By Don Allred
from my 2008 show preview:
After recording and touring with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Nashvlle's Charlie Daniels began his 1071 self-titled debut with a mellow vibe (a gentle remynder that he had produced the Youngbloods' Elephant Mountain), but soon veered toward that road map on the cover, where he’s been ever since,
From https://myvil.blogspot.com/2005/12/sharp-blessed-men.html , about Charlie and a country tribute album to ZZ Top:
Speaking of fiddles, and guitars for that matter, why isn't Charlie Daniels on this thing? There's a very metal-fistic "Sharp Dressed Man" on his '98 Tailgate Party, and the Charlie Daniels Band certainly helped unroll the Interstate of pop-rock-country crossover. The CDB hitched a surefooted, rollcalling (own-namedropping) "The South's Gonna Do It Again" (do what? "It"? Mercy!) to theotherwise often unwieldy new Southern Rock bandwagon. "South's" stitched a Symphony Sid" jitterbop riff through Allmanesque flow, showing even Les Brers how to get real concisely gone for a change!
But Chazz doesn't just run up a musical flag or lay out a picnic blanket(although that pre-ZZ beard's a sparkling white napkin, across hiscrimson-cowboy-shirted belly). No, the good licks speak in many tongues, especially to each other.
His latest all-new release, 2002's Redneck Fiddlin' Man, is a bit off its feed, fave rave "My Baby Plays Me Just Like a Fiddle" notwithstanding. Yet even Redneck's thinned-out dancefloors do sometimes get prowled by cinch-gutted riffs (shades of his ol' Volunteer Jam/talk-radio buddy Ted Nugent), and coiled/"laidback" ones too.
The latter bring to mind '75's perhaps semi-glazed, surely watchful "Long Haired Country Boy,"
talkin' blues, cash, and other trash (he's still with us, on 2001's well-named
Live Record: Now he'll "tell a joke," not "take a toke," but one's as dry as
t'other).
On 2002's The Ultimate Charlie Daniels Band comp, whole flotillas of crap, like
"Simple Man" and "What This World Needs Is a Few More Rednecks," get an answering
mini-saga of "Talk to Me, Fiddle," a brief-lived fiddle-and-mandolincarnation of
the ever elusive (Persian-fairy-tale-named) "Layla," and the "multi-colored
junkyard" expanses of "Honky Tonk Avenue." Which leads to a "Funky Junky," for
more crass sand in your pearl, Merle.
Not bad but certainly nationwide, Charlie's got all this stuff he has to
carry around. Stuff he sees from the stage (as in "All the world's a . . . "),
while insatiably touring. Maybe that's what he really kneejerks (and sometimes
headbangs) against.
Also on Ultimate is "Trudy," in which a sweet, green
gambling table detours into an avalanche of details. After which the narrator's
attention span is equally split between the distant Trudy and a certain missing
high roller. Our boy can't sort this out, but he done, son. So the music rocks on
through his cell block, and into the jigsaw skies.
Meanwhile, Rev. Dylan's old sideman/student Bro. Charlie just keeps
rebuilding some jigsaw soapbox, planing and playing over all its creaks and leaks.
Sometimes the spirit finds its own level, even so. Like on 1999's Road Dogs, where
rapneck-grabbing powerchord purgatory finally exhales "The Martyr." This
song brings the legend of Cassie Bernall, who supposedly said "Yes" when asked "Are you a Christian?" before she was killed at Columbine---which could have made for the most horrendous (or mere) kitsch, even if it hadn't been refuted by survivors. Instead, he imagines her last moments, quietly reminding me of a "mushroom cloud" we were shown in school (actually more like a strange flower, in that case).
An effect in this case slightly dampened by proximity to "Wild Wild Young Men," his
first whiny scolding ever.
But not his last. Tighter than Ultimate, Live!'s
band-as-fiddle dynamics ultimately clunk into the bonus (studio) rant "This Ain't No Rag,
It's a Flag" ("and we don't wear it on our heads." Actually, We do; check your
current audience, CD).
Less snarlin' than gnarlin', "Rag" gets drowned out by
"The Last Fallen Hero" 's solitary drum on Redneck Fiddlin' Man (parade's end,
but no rest). "Amen," sez the fiddler, sawing a blues out of "The Star Spangled
Banner." And, on How Sweet the Sound's (2001) Elvis-brushed hymnbook, Charlie
tends to send us way up yonder in a minor key. And that's alright now, Mama.
