Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir by Charlie Daniels

Author:Charlie Daniels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2017-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

BIG SHOW, BIG CROWDS, BIG CREW

In 1979 we prepared to do the biggest tour we’d ever done. We would be playing major venues, carrying sound and a custom light system, three tractor trailer rigs, and three buses. We were adding a horn section and three female backup singers from Los Angeles; we called them the LA Reflection Section. We also took Ben Smathers and the Stoney Mountain Cloggers, a Grand Ole Opry dance troupe. Altogether this added up to fifty people.

We needed someone to coordinate concert and backstage security. So we hired Rick Rentz, a former Green Beret who owned a concert security company in Connecticut, and he traveled with us full-time.

I needed an assistant to help arrange my schedule, handle meet and greets after the concerts, fly with me on the promotion tours, and handle the retail record-store appearances I was doing so much of, so I hired Bill Yarbrough, who we called Bill Bro, and he went everywhere with me.

As things got crazier and more hectic, we added Junior Rose as a second security man.

It made for a tremendous show, but looking back I can see that we fell into the same trap that a lot of young artists who taste real success for the first time do. We thought bigger was better. The entourage was indeed impressive coming down the road with three trucks and two of the buses all painted up with the band name. The show was an extravaganza. But what the people had heard and come to see was The Charlie Daniels Band. Everything else was just icing on the cake and a lot of extra expense.

I see young artists nowadays doing the same thing, adding stage settings, elaborate lighting systems, and extra personnel and vehicles. In many cases, they are totally unnecessary and super expensive, eating up the bottom line every time a wheel rolls over.

I’m all for expanding and enhancing the show, but I think there’s a happy medium in between the things that actually improve a show and the point where the ego takes over and it becomes superfluous glitz.

Just one of the many lessons I learned and will pass on as I go along.

We were selling out big arenas and getting a lot of attention from the media. The 20/20 television show sent a crew out to travel with us for a few days and do a segment about life on the road with the CDB. We did Austin City Limits, The Fall Guy, and the network music shows that were so popular in those days.

The Million Mile Reflections tour continued hot and heavy through the end of 1979 with basically the same personnel. We did make some changes in the LA Reflection Section, one of the changes involving a young lady who replaced one of the backup singers in late 1979.

Her name was Carolyn Brand. Later on, in October 1983, her name was to change to Carolyn Corlew when she married my road manager and friend David Corlew.

Carolyn

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