Never Look at the Empty Seats Quotes

“So, at least from my perspective of stability and longevity, what you’re looking for in representation, labels, agencies, or record producers is people who believe in you, and sometimes the smaller entities are where you’ll find them.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“So many young artists get the impression that bigger is always better when it comes to record companies, booking agencies, and managers. This is true only to the degree that they believe in you, only when you have at least one important person that goes to bat for you every day. One of the problems with any music business entity is that there is always an internal game of musical chairs going on. There is a very good possibility that the person or persons that believe in you will be fired or move on to greener pastures, leaving you to the mercy of those who are not so impressed with you. I’ve had that happen to me a couple of times. It can really take the wind out of your sails for a while. But you just have to batten down the hatches and deal with it. More than likely if the new regime doesn’t believe in you, it’ll be willing to suspend any contracts and let you go anyway. If you’re in it for the long run, just pick up the pieces and move along.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“They’re always there, nipping at your heels. If you can’t hold your spot, they’ll gladly take it.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“There is an art to entertaining a crowd. If you’ve got a bevy of hit songs, you can entertain by simply playing them one after another. If you’re a knockout in size 28 jeans who can take away the breath of the females in the audience by simply walking on the stage, you’re entertaining. But since I have never fallen into either category, I have had to rely on other attributes.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“When you develop an attitude of “I’m going to accomplish what I want even if I have to work twice as hard as anybody else,” you’re going to get there.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“Guess I’ll hang it up for tonight. Goodnight planet earth. God bless.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“It was to be another one of those moments when just a few words will change your whole life. She said, “You have been invited to join the Grand Ole Opry!” Did I hear her right? Did she really say what I thought she said? At the age of seventy-one, was I really going to realize one of my longest-held and fondest dreams?”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“In November 2007, we were doing a show called Christmas for Kids at the Ryman Auditorium. It’s a show to benefit underprivileged children at Christmastime, started by the drivers who drive the touring buses used by the Nashville artists.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“As I approach my golden years, I find that the creative juices still flow bountifully. I’ve got enough album concepts and ideas to take me years down the road, and as long as God gives me the strength, I’ll be writing and recording new music.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“I will never run out of new projects. I’ve got them backed up in my mind, and when I feel one is complete enough, we just get the band together, call our engineer, and proceed to make some new music. I did a duet album called Deuces with artists ranging from”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“My manager came up with the idea of our own independent label. We had a recording studio that I had seriously upgraded and was capable of handling any kind of project we wanted to attempt. We had a distribution network. We could hire independent promotion people if we felt the need. Most importantly, we could record anything we danged well pleased, with no interference from outside interests. So, why not? Enter Blue Hat Records.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“We were a band without a radio format but not without a following. As always, our concerts were our bread and butter. We continued crisscrossing the country, playing our music and entertaining hundreds of thousands of concertgoers each year. I decided that as far as my recording career was concerned, from then on I would record whatever struck my fancy, without being concerned about it having to fit mainstream radio formats, whatever genre, whatever style.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“For the first time in more than twenty years, I was without a recording contract. We were no longer an act that a major label would want to sign. We did not even remotely resemble what was happening on radio, which was increasingly being dominated by younger acts.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“So when we received another request to do the spring commencement address for the class of 1996 and since it fit into our tour routing, I decided to give it a shot. Well, as soon as the news was released, a few of the college students expressed disdain that the powers that be would select somebody who had never been to college and was known more for redneck songs than for the more genteel pursuits of academia. Soon the criticism showed up in the college newspaper and local media. The pushback came mainly from two seniors named Moore and Leonard. They seemed to think it would be a disgrace to be addressed by someone they considered several cuts below the intelligence level required to speak before such an august body of young men and women who were preparing to go out and make their way in the world. What they didn’t realize is that it was my world they were getting ready to go out into. I had been making my way in it since before they were born and had some things to say about life after cutting the apron strings that could prove just as beneficial as anything they had gotten out of their books.