It's the gospel truth.
from Nashville Scene ballot comments re 2007 releases---
The Charlie Daniels Band's Deuces is Charlie's duets album, with his stalwarts serving here as first-class bar band, hoisting a set of covers and re-hashed personal chestnuts. No Z Z Top numbers, much less guest shots, alas (see CDB's Tailgate Party for the former, and other good cover versions) But "Jackson," with cool-wailin' Gretchen Wilson, has a sleek stomp and kick, somewhut a la Z Z. Descending porch bass notes are greeted by wristwatch-tapping rhythm guitar, in "Signed Sealed Delivered I'm Yours," with Bonnie Bramlett. Even the lesser tracks are rattled along by the characteristically, expertly harnessed speediness, which sometimes gets looser and surfaces as anxiety in his manifestos. But on this album, "Let It Be Me" (with Brenda Lee) is more poignant for its briskness, its flexing: the female duet partners, especially, know how to soothe him (and the old, familiar songs) just enough, to bring out the brio over the brittleness. Without undue earnestness getting in the way---like Vince Gill does on "The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down."
(Contrast with the Allman Brothers Band's version on The Band trib Endless Highway: they don't allow themselves to solo much, much less over-emote—Gregg doesn't even groan! But he's appropriately unhappy.) The Scruggs brothers whine their way through "Maggie's Farm"; they should please shut up and pick, like Daddy Earl does. Still, Charlie and Darius Rucker have a fine time zinging the hapless, right through "Like A Rolling Stone," like Perez Hilton and Michael Musto with better material.
The joke's on Charlie in "Evangeline" ("I hear your laughter in the rain"), where he's ably assisted by the Del McCoury Band (haven't yet determined whether CDB also plays on the tracks featuring guest instrumental chunks), and Del himself sounds swell, in homage to Elmer Fudd (a supporting role, and he's fine with it, as always; suits him better than solo spotlights).
"What'd I Say" is filigreed with the curly burly slightly furtive sub-Ray intonation of Travis Tritt's trivia; "Daddy's Old Fiddle" doesn't have enough of Charlie's old fiddle or Dolly Parton's old schtick (she's expressing interest like a politician on an off day); "Long Haired Country Boy" is best of the superfluous, with Brooks & Dunn clapping along and staying out of the way of the song's long-lidded, don't-tread-on-me undercurrent. Charlie don't "take a toke" here no more, but the line about the TV preacher stays, despite his own return to the fold, and it foreshadows the advent of "God Save Us From Religion," with Charlie's fellow deacon, Marty Stuart. The title is the sumna of a "barroom philosopher," who's mainly building a castle of bottle caps, but Charlie and Marty surely sound with him (consciously intended as sympathetic irony?). Charlie and Montgomery Gentry are all big, high-strung, hit-the-note guys together on "Drinkin' My Baby Goodbye," and finally, we get an actual instrumental, "Jammin' For Stevie," with Charlie and Brad Paisley trading well-considered, enterprising guitar stunts, proving that Southern Rock can still be more than a museum. Nice vapor trails and aftervibes to end the album on a peak; as Paisley would say, it (and at least 60 %of the CD) is "time well wasted," to say the least. (I'm under-rating a little, in honor of Charlie's currently evident allegiance to "Always leave 'em wanting more."
(An expanded edition was released as Duets in 2021, but I haven't heard it yet.)
More NScene ballot comments---
2016: Charlie Daniels, Night Hawk---the title character, that quiet fella over there, lost his wife and babies in a sagebrush fire, so best not mess with him, This here set is at home on the emotional and musical range, so we also get a cowgrass "Big Balls In Cowtown" and Western Swing "Stay All Night"---riding econo, and sounds like he might be playing all the instruments (no drums, that I've noticed yet, anyway---plus a couple of re-done co-writes, "Billy The Kid" and "Running With The Crowd", plainspoken, but more cautionary than preachy, as he keeps a sharp eye on the party (the latter song could be taken as something about runaway populism, as well as reg'lar Saturday nights getting carried away, turning into shoot-outs and necktie parties----I wonder; he's managed to stay out of any political news that I've seen this year, unlike his sometime talk radio colleague, Ted Nugent).
My favorite is "The Goodnight Loving Trail", a real place, main route of many a cattle drive, and name of course ready for implicit irony in this campfire waltz, at first tweaking the beard of the "old woman"---somebody who can't work the range no more, so he's the cook--but the narrator then admits "someday I'll be wearin' the apron too," cos what else can he do? No place else to go, as the desert wind dries him out, first preserves and then scatters his increasing flakiness---I'm paraphrasing, but not by much---also helps that CD's voice is as dry as the wind; no tears. (This is by Utah [Bruce] Phillips, AKA "U. Utah Figment", as referenced by the elusive UP's sometime duet partner, Rosalie Sorrels.)
Also "Ghost Riders In The Sky" and "The Old Chisholm Trail" give us more of the cinematic side, while a somewhut self-mocking serenade of a leetle cowboy fan makes for a slightly sly finale, mixing sentiment and sediment (he knows he's old and his themes are too, duh).
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