Charlie Daniels established himself as a legend of southern rock music with a Gibson Les Paul guitar and a fiddle, but he's always had a piano "in the house," whether it's at home, onstage or in the studio. In a recent visit to the Baldwin Showcase in Nashville, he talked about the role that pianos play in his life and music.

Growing up in Wilmington, NC, the piano was a center of entertainment for his family. "I remember my dad, his family," Daniels recalls. "They all loved to sing, and I can remember on Sunday afternoons, there was a piano at my grandmother's house, and I can remember ten or fifteen people ganged around, singing songs. Somebody would sit down at the piano and they would sing these old songs, singing harmony. It was form of entertainment at the time."

There was a piano in Daniels' home, too, and although he gave up on piano lessons after a few weeks, he still feels the presence of a piano is important. "I think having a piano in the home is a way of encouraging young people to get into music," he explains. "The instrument's sitting there, to play either by ear - there's nothing wrong with playing by ear, that's how I play - or go to lessons. There's nothing wrong with taking lessons. It's a wonderful thing, whether they ever intend to pursue it as a livelihood as I have done and devoted my professional life to playing music and performing, or whether you just want to do it for fun.

"Whether you just want to be able to buy a piece of music or sit down and learn a piece by ear and play, it's a whole lot of fun," he continues. "It's therapeutic and relaxing. I mean, I can sit down with my instrument and I can just travel miles and relax and think and motivate myself, and feel like I can kind of put it on my guitar, and just think. Somebody can sit down at the piano and noodle around and relax, and if you're mad you play a little something like dah dah dah daaaah (he sings the signature figure of Beethoven's Fifth symphony)."

As an aspiring musician, Daniels focused on fretted instruments - particularly guitar - and he left North Carolina in the '50s to play rock and roll. He moved to Nashville in 1969 to do session work and he played on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline, New Morning and Self Portrait albums. In 1973 he stepped into the spotlight as a band leader with "Uneasy Rider." Two years later his Fire on the Mountain album sold two million copies on the strength of a pair of rebel-rock anthems, "Long Haired Country Boy" and "The South's Gonna Do It." He crossed rock, pop and country boundaries in 1979 with "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," which sold a million copies, topped the country and pop charts, won a Grammy and three Country Music Association awards, became a cornerstone of the Urban Cowboy movie and pushed sales of his Million Mile Reflections album past the 3 million mark.

Daniels has added several titles to his resume through the years. He can justifiably call himself a fiddle player, an author and even a political commentator (thanks to some recent, highly publicized columns on his website about the war in Iraq), but he still wouldn't call himself a piano player. Onstage and in the studio he leaves the piano playing to longtime band member Taz Di Gregorio, but he still likes to have a piano around. "It's fun noodling around on one," he says. "When I write songs, a lot of times I start with a riff or some kind of musical thing. I'd get a whole different look, even by changing from electric guitar to acoustical guitar, or maybe sitting down at the piano and hitting a couple of chords that sound totally different voicing-wise than they would on the guitar, and possibly give me an idea to start a song. I couldn't go on into it and play it on piano but it's a good possibility I could get something started."

There's one more advantage that a piano offers above and beyond most musical instruments. "Nobody's going to pick it up and walk out with it," Daniels jokes. "Even if you're home is broken into, you're not apt to lose your piano. If there's some guy who could pick up a piano and walk out with it, he's perfectly welcome to what else I've got there."

Daniels has a new piano to noodle around on now - a Baldwin SF10 that resides in his studio. Itll be used as the CDB finishes up an album in progress and on future CDB projects.