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“What they didn’t realize is that it was my world they were getting ready to go out into. I had been making my way in it since before they were born and had some things to say about life after cutting the apron strings that could prove just as beneficial as anything they had gotten out of their books.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“It was time for another album, and as so often happens, you’ll set off in one direction, change horses in the middle of the stream, and the whole thing turns into something better than you had envisioned it.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“HEART OF MY HEART, ROCK OF MY SOUL, YOU CHANGED MY LIFE WHEN YOU TOOK CONTROL”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“There is usually very little plausible reason for a show to run late. I have no patience with bands who, for no other reason than sloppiness and ego, make the paying customers wait for a show to start.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“I’ve always ascribed to the theory that if you can’t get what you want, take what you can get and make what you want out of it, and we tried to make the best situation we could out of whatever we were presented with. If there were only twenty people in the place, you played for those twenty people. If what you do pleases them, they’ll be back and probably bring somebody else with them. And it snowballs. That’s how you build a following. Bring your “A” game every night, and never look at the empty”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“I’ve always ascribed to the theory that if you can’t get what you want, take what you can get and make what you want out of it, and we tried to make the best situation we could out of whatever we were presented with. If there were only twenty people in the place, you played for those twenty people. If what you do pleases them, they’ll be back and probably bring somebody else with them. And it snowballs. That’s how you build a following. Bring your “A” game every night, and never look at the empty seats. CHAPTER 24 GEARING UP FOR THE LONG RUN Jeffrey Myer left the band to join Jesse Colin Young, who quit The Youngbloods to start a solo career.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“I had tried. I had worked hard and established a toehold and had a chance at a future in the behind-the-scenes end of the music business. But to be honest, it could never compare with the thrill of walking on stage in front of a crowd of people and turning them on with a live performance. In the end, I had to follow my heart and admit that I’d never be completely happy until I had proven to myself and everybody else that I had some world-class music in me and the guts and tenacity to meet the competition head on and breathe the rarified air of sweet success in the business that I loved so very much. I was thirty-four years old and starting all over again, going up against guys ten years younger and ten times better looking than me, but none of them could possibly want to make it more than I did.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“You have to recognize opportunity, no matter how subtle the knock. Everything doesn’t happen at once. One thing leads to another as the building blocks of your life start to take form.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“and if you haven’t lived through it, you couldn’t possibly understand how it was.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“Competition is good, and the only way to win is to try a little harder than everybody else in the game. The sooner young people find that out, the better off they’ll be.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“You’re concerned with the people who showed up, not the ones who didn’t. So always give them a show, and never look at the empty seats!”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“One morning on the way to the studio, I stopped at a drugstore for something. There was this dingy little guy with tangled rat’s-nest hair trying to buy a bottle of cheap wine but he was short a dime. Somebody in line behind him paid the ten cents for him, and he bellowed, “Thank you, brother, the revolution will be won on ripple.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“You have to recognize opportunity, no matter how subtle the knock. Everything doesn’t happen at once. One thing leads to another as the building blocks of your life start to take form. This was one of those times, and I just knew it.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir

“I was and still am a big Dylan fan and admirer, so I asked Bob Johnston if there was any way he could let me play on just one session. Sessions in Nashville are scheduled so you can fit four into a day: 10: 00 a.m., 2: 00 p.m., 6: 00 p.m., and 10: 00 p.m. As it happened, the guitar player they had scheduled for the 6: 00 p.m. session couldn’t make it and wouldn’t show up until the 10: 00 p.m. session, so Bob fit me in for 6: 00 p.m. I was the hungriest musician in the studio. I hung on every note that Bob Dylan sang and played on his guitar and did my best to interpret his music with feeling and passion. When the session was over, I was packing up my guitars to head to my club gig, and Bob Dylan asked Bob Johnston, “Where is Charlie going?” Bob told him I was leaving and that he had another guitar player coming in. Then Bob Dylan said nine little words that would affect my life from that moment on. He said, “I don’t want another guitar player. I want him.” And there it was. After all the put downs, condescension, and snide remarks, after all the times I’d driven to the hill above my house and shook my fist at Nashville and said, “You will not beat me.” After all that rejection, none other than the legendary Bob Dylan was saying that I might be worth something after all. It’s bits of encouragement like that that keep you going. Once in a while something just lights you up and you say, “Yeah, I can do this.”
― Charlie Daniels, Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir