I started writing this back in March, but as is sometimes the case, other things take priority and something lower priority like this gets put on the back burner. It’s also not the kind of subject I usually tackle, since most things I write are about Dad at the core, although I have dabbled in some political/current events over the years, but not so much lately.

But a few months ago I did write about sharing Tennessee Titans football with Dad and a melancholy stroll around the soon to be empty stadium now known as Nissan Stadium on the last home game of the 2025 season, so we’ll call this a follow up.

Since the middle of February, rumors began to swirl about a new logo and look for the Tennessee Titans, which is the team I cheer for… not that there has been much to cheer for the past few years, starting with the team itself.

Almost 52 years ago, the CDB packed 2,000 fans into War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, TN for what would prove to be a historical night, the very first Volunteer Jam.

Though it began as a live recording session to record two live tracks for the band’s upcoming ‘Fire on the Mountain’ album, it became something much more, an event in its own right, a ‘happening,’ so much so that it became a mostly annual event from 1974 off and on through 1996, and then revived in 2015.

By now you have probably heard the announcement or seen the press release on Thursday March 26^th about The Legend of Charlie Daniels show this 4^th of July at Ft. Campbell, and you’re probably wondering what the heck that’s all about.

Well, the idea – or rather ideas - go back to the week after Dad went home on July 6, 2020.

Last week I unknowingly unleashed a hornet’s nest with a simple factual statement.

Was it some highly-charged bold political statement like Dad might have made before he left us? Was I calling out someone for their behavior in a controversial way?

Nope, it was pretty uneventful, but the controversy followed nonetheless.

Y'all will have to excuse me, I just got punched in the gut today. 3 Doors Down co-founder and front man, Brad Arnold went home to be with the Lord today (2/7/2026) after being diagnosed with cancer early last year.

This is extremely hard for multiple reasons. For one, he was only 47 and still had a lot of life left in him, a life that was a gift, because ten years ago, he was headed down a road that could have taken him years ago. 

Sunday, January 4, 2026 officially marked the end of the 2025 NFL regular season. If your team makes the playoffs, you get at least one more game—and a shot at the “Big Game,” or as it’s sometimes legally referred to unless you’re an official sponsor… the “Superb Owl.”

On that day, my Tennessee Titans were soundly defeated by longtime rivals, the Jacksonville Jaguars —a rivalry that dates back to 1995, when the Jags entered the league as an expansion team in the AFC Central alongside the Steelers, Bengals, Ravens (freshly moved from Cleveland by Art Modell), and the Houston Oilers, who would soon relocate and eventually become the Tennessee Titans.

In December of 2020, I wrote extensively about Dad’s absence around the holidays which now have the taint of melancholy to which I coined the phrase, “Sadiversary.” And it’s true, I ran the emotional gamut that year, and it was exhausting.

Something very significant happened this week, a piece of CDB musical history has been carefully, lovingly and painstakingly preserved.

It involves the most recognizable of all CDB songs, the song that despite its inauspicious beginnings made a simple story created out of necessity into one of the most recognizable songs of the 20th Century and still going strong into the 21st.

Round 1.

We all know and love the story of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the song that was written as an afterthought that became one of the most iconic songs of the 20th Century and is still wildly popular over forty-six years after its release.

In fact, as I’m finishing up this Soapbox, Jr., it just happens to be December 5, 2025, forty-seven years to the day that “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was recorded.

It keeps getting harder to believe that Dad would have been 89 this year... almost 90! There’s not a day that goes by that there’s a question I want to ask him about. It may be a question about his career, something related to the business, advice or just how he’s doing.

Not too long ago, I wrote about the trend that was going on Facebook – and I don’t mean viral trend – was dozens of AI generated final tour announcements for 2026.

Remember when Facebook and their parent company, Meta, used to try to shut down anything they deemed “fake” on their platform? 

Apparently, that’s ancient history.

On September 20, 1964, Mom and Dad were joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony. For many years, I’ve posted pictures of Mom and Dad shortly after they were married and two things always stand out about the photos, “Wow, your Mom was pretty!” and “I never saw your Dad without a beard before

Well, Labor Day has come and gone, the unofficial end of summer – even though we’re having record highs just a few days before fall begins in Tennessee – but it’s still time fold up the beach blankets, put away the charcoal grill and stick the magnetic football schedule to the side of the refrigerator.

I come from a long line of people who made a living by the sweat of their brows and the labor of their hands. Hands that could handle a plow or a crosscut saw, break an ornery mule or hold an infant baby.

Simple men who stood on the streets of small town America on Saturday afternoons while the wife bought supplies for the week and talked about the weather, the price of corn or the latest exploit of their prize coonhound or how this year's high school football team didn't quite come up to last year's

This week I was looking through some various Facebook posts after checking Dad’s page for comments or trolls. I didn’t see anything that required my attention, so I was briefly checking out a few of the posts that Facebook had spoon fed to us.

The first one I noticed was the lovely and extremely talented Rhonda Vincent in which she was announcing her farewell tour, “One Last Ride • 2026.” Every entertainer eventually has to decide when it’s time to hang it up, but Rhonda seems way too young to be considering retirement, and we saw here a few weeks ago at the Opry 100 tribute to Dad and she never mentioned any need to retire.

