2007 Soap Box Archives

Volunteers

Some things are just special and to me the annual CDB Volunteers family reunion is one of them.

For those of you who don't know, the CDB Volunteers is the name of our fan club and the family reunion is our yearly get together held at Charlie Daniels Park in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.

The band is in its 36th year of entertaining and some of our fans have been with us all the way. In fact, we have a special segment of The Volunteers we call the century club and to belong to the century club you have to have attended 100 CDB shows.

Now that's a lot of times to see a band and to show our appreciation we award them with a certificate and a special belt buckle and you'd be surprised how many I've given out over the years.

Every year we have food and prizes and we bring the band in to do a unique show for our fans. Unique in the fact that it's all requests. We just take requests from the audience and play what they want to hear for the whole show.

Then I spend as much time as it takes to take every picture, sign every autograph, hug every neck and shake every hand for everybody who wants it.

This year we were especially honored to have some of The Wounded Warriors with us. You should have seen the ovation they were given when I introduced them to the crowd.

It's so gratifying to see so many of the same faces year after year bringing the kids and grandkids who hopefully will be the next generations of CDB fans.

I promised everybody last year that since I was going to be in China on my birthday, we would celebrate my 70th at the reunion this year. And we did, Hazel had enough cake to feed Pharaoh's army.

I am in my 50th year as a professional entertainer. I left North Carolina in 1958 with a guitar and a dream and headed out into a world I knew very little about with a burning desire to be a professional musician.

The journey has led me across a goodly portion of this planet and to heights I didn't even have the imagination to dream about when I left Wilmington, North Carolina all those years ago. God has truly blessed me.

I know that many of you who are Volunteers read this column and I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for being a part of my dream, for your loyalty and your friendship and for coming to Mount Juliet every year to help an old fiddle player celebrate the life God has blessed him with.

Pray for our troops

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

June 9, 2007