Never Look at the Empty Seats

by Charlie Daniels

  A few months after the barn fire, a friend of ours, Jerry Mansfield, called Thurman and told him that he’d located a son of Little Bear and was going to see that we got him.

  He was a stud colt. And to the cowboys at Twin Pines Ranch, he was the most beautiful thing we’d ever laid our eyes on.

  What else could we name him but New Beginnings?

  Ain’t God good?

  CHAPTER 36

  YOU NEVER DID THINK THAT IT EVER WOULD HAPPEN AGAIN

  It was 1980 and time to start writing for a new album. I went into it with both barrels blazing.

  It’s a funny thing about patriotism. I had seen it at its white-hot peak during World War II. It was at its lowest ebb in the latter days of the Vietnam War, when desecrating the flag, draft card burning, and disrespecting returning soldiers were commonplace. I had thought it was way past time to bring our troops home from a war the politicians refused to let them win, but flag burning and stoned-out hippies spitting on soldiers who had risked their lives for them made me angry, sick, and bewildered. I wondered if we’d ever pull together as one united people again.

  In 1979, when the Iranians took over the American embassy in Tehran and held the staff hostage, parading them around like blindfolded sheep for the world media to see, I felt a creeping anger growing across the face of this nation. As the days dragged by and only an embarrassing, failed attempt was mounted to free the hostages, the frustration and animosity among the people grew. I started hearing things like, “We oughta bomb those idiots” and “We ought to go over there and take our people back.” The phrase “You never did think that it ever would happen again” came into my mind. I wrote a song I called “In America.”

  I wanted to write a ghost story song but had a hard time coming up with a theme. I thought about old folk stories and Indian legends, but nothing appealed to me. Then I remembered a spooky old swamp in Bladen County, North Carolina, where we had coon hunted when I was a boy. The place was filled with thick undergrowth, vines and briars, and patches of marshy ground. Nobody actually lived there, and there were no alligators, but with the aid of my poetic license I wrote a song about it, “The Legend of Wooley Swamp.”

  I wrote a ballad about growing up in rural North Carolina and married it up with a piece of prose I had written years before. It turned into “Carolina (I Remember You).” Drawing on my days on the Mexican border, I wrote a song about a bullfighter and called it “El Toreador.” I wrote a new fiddle tune called “Dance, Gypsy, Dance,” a light little piece called “South Sea Song,” and a rocker called “Money.” With Tommy Crain’s “Lonesome Boy from Dixie” and Taz’s bluesy “No Potion for the Pain,” we were ready to cut a record we would call Full Moon.

  For some reason I can’t recall, we recorded “In America” at the Record Factory in Los Angeles. I don’t remember if it was logistical or if we had figured it was going to be a single and tried to get a jump on it to get it ready for release before the rest of the album, but it was the only song we recorded in Los Angeles; we did the rest in Nashville later.

  A few days after we recorded it, we performed “In America” on the Academy of Country Music Awards television show. The next day Epic Records was getting calls from radio stations around the country wanting to know why they didn’t have “In America.” Even the local station in Wilmington called my mother wanting to know where Charlie’s new record was.

  America had had enough pushing and was ready to get behind a patriotic piece of music, and “In America” fit the bill. When it was released we immediately started getting major airplay. Then, when the Full Moon album was released, we were soon on our way to our second consecutive platinum record.

  We set a blistering pace with our touring schedule and hit the road with a vengeance and a hot show. We were selling out big venues and playing a two-and-a-quarter-hour set of music, most nights doing three encores.

  Something very special happened at the Volunteer Jam that year. I was onstage with the band and looked over to the wings of the stage, and standing there grinning like a possum was none other than one of my lifetime heroes, Roy Acuff, who had come out between shows at the Grand Ole Opry because he knew it would thrill me to no end. I, of course, called him out onstage, and the crowd loved him. I couldn’t believe it. Here was the King of Country Music, the superstar Opry legend I had listened to on our old Zenith radio before I’d even started school, standing on my stage, singing a song with my band on a Saturday night in Nashville, Tennessee. Mercy!

  When you’re doing something you love and the momentum keeps increasing, it seems that the world just spins a little faster, and the first thing I knew, it was 1981. Little Charlie had turned sixteen and was getting a driver’s license. He had gotten his learner’s permit at fifteen and a half, done a lot of supervised driving, and proven himself responsible and capable. So when he got his license on the day he turned sixteen, how could we refuse to let him drive to an all-night skating party in Mount Juliet?

  He didn’t drink, he’d been an obedient and thoughtful son, and we were sure he would be just fine. But when you think of your baby making his first solo flight, you can’t help but be a little bit apprehensive. Of course, being the man of the house, I tried to approach it with a somewhat blasé attitude, thinking that this was really going to be hard on Hazel. Guess who laid awake until three o’clock in the morning while his wife slept like a baby? The creak of the front gate was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard, and I thanked God my son was home safe.

  Of course, when kids get their driver’s licenses, they discover a whole new kind of freedom. Then, of course, comes the dating and all of the other teenage interests, and the first thing you know they’re spending a lot of time behind the steering wheel. I used to worry every time Charlie pulled out of the driveway. I soon learned that all I could do was ask God to protect him and leave it in His capable hands.

