IN CONCERT
Sunfest featuring the Charlie Daniels Band, Kentucky Headhunters and more
When: Sunday, 2 p.m.
Where: Cowichan Exhibition Grounds, 7380 Trans-Canada Hwy., Duncan
Tickets: $60
Information: sunfestconcerts.com
Charlie Daniels has been writing songs for nearly 50 years. And some of them - including It Hurts Me, which was recorded by Elvis Presley, and The Devil Went Down to Georgia, his Grammy winning No. 1 hit from 1979 - have made him a legend in country music circles.
More than a decade ago, he tried his hand at another type of writing - one that has got him into more hot water than he could have imagined.
His biweekly essays in the "soap box" section of his website run the gamut, from mundane to heartbreaking. The posts that tend to make the headlines, however, are ones of a political nature. Inevitably, it is those that the country star feels most passionate about.
Daniels says that because he's a patriot with Christian values, in addition to being an outspoken critic of U.S. President Barack Obama, he has become a target of the liberal media that choose to see only one side of his story.
"The things I criticize are from the point of an American citizen who has lived on Earth for 75 years, and who has lived through every president since Roosevelt," said Daniels, a resident of Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
"I'm not a Democrat or Republican. I'm an American. I vote my conscience."
Daniels, who performs Sunday in Duncan, always signs off his posts with a thoughtful phrase: Let's all make the day count.
Suffice it to say, he has been getting every ounce out of life for decades.
The world-class fiddler and guitarist, who has collaborated with Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Leonard Cohen, fits easily into a range of musical categories.
Though he's most comfortable in country music, he is considered one of the forerunners of southern rock.
He is also a member of the Grand Ole Opry and has years of humanitarian work to his credit, including the Volunteer Jam, the charity concert he founded in 1974.
"Keeping up with everything, it's a pretty busy life," Daniels said Friday from a tour stop in Oregon, one of 100 dates the Charlie Daniels Band will play this year.
"It would drive a lot of people absolutely nuts, because there are so many commitments and time constraints and deadlines to meet. It's enough to run a sane person insane. But I thrive on being busy."
Daniels has been consumed of late writing his autobiography. He has roughly 200 pages completed thus far, which only takes him to the 1980 mark. As he goes over the events in his life, he isn't being thrown off by the rush of nostalgia. Daniels isn't much of a what-if type of person.
"If you have a wrong that can be righted, whether it be present day or in the past, if you can do it, I think you should. But there's a point you can reach where there's absolutely nothing you can do about something you have done, and the best thing to do is to let it ride. Learn from the experience. Move on from today. I can't do anything about yesterday."
Even though he always looks forward, some of his soap-box statements are putting some heat of the North Carolina native.
Daniels will take the heat over his comments - such as the July 21 open letter in which he wrote: "Mr. Obama, I don't think you like America very much. I think you'd like to redesign it from the ground up, to turn it into a lazy, unproductive, secular, socialist society" - if only his critics agree to do the same.
"I'm opinionated in my songs. There's nothing new about what I do, and I know some people aren't going to like it. This is a free nation. They have every right to condemn the things I say. But if you turn that around, I have the right to do the same thing. The only thing I expect people to do is to be as introspective and as truthful in their criticism as I am in my statements."
