Five Long Years Gone, and What’s Next? - Soapbox Jr.
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.
He was passionate about love for our Lord, for the love of our great nation and for those that served it.
He was one of a kind, and the hole he left behind is enormous, not only to Mom and I and our close friends and extended family, but also to the millions of fans he left behind.
It doesn't happen as often anymore, but sometimes when the morning cobwebs are still lingering in my eyes I forget that it all wasn't just some long convoluted dream that I'm finally waking up from.
I won’t retrace the entire week again, I’ll try to give the basics and make sure all of the pertinent soapboxes from the days after his “changing addresses” are up and I’ll post the links to the full soapboxes.
After a relaxing socially distanced 4th of July (and 5th) July 6th began with a desperate phone call from my Mom telling me to get up there and quickly, something was wrong with Dad. There was the immediate thought that maybe Covid had somehow gotten to him despite all of our caution – I didn’t hug my parents for over four months for fear of possibly getting them sick – but this was something else.
He was having a stroke, his second, the first was while snowmobiling in Colorado in 2010 and he recovered, so there was no doubt in our minds that he would do so again.
Had Mom thought these would be her last moments with him, she would have ridden in the back of the ambulance, instead, she rode with Donna Copeland, and I stayed as close to the ambulance as I could in my car.
After parking, the news was grim, and less than an hour since the phone call from Mom, all hope was lost. He wasn’t going to improve. The hemorrhagic stroke was devastating to his brain, and he was already in a twilight between the faces of those that loved him and seeing the face of Jesus.
For many years, the term for PTSD – at least in the military - was shell shock, and that seems more appropriate to how we all felt that day, we were shell shocked.
The doctors kept him on a ventilator just long enough so friends and loved ones could come to say their goodbyes as we no-doubt broke countless hospital rules that day.
There were so many hugs, and so many tears…..sooo many tears…feelings of unbelief, and still more tears…
The week that started out crushingly emotional and somewhat surreal continued from making the funeral arrangements on Tuesday the 7th, visitation and celebration of his life on Wednesday July 8 – sadly also Mom’s birthday – to the funeral on July 10th.
Two things that stood out so much that week was the love the communities of Mt. Juliet and of the larger Middle Tennessee area showed for Dad, from the trip from the hospital to the funeral home, and from the funeral in Murfreesboro to his plot in Mt. Juliet Memorial Gardens, there were so many people standing along the routes with American flags and signs that said “We love you Charlie!” It was such a beautiful tribute to him.
His fans loved him, and he loved each and every one of them. He knew they were the ones who bought the concert tickets and bought – or streamed – the music.
In the aftermath of that dreadful week, something immediately jumped out at me once all of the dust had settled. Dad’s legacy must live on for as long as possible. Therefore, one of the first things I did on July 7th was start his daily tweets back up. Something he wasn’t able to do on the 6th - and with minimal interruptions since - I’ve kept them going and will continue to do so as long as I am able, although they are tagged with “TeamCDB” so as to differentiate from when Dad tweeted them.
As far as continuing that legacy, and extending it even further, I had a couple of ideas early on. First was doing a tribute album. This idea goes back to while Dad was still with us.
After July 6, I still felt that was the way to go. Mom and I had discussions about the future and that was one of the no-brainer ideas I had, figuring we had at least four or five unreleased songs in the Blue Hat Records vaults to go along with artists covering the CDB, and I even know what we should have in the Epic Records/Sony Music vaults, probably better than anybody alive.
My other idea would have worked, if we hadn’t been in the middle of a pandemic. Just a few days after Dad went home, I met his manager, David Corlew, to talk about the feasibility of a farewell tour with the current band and a multimedia mixture of clips from pop culture references and TV movie appearances all merged into a touring celebration of Dad’s life. We could even have display cases in the lobbies of the venues with guitars and other artifacts.
But the sad truth was that the music business was still trying to climb out of the lockdowns and some band members, like Chris Wormer, were now exploring other careers, but I still felt this had life, I just didn’t know where, when or how.
I discussed it with countless people in the music business, and then finally somebody saw what I saw, an old friend got my vison, for both the tribute album and the touring celebration of Dad’s life, he even had some more intriguing ideas to add to the mix, including a behind the scenes making of the tour documentary series, and we’re got some elements of the tour multimedia screens that will be dazzling to say the least.
This is only the beginning. This is the first in development project I am able to discuss, so far. But as I said when I was accepting the 2023 ACM Spirit Award in Dad’s absence, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
I’ll talk a little bit more about what the future holds next time.
Thank you to everyone for the prayers over the years, we’ve needed each and every one of them.
Dad, we miss you and love you and want to make sure that your voice, your music and your philosophy lives on, and until we're face to face again, I am going to make sure your legacy endures.
And I’m confident that we’ve got a lot of like-minded folks who will join us.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
What do you think?
Let’s all make the day count!
Pray for our troops, our police, the Peace of Jerusalem and our nation.
God Bless America!
#SonyReleaseHonkyTonkAve
#BenghaziAintGoingAway #End22
Charlie Daniels, Jr
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