Vince Gill is a country music lifer. A multi-platinum artist who has sold more than 30 million albums, earned 18 CMA Awards and received 22 Grammy Awards in addition to being a member of the Grand Ole Opry, Gill’s skills as a vocalist, instrumentalist, storyteller and songwriter also landed him in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Currently splitting his time between being a member of The Eagles and being a solo artist, the Oklahoma native is stopping long enough to look back at a professional career that began when he moved out to Los Angeles in 1976 to join fiddler Byron Berline’s backing band Sundance. With next year representing a significant milestone, Gill has been in the studio working on an ambitious project that is a nod to these past five decades.
“I’m 68 and I’m trying to bank as much stuff as I can,” he said with a laugh. “I just have to get it in the can and finished. I’ve got all these songs I’ve been writing and at some point, I’m going to wake up and wheeze like an old woman where I’m not going to want to sing too much on a record anymore. But while I’ve still got my faculties, I’m taking advantage of it.”
He added, “We’ve come up with a pretty interesting idea. I left home 50 years ago in 1975. I got out of high school and took off. I started trying to live and play music and I’ve managed to do that all these years. I believe this project is going to be called Fifty Years From Home and we’re going to put out a series of EPs—one a month for a year to celebrate these 50 years of me being gone, so I’ve been recording a boatload of music—all kinds of music. It kind dabbles in a little bit of everything. I’ve been in an amazing creative space and I’m trying to take advantage of it.”
Gill’s approach to embracing such a broadly rich career has a precedent. In 2006, he released These Days, a groundbreaking four-CD set featuring 43 new recordings of diverse musical stylings. And befitting someone who is the musical equivalent of Forrest Gump, Gill’s list of guests on this project included John Anderson, Guy Clark, Sheryl Crow, Phil Everly, daughter Jenny Gill, wife Amy Grant, Emmylou Harris, Diana Krall, Michael McDonald, Bonnie Raitt, Leann Rimes, Gretchen Wilson, Lee Ann Womack and Trisha Yearwood. It was this kind of creative, out-of-the-box thinking that had Gill going from thinking about maybe releasing two songs a week for a year to instead shifting gears to the monthly EP strategy.
“You see a lot of people putting a lot of content out a little bit at a time,” he said. “Everybody loves information in this day and age. Rather than a 10-song record that shows up, this’ll be something unique and people maybe looking forward to it and thinking, ‘Next month, he’s got another one coming. Let’s see what that’s about.’ Who knows?”
Currently on the road with a 10-piece band, Gill is looking forward to dipping into a vast canon that will allow him to mix old and new.
“This band I put together is a monster band,” he proudly pointed out. “They are some of the best players I’ve ever assembled in a band. I’m not touring constantly, so I don’t have a constant band that I always have put together ready to go. I had to put this together. It’s just full of my favorite people and musicians. There are 10 of us I think and it’s a pretty joyful bunch.”
At this point, he admits that his creative pursuits have more to do with self-satisfaction versus being a flavor-of-the-month, particularly when it comes to his current and future output.
“I’m playing quite a few new songs in the show just telling people that while this may not be your cup of tea, I’m going to show you what I’ve been up to,” Gill said. “This is what my creativity looks like these days. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing something you haven’t heard before. You might leave here feeling like you know me a little bit better and maybe something you heard might move you a little bit and that would be a great way to spend a night.”
Being tapped to become a member of The Eagles is one of Gill’s largest latter-day achievements. Having first gotten to know the band members as far back as 1980 when the band was on The Long Run tour which preceded a 14-year-hiatus, Gill’s first friendship came via the late Glenn Frey, with whom he shared manager Larry Fitzgerald. The two eventually became friends and golfing buddies. Over time, those relationships grew to include Timothy B. Schmidt, who Gill recorded “I Can’t Tell You Why” for the 1993 Eagles tribute album Common Thread, Joe Walsh who he shared stages with on Clapton’s Crossroads string of shows and Don Henley, who invited Gill to play on the former’s 2016 solo album Cass County. Following Frey’s passing, Eagles manager Irving Azoff reached out to Fitzgerald about Gill stepping in. It was a sentiment seconded by Henley.
“Don said I was the one guy he thought about the most of who he would even think about continuing this [band] with,” Gill shared. “We got to be close and I’m grateful for that friendship and kinship. It’s been a great experience. Everybody was kind of okay with it for the most part. There’s always going to be some naysayers and whatnot and you expect that. But it’s been a pretty positive and amazing experience and its given great validity to my life and career and I’m glad that they reached out.”
With the perspective of time and experience, Gill is content with an elder statesman role in which he’s calling the creative shots and not having “…these aspirations of hit records again so much or singles.” Whatever he’s doing, the man who at one point turned down a shot at being a member of Dire Straits in order to bet on himself is doing what he loves and hoping his fans will come along for the ride.
“For me, I’m grateful to still be creative,” Gill explained. “Just being 68 years old, I realize that I don’t have as many years left as I have had being here. I don’t mean that in a morbid way, but in a very realistic way. I just want to take advantage of the years of creativity that I have left in all ways, shapes and sizes.”
Vince Gill will be appearing on July 11 at the Beacon Theatre, 74th Street & Broadway, NYC. For more information, visit www.beacontheatre.com or call 866-858-0008.
