Sharp As A Tack

Younger people, sometimes condescendingly, use the phrase "sharp as a tack" when speaking of their elders.

Charlie Daniels turns 82 today -- and he is, with all due respect, sharp as a tack. Chatting by phone, he's on point, enthusiastic -- both about his career and the interview -- proud that's he got a new book and three new albums out -- one with eight new songs he's written. Asked if 82 feels different than 22, he doesn't hesitate with his answer.

"If I told you it didn't, I'd be lying," he says in his charming Southern drawl. "Of course, your body ages. I can't do things I used to do physically. I used to jog. Now, I walk for exercise. My hands are not as loose and limber as they were when I was 22. But you adapt to stuff like that.

"And as far as entertaining's concerned, I think I'm a lot better. Nothing in the world takes the place of experience."

Daniels admits he's been asked when he's going to retire. His answer is not any time in the foreseeable future.

"It's what I want to do," he says of the 100 shows or so he plays a year. "I'm not going to say I'm driven, but I am very motivated by creating and performing music. My life is busy. It gives my mind something to do. Speaking for me, if I was to sit down in a rocking chair before I'm ready to, I'd be sitting there wondering what's happening over the next hill.

"I've traveled millions of miles and done thousands of shows, but music is so infinite. There's no way you can't be excited about it. So as long as the Good Lord's willing and my health holds out, I'll be out there playing music."

Daniels is the quintessential Southern gentleman, and admittedly, there's something kind of magical about being "ma'amed" by a living legend. That's a phrase he scoffs at, saying it's very kind, but "I don't think of myself that way."

"I've just been very blessed," he says. Were fans to visit his home -- which is a mile off the road near Mount Juliet, Tenn. -- they'd have to go to the "basement" to see his platinum and gold records. "You'd be able to tell someone in the music business lived here then." But upstairs, the two-story log house is very much the home he's shared with his wife for almost 40 years.

"I like Western art, Western paintings and bronzes," he says. "She likes antiques." He jokes that he gets one room to decorate as he wishes, and it's his den, filled with guns and Indian warshields and kachina dolls -- "a very masculine sort of room." The rest of the rooms are "very antiquey." But either way, he says, "we want to be comfortable in our home. A painting is not what it's worth on the open market, it's that I enjoy looking at it when I walk by. I may walk up and touch the bronzes. It's for us. It's what suits us."

Raised "in a hunting and fishing environment," Daniels says he's still outdoors whenever he can be, and he has a shooting range, a place to hit golf balls, a picnic patio and more at his home. But he admits you won't find him out riding a horse or a four-wheeler until after the first frost. "I was raised in the woods with the ticks and the chiggers, but I'm literally afraid of them [now]." At one end of the spectrum, he says, he and his wife spend part of the winter in Colorado, "hopefully just watching it snow" and going snow mobiling. On the other, "we might take off for a couple of days and go to New York and catch some shows and eat at some good restaurants."

But on stage, Daniels aims to be completely consistent.

"We come to entertain people -- that's the total reason for being there," he says. "It's not about ego. It is about self-gratification, because we enjoy doing it. But we're there for the crowd. I refuse to do a bad show."

NAN What's Up on 10/28/2018