Soap Box

​I have been working on an autobiography for around twenty years or so and never could finish it because my career is an ongoing thing and I just couldn't find a place to stop or pause it.

I have decided that with my induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, it would be a good place to pause the "first" 80 years.

So, I have been working on the bio lately, revising and rewriting, and it elicits a lot of memories of the early days, when in the summer of 1958 I cut the apron strings, left Wilmington North Carolina and went out into a world I knew very little about, armed only with a guitar, a dream and a four-piece band to make my mark on the world.

The early days are a time of learning and I learned fast, not out of intelligence but of necessity as I found that time, tide and the music business waits for no man, it rolls on like a river and most of the time you're swimming against the tide.

There are few constants in the ever-changing music business, but the one constant you can always count on is competition. Somebody always wants your job, whether it's a spot playing five hours a night in some back street juke joint or walking on the big festival stages in front of tens of thousands of people.

Everybody wants a record deal, and I'll have to admit that I don't understand today's record business as well as I did in the days when I got my first contract, it's changed a lot, but one thing remains the same.

There are only so many spots on a radio station play list and you and every other act fortunate enough to be making records are all competing for those few spots.

It�s a day in day out struggle for those who determine to "make it" a sometimes wildly rewarding, sometimes heartbreaking journey with no let up, no quarter asked and no quarter given, and if your depth of commitment is not bottomless, as Alexander Pope said, "Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring".

In other words if you're not in for the long haul and equipped to handle the rollercoaster ride, do yourself a favor, go home, get a job and play the Holiday Inn Lounge on the weekends, otherwise you're going to get your heart broken so many times you're apt to become a bitter person.

There is always a new crop of young people who come to Nashville every year to match talent and tenacity with all the other hopefuls who are trying to get that elusive recording contract or a favored position at a good booking agency.

Some of them will be around next year and some won't, some will get a job tending bar or driving a cab or anything to keep body and soul together while they wait for that break, spending their nights sitting in with bands in hope some record company exec will walk in and usher them into wonderland, their spare moments in songwriting appointments grinding out words and music, hoping the next one will be the one.

When I first came to town, Kris Kristofferson was working as a janitor at Columbia Studios and I remember when Tommy Cash was a room clerk at a motel.

So, it takes more than talent, sometimes you just have to outlast a dry spell, weather a storm or hang on by your fingernails, but if you've got something people like and if you're willing to fight the battles and develop a "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead� attitude, you just might pull it off.

I wish all the best for all the young hopefuls who are willing to walk out on that high and shaky limb and go for it.

Hang in, hang on, hang tough.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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