From the Archives

Fiddle Flashback

Charlie Daniels' Volunteer Jam to go nationwide in '99

Posted Feb 09, 1999 12:00 AM

Looks like the South's gonna do it again. Sixty-two-year-old southern rock icon Charlie Daniels is ready to pack up his devil-whuppin' fiddle band and hit the road with the Marshall Tucker Band and Molly Hatchet for Volunteer Jam '99. The spring tour will mark the fist time the Volunteer Jam has traveled outside its native Tennessee. Back in the Seventies and Eighties, the one-day, all-star Nashville concerts hosted by Daniels became a tradition, featuring surprise performances from Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson, Billy Joel, Ted Nugent, Stevie Ray Vaughan and dozens more.

The thirty-four-date tour, scheduled to kick off in Jackson, Tenn., on April 21 and wrap up in Boston on June 13, came about after executives from concert powerhouse SFX Entertainment, aware of how well classic-rock tours by Fleetwood Mac, Styx, Steely Dan and others have done in recent years, approached Daniels last year about testing out the Jam in a similar context. After two successful trial concerts in Connecticut and New Jersey last summer with Marshall Tucker and Molly Hatchet in tow, Daniels began to map a tour for '99. If all goes well, the Volunteer Jam may be around for three years to come.

The tour also will coincide with the release of Daniels' new album, Tailgate Party, where CDB covers southern rock classics such as the Allman Brothers' "Statesboro Blues" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" -- not to mention's Daniels' own "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." During southern rock's prime in the Seventies, some of the music came with an us-against-them attitude, personified by the Charlie Daniels Band's defiant Mason-Dixon anthem, "The South's Gonna Do It Again." "You have to remember the lines were really drawn back then," says Daniels. "People looked down on the South a bit, so we sort of put our back up against the wall. It wasn't combative, it was just a way of saying, 'We're proud of where we're from.'"

Daniels is still proud of the South, but you won't see any rebel stars 'n bars flags onstage at Volunteer Jam `99. "We stopped using it because to me they mean one thing, pride in the South, but to others they mean [slavery]. And then some of the fringe groups, the skinheads, starting using the flag and it became associated with oppression and racism. I don't want anyone to think that's what Charlie Daniels stands for."

What does CDB and the Jam stand for? "It's just fun, good-time music," says singer, who's been fronting his band since 1971. "It's a bunch of guys saying, 'Hey, we're going to have some fun tonight. What you see is what you get.'"

Scheduled dates for Volunteer Jam '99