Then I looked again and saw where Willie Nelson was also going to call it a career and take time off the road and he was announcing a tour, “One Last Ride • 2026.”

Interesting that two such prolific artists would both look at retiring at the same time, although Willie would seem to make more sense than Rhonda, not to mention, both of them launching tours with identical names. SO I decided to take take a deep dive and see if my ”Spidey Sense” was tingling for a reason.

It was.

In fact, I had seen one or two cases of this phenomenon in the past month or so, but I was always too busy to take a dive down the rabbit hole… Just for the record, I’m still too busy for this deep dive, but I feel that it’s important to speak up.

“One Last Ride” seems to currently be the most popular tour name, and this is across all genres, from Country, to Rock to Hip Hop.

Tuesday night, July 8, 2025, marked twice this year that fans at the Grand Ole Opry rose to their feet to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The other was a couple of months ago on a primetime TV special. Sadly, both times, Dad was only there in spirit.                                                   

There is a famous, actually infamous true story about a football game so lopsided it caught the attention of the big city East Coast sports writers who otherwise would have not batted an eye at the two teams involved, both from the South, the powerhouse Georgia Tech Yellowjackets – let by future hall of fame coach George Heisman and the Cumberland University Bulldogs who just happen to hail from Wilson County, TN the same county as the Daniels family has called home since 1973.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CLASS OF 1996 - UNCW

I would like to clear up a few points about my addressing your class at commencement exercises, points which I feel have been distorted by a few overzealous, uninformed,pseudo-journalists.

I will not address the one-hit wonder,” “goober brained redneck” aspect of these pieces, and one letter published in The Seahawk I will not address at all except to say that the racial overtones it contained were totally unfounded and offensive beyond description.

"On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus." - Luke 24 1:1-3 New International Version of the Holy Bible

Since Jesus was crucified on a Friday and Shabbat - or the Sabbath - began at sundown, His followers had not been able to carry out the anointing of His body with the fragrant spices and ointments and it had to be delayed until Sunday morning, after the Jewish religious law forbidding working on the Sabbath was lifted.

Apologies to Charles Dickens and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn for the title paraphrasing “A Tale of Two Cities.”

As I was scheduling posts for April 13, it thought crossed my mind that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Kind of sums up the day. There were two monumental events in the life of the Daniels family that took place on this date six years apart, so as the old saying goes, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.” 

April 1, 2025 marked the 11th anniversary of 'Off the Grid – Doin’ It Dylan,' the CDB’s tribute to Bob Dylan. An April Fool’s Day release? Sure. A joke? Not even close—at least not to those who knew how much Dylan meant to Dad’s musical journey.

On March 13, 2020—just over five years ago—Dad and the band took the stage together for what would be their final show. It was in Huntsville, Alabama, at the Von Braun Center’s Mark C. Smith Concert Hall.

After that night, he and Mom returned to Twin Pines Ranch, where they mostly stayed - sheltering in place - until that heartbreaking day, July 6, when everything changed for us. The CDB family lost its leader, and a good and faithful servant was called home—to his permanent home, “in the sky, Lord, in the sky.”

Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. For example, nobody could have seen a pandemic taking Dad and the band off the road. It still seems like something out of The Twilight Zone sometimes.

“This is a day of new beginnings, new year, new hope, new resolve, a 365-day period of progress and accomplishment. Let’s all make the day count. “ – Charlie Daniels 2017

Happy New Year, everyone!

Dad, you would have been 88 years old today, two years away from 90, and it’s still hard to believe you’re gone.

“You better watch where you’re goin’, remember where you been. That’s the way I see it, I’m a Simple Man” – Charlie Daniels 1989

In 1989, Dad was approached to write some songs for the Patrick Swayze motion picture, “Next of Kin,” a movie about a Chicago cop who grew up in the hills of Kentucky, who tries to catch the killers of his younger brother, as his older brother prepares for a blood feud with the Chicago mob.

“A dream is a wish your heart makes” – Mac David, Al Hoffman & Jerry Livingston from Disney’s “Cinderella” Dreams are funny things, we dream when we sleep, we dream of things we want to accomplish, or for something we really want, or relationships, success, etc. But not all dreams are good, some are quite disturbing and startling, and July 6th, 2020, felt like one of those dreams, the “not good” kind.

My worst birthday ever was when I turned 15 on April 28, 1980.

Was it because I was spoiled and I didn’t get what I wanted?

No, although our plans did change at the last minute, but only  because of a tragedy.

*NOTE* In honor of the Sixteenth Anniversary of Charlie's Grand Ole Opry induction, here's a Soapbox Rewind from 2008, just before he was inducted, and he shares his feelings on his then-upcoming induction. - TeamCDB

On Friday, January 18th, I will catch a plane from Durango, Colorado, where I'm on vacation, en route to Nashville, Tennessee, which is the last fifteen hundred miles of a journey of several million which started one afternoon in Gulf, North Carolina, circa 1951 when I was visiting a friend, Russell Palmer, and he pulled out an old Stella guitar.