Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Charlie Daniels to sing at RiverCenter Nov. 18

‘Long Haired Country Boy’ comes to town

The devil went down to Georgia, according to Charlie Daniels’ famous hit, and odds are good he’ll play it here Nov. 18.

“Of course. We’ll do it or we’ll get lynched,” Daniels said in a recent interview.

The Charlie Daniels Band, led by legendary musician Charlie Daniels, is giving a benefit concert for Laughing Child International, a ministry operated by Columbus native Shane Clark. Camp Laughing Child in Mexico is for children with HIV-AIDS. Worldwide, 2.3 million children are afflicted. Jonathan and Lisa Moore, a Columbus-based Christian duo, will open for the event at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.

Earlier in the day, Daniels will be part of a barbecue lunch auction featuring music by Eastwind Bluegrass with auctioned items including Daniels’ autographed fiddle. Mayor Jim Wetherington has declared Nov. 18 “Charlie Daniels Day,” and Maj. Gen. Michael Ferriter, commanding general of Fort Benning, is scheduled to appear at the auction.

Columbus connection

Daniels and Clark met more than a decade ago, when Clark was working for Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity International and Daniels performed an occasional benefit for the housing ministry.

“He’s one of my favorite people,” Daniels said of Clark. “He’s a great guy and he’s got such a great heart. He’s spent time in India, and all over the world. He could do anything but he chooses to spend his life caring for children under the radar. My hat’s off.”

Clark’s India connection was initially with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. Before founding Laughing Child in 2002, he led ecumenical and inter-religious affairs on behalf of Habitat. In 1991, Clark founded Word Made Flesh, a non-profit that serves the world’s most vulnerable poor. He was the organization’s international director until 1995. Word Made Flesh is believed to have established the first pediatric AIDS care home in India.

Clark has a saying: “If the Church will learn to cry, the children will learn to laugh.”

“The answers are not more organizations or more institutions but healing relationships,” he has said.

Clark enjoyed a six-year learning/serving relationship with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In 1999, Clark published a photographic book, “When I Grow Up,” for which Mother Teresa wrote the foreword. (The world-famous nun died in 1997.) Clark dropped out of Hardaway High School at age 16, then passed the GED. He is a graduate of Asbury College in Kentucky and completed master’s-level study with a mentor, Sam Kamaleson of World Vision International. He’s had one year of Ph.D. studies in Oxford, England. A musician himself, Clark teamed up with Daniels on a duet on Clark’s album, “Deep Blue Hymns.”

Charlie Daniels was born on Oct. 28, 1936, in Wilmington, N.C., and raised on a musical diet that included Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass bands and the rhythm and blues and country music from Nashville’s radio stations WLAC and WSM, according to Wolfman Jack Entertainment. He graduated from high school in 1955. Already skilled on guitar, fiddle and mandolin, Daniels formed a rock ’n roll band and began touring.