Jody Daniels ’77 of Athens, Ga., has been on a remarkable musical journey, both as an instrumentalist and as a songwriter.

A fixture of the Grassland String Band since its founding in 2013, he plays banjo, guitar, and mandolin in the ensemble, which began life as a trio with a bluegrass feel but came to absorb influences of jazz, blues, gospel, Cajun, and rock as its membership grew to seven players. He has also written many of the songs that Grassland performs, describing them as “preachy” because he strives to communicate useful messages through them. He credits Pfeiffer College, where he majored in English, with helping him develop the literary tools to make all the words in his songs matter, be they descriptive, a play on words, or simply part of a rhyme scheme that can make a lyric memorable.

The diverse backgrounds and capabilities of Grassland’s players enrich the band’s sound and approach. Drummer Todd Ferguson, also a choral director, studied organ performance at the University of Illinois. Grassland’s lone female vocalist is Leanne Daniels Badia, Daniels’ daughter; she majored in music at Georgia Southern University and played saxophone in its marching band. She’s married to Grassland’s Jason Badia, a guitarist who’s written many of the band’s songs, as has Leanne.

Daniels speaks with pride about Grassland’s many accomplishments, which include performing in Athens venues, recording albums, touring outside of Georgia and sharing festival stages with luminaries ranging from Greensky Bluegrass to Daniel Donato.

Grassland “is a very good band, and I feel very fortunate that I can write for them,” Daniels said. “There is a need for bands like Grassland in this industry. We’ve done a lot of really fun shows with major bands. We’re not the thing, but we’ve been a part of some great things.”

Daniels, a native of Charlotte, N.C., was born Joseph Charles Daniels Jr., but he has always been known as Jody Daniels. He lived for a time in family housing on Pfeiffer’s campus when his late father, Reverend Joseph Charles Daniels Sr. ’60, was a student there.

“I already knew Pfeiffer,” Jody Daniels said, explaining his decision to attend the College. “I knew what it was like. I knew that the class sizes were small and that that was going to be really good for me. And I knew that I had a sister (Della Daniels Raines ’74) there who was going to watch out for me.”

Jody Daniels settled in Athens with his wife, Monica, after a construction job for the now-defunct J.A. Jones Construction company brought him to that city. He eventually became the procurement manager for the Athens Housing Authority, a post he held for more than 30 years.

In Athens, Daniels found the ideal environment: He could “finally settle down and have some roots,” having moved a lot during his childhood as his father pastored several United Methodist churches in North Carolina and later, during his time at J.A. Jones where he worked in Saudi Arabia among other locations. Athens also allowed him to treat music as a serious sideline in a city with a thriving performance scene.

The strength of Daniels’ interest in music is hardly surprising. Both of his parents came from long lines of musicians and singers. In the 1950s, his father and his mother, the late Della Rae Woodle Daniels, joined forces with several of their siblings to form The Daniels Family Singers. The group performed on a television show that aired weekly on WBTV in Charlotte, N.C. Jody Daniels has posted the group’s recording of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on YouTube.

“The Daniels Family Singers did very, very well,” Daniels said. “They had a television show, and they had a record. And I remember thinking that I would also like a record someday.”

This is exactly what would happen: Throughout the 1980s, when he performed with Horizon, an Albemarle, N.C.-based country music band, he made several recordings at the Arthur Smith Studios in Charlotte, N.C. And in 1999, he paid tribute to his parents with the release of You’ve Got a Friend in the Business, an album of gospel music produced by Dick McVey of Nashville, Tenn.

In a sense, Daniels’ parents paved the way for these and subsequent recording projects, including Patches, Grassland’s fifth album, which is scheduled for release this year. They provided him with piano lessons and, then, an acoustic guitar at a young age. Daniels’ father enlisted him early as a musician who would sing and play during visits to hospitals and nursing homes or at church gatherings.

Even after Daniels left home, there was an expectation that everyone would eat andsing at family gatherings while he strummed his guitar. He remembers that his mother never asked him to be at a family reunion; she’d simply say, “you are bringing your guitar.”

“Playing music became kind of synonymous with who I was,” Daniels said. “It was always important, and I always loved to write. I look forward to continuing down the musician-songwriter path, and I’m grateful to Pfeiffer for giving me the inspiration to do so.”