  Charlie was, and still is, a very considerate kid. If he was out and about and was going to be more than a few minutes late, he would find a phone and call to let us know.

  I wanted him to know what real work was, so he worked in the barn doing whatever needed to be done. He cleaned out a lot of stalls in his teenage years. I think that every kid should know what it’s like to sweat, to pick up heavy loads, to do things that are not particularly pleasant but necessary, to know what it’s like for a lot of people on this planet, and to feel an empathy for all working people.

  Our children grow up so quickly, changing before our eyes, going from one phase to the next almost overnight, it seems. I enjoyed watching my son grow up and dreaded the day he would cut the apron strings, but for now he was living at home.

  It was time to break some new ground. We got a call from our booking agency, saying that they’d been approached by Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe. Frank Sinatra had cancelled a week’s engagement and Willie Nelson had agreed to fill some of the days, but they still had three open and wanted the CDB to fill it.

  I was stunned. I had always thought of the Nevada casino circuit as being the private preserve of The Rat Pack, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, and entertainers of that genre. Of course, I knew that Willie Nelson had broken into the scene in a big way, but Willie could match voices with any of those people and hold his own. We were a loud, raw Southern band that jammed and slammed our way through a show, and our crowds were anything but the suit-and-tie bunch.

  Although we had the time and it would fit perfectly into our routing, I really had my doubts about taking the engagement. This was the main room of a famous casino, a stage that the legends of show business had performed on. We told our agency that all we knew how to do was play two CDB sets a night, no bells and whistles and no smoke and mirrors, just two hours of hardcore guitar and fiddle rocking out and taking no prisoners.

  They said to come on, and we did. I flew in, and they sent a car to pick me up at the airport, and as I often do, I invited the driver to come to a show. He said, “I believe all your shows are sold out.”
I thought he surely must be mistaken, but when I got to Harrah’s, Stu Carnell, the guy who booked the show, confirmed it. All six CDB shows were sold out in advance.

  And that was not the only surprise I had waiting for me at Harrah’s. The place where I would be staying was what they called the Star Suite, a lavish apartment that was part of two floors, with its own kitchen complete with personal cook, a fireplace, a movie screen that came down out of the ceiling, a fully stocked bar, and a bedroom that could have been straight off a movie set. Hazel flew in, and we enjoyed Harrah’s hospitality to the fullest.

  A two-hour-and-fifteen-minute show in a casino where the prime concern is to get everybody to the gaming tables is unheard of. But that’s what we did, twice a night for three nights in a row.

  We would play Harrah’s properties in Tahoe, Reno, and Atlantic City many times over the years and did eventually cut our show to a more suitable length.

  CHAPTER 37

  TALK TO ME FIDDLE, TELL ME ABOUT THE TIME WHEN YOU CAME ACROSS THE SEA

  Everybody agreed that it was time to do a foreign tour. We had been overseas a couple of times but had never had a record that had done as well as our latest ones, and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” had been very successful in countries where English was not even spoken. The tour started out with a bang, with three packed-out nights in London.

  Everything was going great until we flew into Paris to tape a television show. When we got to Paris, the truck from London with our equipment had been held up at the border because the French customs agents had gone on strike. When we got to the theater for our sound check and camera blocks, we found out that we would not be taping a television show but a radio show because the French camera operators’ union had gone on strike.

  We had rented a small bus to move us around Paris while we were there, and when we finished our sound check and went out to go back to the hotel, the bus was sitting on the street, locked, and the driver was nowhere to be found. We took cabs back to the hotel. He finally showed up in time to take us to the show that night.

  The next morning we went to the airport to catch a plane to Bremen, Germany, only to find that the French air traffic controllers had gone on strike and our flight had been cancelled.

  We didn’t actually have to be in Bremen until the next night. Since the planes weren’t flying, it was decided that we would go to the bus company, rent a bigger bus, and ride to Bremen, which was only eight hours away. Then we’d have it take us on to Amsterdam, the next date on the tour.

  This all happened in the morning, and after our people spent all day trying to arrange for a bus, we pulled out of Paris about sundown with two bus drivers we named Slinky and Blinky. They spoke all of ten words of English and drove forty-five miles an hour all the way from Paris to Bremen, Germany, turning an eight-hour trip into a thirteen-hour trip.

  Feeling that we would like to get to Amsterdam before the new year, our people called the bus company in Paris and told them that we would not be taking their bus to Amsterdam because their drivers drove like escargot herders. They assured us that they would talk to Slinky and Blinky and have them put the pedal to the metal if we would only keep the bus. Since Amsterdam was not too far away, we agreed.

  Slinky and Blinky did step it up a bit, probably to 55 or so, but the speed limit on the autobahn is 125 miles per hour for cars, and it still seemed we were crawling. When we finally got to Holland, we had the bus drop us off at the television show location, and J. B. Copeland went to check in and drop our luggage off at the hotel in Amsterdam. Slinky and Blinky tried to make him get off the bus blocks away from the hotel with all the luggage, which J. B. refused to do. Our two French bus drivers were last seen driving away from the Amsterdam Marriott trying to maneuver the narrow streets of downtown Amsterdam. I hope they made it back to Paris.

