By Peter Cooper • THE TENNESSEAN • March 24, 2009
Like a lot of people in this Music City, Charlie Kelley plays for a living.
"Because of what we do, a lot of us don't feel like we age," said Kelley, a Grammy-nominated musician and producer who inspired and conceived tonight's The Stars Go Blue fundraiser at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Ford Theater. "We have the Peter Pan syndrome, but we're not Peter Pan, and we have to take our health seriously."
For Kelley, 2008 was a hard and long lesson in such things. In May, his wife, Great American Country television personality Nan Kelley, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. She endured grueling chemotherapy until October, when treatment ended.
"After Nan's last radiation treatment, we thought, 'We're in the clear,' " Kelley said. "Then, three weeks later, the doctor told me I had colon cancer."
December brought a Grammy nomination for Speechless, an instrumental album Kelley recorded with LynnMarie Rink. He was in a bed at Centennial Hospital, recovering from surgery to resection his colon, when he heard the news.
"They had given me morphine, and I was pretty out of it," he said. "I kept falling back asleep. But the doctors found out about the nomination, and they were excited about it, and it got me to thinking that maybe I had a voice that coul d reach out to people and raise some awareness about this disease."
Other than his time in 1990s country band The Buffalo Club, Kelley has most often been a sideman and behind-the-scenes guy. Currently he's part of Jamie O'Neal's touring band, and he has also played guitar for Keith Urban, SheDaisy, Doug Stone and others.
Teaming with Rink in The Boxhounds, Kelley has somehow managed to make the electric guitar a featured instrument in polka music. He has also produced music that has brought polka to new (often younger) audiences. What hasn't he done? Well, he hasn't made the kind of salary that would allow him to make a significant donation to colon cancer awareness.
"I wish I had buckets of money to give away, but I don't," he said. "In thinking about this, though, I realized that I've made friends with some very kind people whose talent could help raise money and spread the message."
So tonight, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Hal Ketchum, O'Neal and some special guests will gather at the Hall of Fame. They'll sing songs and speak about a disease that kills more people annually than breast cancer and AIDS combined. Nan Kelley will serve as the night's hostess. There'll be auctions and a meet-and-greet, and Kelley will likely talk a bit about his sad last year and happier new one.
"The cancer that they found through doing a screening was about the size of your thumbnail, and the cells were highly aggressive," Kelley said. "The doctor said, 'If you hadn't been screened, in five years you'd have a big, big battle.' Now it's been three months, and I feel normal again. And normal is amazing. I'm back out there, playing."
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