Daniels is a country music legend, best known for his fiddle playing and the hit song, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". Even though he's been in the music business for several decades, he says he still really loves what he does. With recent forays into gospel music, including 2001's How Sweet The Sound (Sparrow Records), as well as blues and Southern-style honkytonk, the good-natured Southerner finds himself endlessly touring these days, playing mostly secular music for thousands of fans from 7 to 70. In fact, "We're on our third generation of fans," he says.
So what keeps him going? What's he passionate about?
"My relationship with Jesus Christ, first of all," he says, as we chat by phone. "Then, my family, my country, the military, my music, and I love art, paintings and sculptures and things people have made with their hands."
Daniels is a truly passionate man, quite outspoken about a number of issues, and patriotism and America rank high on his list of things to talk about.
"I'm very passionate about my patriotism and my country and what I see happening to it. I don't know how much longer we can travel down this road," he says. He's not impressed with people trying to erase God from public life.
"In the grand scheme of things, all these intellectual people who say things like, 'there is no God, God is dead, God's not concerned, we're all our own gods,' are pitiful. It's like a flea trying to move a bowling ball. It means nothing at all except that it deceives people," he says. "The more people feel a certain way about something, the more they are convinced that they are right. But they're not right. They're wrong. And it says so in the Word of God."
Daniels, who is pro-life, anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, thinks that government buildings should be able to display the Ten Commandments because, in his opinion, they're not hurting anybody. He says he gets offended when he sees X-rated movies advertised on public theatre marquees, but says, "I'm not going to get a court order to have them removed. If I don't want to look at it, I don't look at it. It's that simple."
When asked if people who seem to be anti-God have succeeded in removing the deity from public life, Daniels gets noticeably worked up. His voice sounds more aggressive. "There are people out there, a lot of good Christian people in this country, millions and millions of them, who don't subscribe to new age theories and thoughts. Those thoughts are not pervasive, just well publicized," he explains. "Where Satan is so smart is he's moved in on the mass media and gotten a hold of school boards and the machinery of education. That's the thing going on right now."
