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.                                                   

I’ve put this off long enough. It’s here whether I like it or not, so I have to deal with it.

As I write this, it’s Saturday afternoon on July 5, 2025, a little more than sixteen hours before the call from Mom came at 5:45 that something was wrong with Dad in 2020.

My life changed forever that morning, and got much more difficult much more frustrating and much more complicated, and in many ways, it still is.

For my Mom and I, Dad was our rock. He was the dependable father who always took care of us, even when times were lean early on. He was an incredibly talented musician and entertainer. He was a generous man in private and in business.

He was the kind of man who gave writer’s credit to his band, no matter how much or little of a song they had contributed, several former band members or their families still earn money from the songs they performed on.

He loved horses, he loved dogs and cats, he loved people, he could strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and he would give you his last dollar, or even the shirt off his back.

He was kind, he was wise and he gave great hugs.

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.

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.

Goodbye 2023, hello 2024! 

It’s a fresh start on another 365 days for us to seize and – as dad would say - make count, and if he was still here, I have no doubt he would still be making his days count.

He always did. 

"It was October in St. Louis Town

When We Heard That the Free Bird

Had fell to the Ground

We all said a Prayer 

“Opportunity knocks but once, softly, and then moves on swiftly, attune your heart to her call, your ear to her knock, open the door and be blessed. Let’s all make the day count.” – Charlie Daniels

Sage advice from a wise man.

And he knew what he was talking about because it had happened to him on multiple occasions in his lifetime, but I’m going to focus on three pivotal individuals who opened the door for opportunities.

On April 1, 2014 – in what many probably thought was an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank - The CDB released “Off the Grid-Doin’ it Dylan,” a tribute album to Bob Dylan who was a pivotal figure in dad’s career.

It was also the first album of new material released through Blue Hat Records distribution deal with Megaforce Records, which is primarily a heavy metal label, and the original distributor of Metallica’s early recordings

In 1984, the CDB was hard at work on its next release, ‘Honky Tonk Ave.’ The album was loosely based on a short story that dad wrote in his short story collection “The Devil Went Down to Georgia: Stories by Charlie Daniels” which would be released the next year.

The idea was to tie in the story and the album into something along the lines of Willie Nelson’s ‘Redheaded Stranger’ album, where the songs tell a bigger story.

It’s hard to believe that we’re just a few weeks away from the one-year anniversary of dad’s “changing addresses” – thank you, my spiritual big brother, Bill Wolfenbarger, for the use of that term.

It’s been a doozy of a year, dealing with the aftermath of losing dad, the lingering effects of the pandemic and how that has impacted what we’ve been trying to do business-wise, and the “sadiversaries” that have popped up over the last 11 months.

This upcoming “sadiversary” is the precursor to the biggest one of all, the first Father’s Day without dad in my life, then the one-year anniversary is just around the corner.

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a brand new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, here's a rewind from way back in 2003. - TeamCDB/BW

To you who have read this column for years this piece may seem a little redundant since I have written on this subject before. But it is such a frequently asked question that I feel I should revisit it from time 
to time.

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a brand new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, here's a soapbox rewind from 2009. - TeamCDB/BW

I guess it may be a sign of my advancing age or a healthy case of nostalgia in fond remembrance of a simpler time in my life, but sometimes I find my thoughts wandering back to a time and place in my young life when my responsibilities consisted making sure the wood box was full and keeping my grades above the passing line.

Normally the soapboxes I write are about dad, or something political in nature in the vein of Dad’s soapboxes he regularly wrote when he was still with us.

But with Mother’s Day this weekend, I thought it was appropriate to turn my thoughts to my mom, Hazel Daniels.

As I have said before, mom had a lot to deal with when I was growing up. Not that I was a particularly bad kid, or anything, but dad was on the road most of the year, so she was almost a single mother for long periods of time.

We did everything together, and she always took care of me.