Well, I just can't play the game anymore. I'm 63 years old, and I've been in the business for 40 years now. I take good advice and direction really well, but I don't need somebody that finished college two years ago to come in and tell me what I should be recording.

I can't wait to get off the bus and... go on stage and entertain people. That's my thing, that's what I love. I love doing it... I thank God I can make a living doing it.

I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I love being Charlie Daniels for good, bad, or indifferent.

I had been on the road for a long time and was not really getting anywhere. Bob Johnston, a friend of mine, had taken over Columbia in Nashville. He asked me if I wanted to come down. I did - thank God I did.

Well, I just can't play the game anymore. I'm 63 years old, and I've been in the business for 40 years now. I take good advice and direction really well, but I don't need somebody that finished college two years ago to come in and tell me what I should be recording.

Make sure to be honest with yourself, about if that's really what you want to do with your life - to make music. It takes a commitment - a tremendous, thick-skinned commitment of being the first one to get there and the last one to leave, doing what you want to do even if you have to work twice as hard as anybody else ever did.