider this the capstone to your career? Is this the high point?
A: Well, you know, it’s kind of hard ... let me put it this way: I’ve been writing a book. I’ve been writing a biography for about 20 years and I could never find the place to pause it because my career goes on. I’m living it every day, and I could not find a place to kind of bring it in. And I decided that I will pause it since I got inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. ... I’m going to have it finished by the first of December.
Q: Do you see yourself in any of the up-and-comers now in the music industry? Because you were pretty much a trailblazer ...
A: You know, I really don’t know. I’ve had a lot of younger folks that tell me that they’ve been listening to me ever since they can remember, that we had some effect, the music we play had some inspiration or some effect on them. I would really feel a little presumptuous to try to say, “Yeah, I really see myself in somebody,” but I kind of see the style of music in a lot of bands that played when we first started out together – Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers – I hear a lot of that, a lot of slide guitar, a lot of, you know, Southern-type stuff in a lot of the younger musicians who’ve come along now, so I think it would be, actually, a lot of people like ... Ronnie Van Zant, Duane Allman, a lot of people have inspired these young folks.
Q: Coming up, who were your influences?
A: I had so many ’cause I was born in 1936, and at the time I came along, radio stations were not formatted for any particular one kind of music; they had a mandate from the FCC and they had to do something for everybody, so they played everything – they played country music, they played the popular music of the day, whatever that happened to be; I remember when it was big bands. And then when rock came along, it started inching in back in the ’50s with all its different permutations. And I heard ... of course, in the South, you’re going to be exposed to the blues, and gospel, jazz, and so when I got ready to write original music, I had a lot of influences. Of course, the country influence is always there ... Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams and those guys. And then, B.B. King and lots of people across a wide spectrum of musical styles influenced me.
Q: Out of all your songs, what do you think your favorite is?
A: I don’t really have a favorite. There are several songs, and some of them are very obscure that I feel really good about the lyrics and the music, too. Of course, the best song we’ve got, the best-known song we’ve got is “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” but we have been blessed to have several albums and songs that have done well, and we make up our set from familiar things. We start with the bigger things and kind of work around the edges with the unfamiliar things. When we play, we do “Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Long Hair Country Boy,” ... but I can’t say any of them are my pick-up favorite.
Q: Do you have any that you’re getting sick of?
A: No, no, no. I get a chance to play it better tonight than I did last night, and better tomorrow night than I did tonight ...
Q: I heard you say in your acceptance speech that you weren’t planning on retiring.
A: No, I’m not. I don’t have any reason to retire, really. If I did some kind of physical labor that took more than I could handle in my advanced age, I would obviously be thinking about retiring, or reducing what I was doing or whatever. But I can handle a hundred dates a year, 10 Grand Ole Opry appearances and all the writing and interviews and things that go along ... I can handle that well. And there’s no reason ... if I retired, I’d be bored. My wife, myself, we’d both be bored. I prefer to be on the road here with my band playing. I love it. I thoroughly enjoy what I’m doing ... I mean, just moving from town to town, looking at a different motel parking lot every morning, it’s the way I prefer to live my life. I love it.
katie@durangoherald.com