  Million Mile Reflections and Full Moon had taken the CDB to a whole new level internationally. The album went platinum in Canada, where we did a cross-country tour from the Maritimes to British Columbia. We played New Zealand and did a tour of Australia with the Little River Band and of course toured the United States constantly.

  The concert we did in New Zealand, an outdoor show called the Mombasa Festival, was like walking back into the sixties, complete with brightly painted hippy vans and people who looked as if they’d just walked off Haight-Ashbury at the height of San Francisco’s psychedelic period.

  It was a pretty strange bill. I remember that Dizzy Gillespie was supposed to go on before us, but he was upset about his money or something and wasn’t going to play. I said, “We’ll go on, money or no money. We didn’t come this far not to play our music.”

  Things can get out of hand at these kinds of affairs, and David Corlew decided Rick Rentz, our security man, may have needed some extra help and hired a couple of the Maoris, New Zealand’s aborigines, who were supposedly doing security for the event. But when David offered them cash on the barrel head, they came aboard in a hurry.

  We were getting ready to play our set, and all of a sudden Dizzy decided he wanted to play. We were all set up and ready to rock, so we didn’t want to leave the stage. When the promoter tried to come onstage and get us off so Dizzy could come on, one of our Maori, a huge guy we called Mongo, wouldn’t let him come onstage.

  “But I’m the promoter!”

  “I don’t work for you; I work for him,” Mongo said, pointing at David.

  We played our set and rode off the property with our new Maori friends walking on each side of the car.

  Then, off to the land down under to join the Little River Band for a tour of Australia.

  The mecca of Australian country music is an outback town called Tamworth. It could be compared with Nashville in that the Australian Country Music Awards take place there every year, and as we were up for an award, I went to Tamworth to accept it.

  Australia has its own brand of country music and its own stars. Slim Dusty has been referred to as the Australian Roy Acuff in that he was considered a pioneer of country music in Australia.

  Smoky Dawson, another Australian star, has a river named after him.

  I met both of these gentlemen and enjoyed a night of the Aussie’s brand of country music. I would go back to Tamworth several years later and play on the Australian Country Music Awards.

  The Little River Band is the only group we ever toured with for which I stayed around almost every night for their set after we did the opener. They had the best and tightest vocal harmony of any band I’d ever worked with and a very talented sound man mixing out front. They were as close to perfection as I’ve ever heard any band be, night after night.

  I fell in love with Australia as we toured around the country, and I felt that the United States and Australia had a lot in common. The people are warm and fun loving, and their beloved Australia spans a continent, just as our United States does.

  We are both relatively new countries compared to Europe and Asia. It had taken a hard and determined bunch of people to settle the untamed stretches of these two vast lands. And the Australian people have a sense of national pride and independence that I could identify with.

  No matter how much we enjoy seeing new places and making new fans, it’s always a blast when you clear customs and somebody says, “Welcome to the United States of America.”

  CHAPTER 38

  CARDBOARD CRITICS

  When we released “In America” as a single there was some criticism—not a lot, but there was a little residue of anti-American sentiment among the left-wing press and aging hippie music critics, and such a flag waver was a little much for them. This was nothing new and nothing to be feared because I had had flak from the elitists in the press all of my career. The CDB was once named one of the five most worthless bands in rock and roll, along with the Grateful Dead and Rush, by a music critic who wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I’ve often wondered what ever happened to him.

  For the most part I have had a wonderful relationship with the music media. But
with some of the more self-diagnosed intellectuals, our music either goes over or under their heads, and they use every obscure word they learned in English class to tell the world how they feel about it.

  A Canadian critic once described Leonard Cohen’s music as “inane.”

  The dictionary defines inane as meaning “silly.”3 If anything is very silly or stupid, it is the critic’s use of the word inane to describe the work of one of the most sensitive and poetic songwriters of our time.

  The thing you have to remember is that music critics are nothing more than humans with opinions. Some of them who couldn’t cut it in the performance end of the business have decided to take out their frustration on artists they don’t consider their cerebral equals. I’ve had critics point out things that I knew went wrong in a show, and I don’t mind it at all. But when someone fills up a column with superfluous and hurtful comments, I take offense. Many times I answer back in kind, sorta critique the critics, and they don’t like it at all. Too bad. I have as much right to critique their work as they have to critique mine.

  One of the most blatant flubs by a critic I’ve ever heard of was when one of the big-city critics covered a Buck Owens show. He wrote that he didn’t know why Buck had to do that old Beatles song in his set. He was referring to “Act Naturally,” which the Beatles released in 1965, a couple of years after Buck had a big hit with it in 1963. In fact, it was a Buck Owens classic.

  As somebody so aptly put it, critics are like eunuchs. They can observe and assess, but they can never, ever participate.

  “In America” was off and running, and the Full Moon album was walking out of record stores. With the release of our second single, “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” we were on our way to another big record.

  CHAPTER 39

  HIGH LONESOME, OUR LITTLE PIECE OF TENNESSEE