*NOTE* CDB guitar tech, Roger Campbell, penned this ode to a dear old friend, and we wanted to share it with you today. – TeamCDB/BW
No, no one has died, but yet we lost a faithful and beloved member of the CDB family today.
"On January 30, 2010, Charlie Daniels suffered a debilitating stroke in Colorado and was forced to end his 50 plus year touring and recording career. The once-great fiddle player’s voice and music were silenced for the rest of his life until another stroke took his life ten years and six months later on July 6, 2020."
That is how the last ten years could have played out.
I have to say I’m floored over the reaction to the past two soapboxes chronicling the passing of my father. It seems that Part 2 touched a lot of people as many have said they cried as they read it, which sounds about right, I cried as I wrote it. I’ll have one more soapbox chronicling the week of dad’s passing, and then I’ll see what else might be rolling around in my head that can be put into print.
Back to that terrible week of July 6th…
As I sit here, it’s Saturday morning/afternoon, July 11, 2020, the day after we laid my father to rest.
I think it goes without saying, that this has been the worst week of my life, bar none. The man I’ve known for 55 years, who, along with my mom, have always been there for me is gone.
Charlie will be back with a new soapbox on Tuesday. In honor of Memorial Day, here's a Soapbox Rewind from 2014. - TeamCDB/BW
My first memories of war were on a cold gray Sunday afternoon in December in 1941. Our family was gathered at my Grandfather's house on the Carolina Beach Road in Wilmington, North Carolina enjoying the closeness of our family ties.
Activism in the cause of something you deeply believe in, when carried out by a private citizen is a noble thing and a precious right of our Republic.
But when institutions, put in place to serve the public in a fair and impartial fashion step over the bias line, it harms the very foundation of liberty and justice for all our nation was founded on.
To say these last few weeks have been trying, nerve-wracking, confusing and uncertain is the grossest of understatements.
Even watching the president’s daily coronavirus briefings did little to glean enough information to form any solid opinions, the negative and abrasive questions of a totally biased media, the sometimes stilted science-speak of some of the officials and guests left you wondering what they actually said.
“We’ll all stick together, and you can take that to the bank.
That’s the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks!” - Charlie Daniels 1980
It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years since one of the most impactful CDB songs was first introduced to the public, “In America.”
I just perused the headlines at a major online news source and if that was all the information I could obtain, I would have an extremely depressing day. I’ll admit there is enough bad stuff to dominate the front page or lead story of any news organization right now, but what really irritates me is the total omission of, or relegating to boilerplate status, anything uplifting or hopeful.
The coronavirus did not suddenly pop up on the city streets of the world, it didn’t get there by itself, it was carried in the body of a human being.
There may be controversy about the exact location at which it originated but it is a proven fact that its origins are somewhere in the city of Wuhan, China.
I am going to do my level best to aim this column straight down the middle, glancing neither left nor right, in what the politicians in DC call a bipartisan fashion.
It is an attempt to circumvent personal political preferences, step around the hyperbolic, the rhetorical and the prejudiced vendettas so firmly ingrained into our minds by media on the left and on the right.
