Vince Gill – Straight Shooter
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Vince Gill wasn’t born with a guitar in his hands, but the country music legend damn sure didn’t waste much time getting acquainted with one. Gill, who’s racked up 21 Grammy Awards (and counting), more than any other male performer in the history of country music, began plucking around on an old parlor guitar at the age of two, an act as autonomic as breathing. His fascination with the instrument fueled childhood dreams of being part of a band, an important distinction because Gill has always been most comfortable fitting in – something he did recently when he joined the Eagles on tour, filling in for the late Glenn Frey. The Oklahoma native is just wired that way. He’s never been driven by fame or adulation, or by a hunger to see his name up in lights, happily working as a session musician long before breaking it big. In fact, Gill still finds great joy in playing on other artist’s records, something he has done more than 500 times over his career. His well-deserved celebrity – Gill has been named the Country Music Association’s Male Vocalist of the Year five times, and its Entertainer of the Year twice – may allow him the freedom to call his own shots, but it sure as hell hasn’t gone to his head.
“I’ve been in bands before. I’ve been a sideman,” Gill says. “I kind of know how to act in whatever role, and I think that goes back to the way we were raised. You’re not going to be a showoff. You’re not going to be an arrogant kid. For me, it has always been about the music.”
Like rings of a tree, the stages of Gill’s musical journey can be marked by a guitar of some sort. There’s the Gibson ES-335, which was given to him by his parents at age 10 as a Christmas gift. He bought his first acoustic, the Martin D-41, while attending Northwest Classen High School. The 1942 Martin D-28 with the signature herringbone pattern? He scored that prize in the mid-1970s, while he was on tour with Bluegrass Alliance. The man selling it wanted $2,500, a price way beyond Gill’s means at the time, so he negotiated a trade, giving the man his D-41 and writing a check for $1,600.
“I emptied out my bank account,” Gill says, “so I was dead broke, but I had that 1942 D-28.”
While the Vince Gill backstory is populated with myriad guitars and a deep love of bluegrass, country music, and rock & roll, it’s relatively tame when compared to the lives of other legends, guys like the dark-starred George Jones, who spent a good part of his career drinking himself into a straitjacket, or Johnny Cash, who for years battled drug addiction. Even Gill’s idol, Merle Haggard, spent time in San Quentin State Prison before turning his life around to sing and play a complex, loose-shackled, intensely durable brand of country music.
Gill has no such turbulence in his past. A plainspoken, no-nonsense, straight shooter, Vince Gill was raised by parents with old school sensibilities, the kind who expected their son to live according to the principles that come from generations of working the farm. The rules were simple: Toe the line, and all was right with the world. Do or say something that didn’t make sense, and prepare to suffer the wrath.
“My dad was pretty gruff, but he was fair,” Gill says. “There was no messing around much. If I wanted to keep playing my guitar, then I knew not to step out of line.”
His father, a lawyer and administrative law judge, was a lover of country music who played guitar and banjo with friends at parties and dances. He taught his son the rudimentary chords and encouraged his interest in music, much of which Gill picked up on his own. (The piano and violin lessons he suffered through in grade school, along with playing in the school orchestras, almost guaranteed that Gill would be self-taught when it came to the guitar.) By his teenage years, Gill had given guitar lessons a try, only to abandon them in favor of his other passion, golf. He was happier playing by ear.
“I took some guitar lessons in junior high school, but as I look back, I don’t think they were really informative,” Gill says. “It was something to do at the time. My teacher was a neat old guy, and I enjoyed him. But I just basically learned songs. That was something I was already doing on my own.”
By high school, Gill’s talents were becoming harder to ignore. He played with a series of local bluegrass bands, performing in Oklahoma City bars with the local favorite Mountain Smoke. One night, they opened for the country rock band Pure Prairie League, a group that would play a substantial role in Gill’s future. His parents greenlit these late night shows on the condition that he keep up his grades, and by graduation it was clear that he would pursue music full-time. He packed everything into a van and headed off to Louisville, Kentucky, to join the band Bluegrass Alliance. The year was 1975. Gill was barely eighteen. He toured with the group for several months before jumping to Ricky Skaggs’ Boone Creek Band, a brief stop that would yield a lifelong friendship (and frequent collaborating partner). A few months later, a 19-year-old Vince Gill moved to Los Angeles, where he started working as a session guitarist and harmony vocalist for other artists.
“Southern California was a great time,” he says. “I moved there to play bluegrass music and be in this great band [Sundance]. The music scene there was unbelievable.”
Sundance, a bluegrass group fronted by fiddler Byron Berline, ended up scoring a gig at the famed Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood. The star-studded audience included country music heavyweights Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell.
“It was surreal, seeing all of these people I’d idolized. I was awestruck for a minute, and then I introduced myself and made some friends. I guess you could call it networking – whatever it was, I jumped in with both feet.”
Like a Wharton Business School graduate, the opportunistic Gill was eager to climb the ladder, never really content, always on the lookout for a better caliber of musician. In 1979, only four years after leaving home, he was hired as lead vocalist for Pure Prairie League. His transition from acoustic bluegrass to electric country rock was seamless. He toured extensively with the band and recorded three albums. A single, Let Me Love You Tonight, featuring Gill on lead vocals and David Sanborn on saxophone, cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
While playing with the band, Gill met singer Janis Oliver, of the country music duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. They married in 1980 and had a daughter two years later, a storybook beginning to a decade that saw him jump at the chance to join The Cherry Bombs, led by Rodney Crowell. Gill occupied the revolving guitar chair, filling in when Albert Lee was touring with Eric Clapton and Richard Bennett with Neil Diamond. It also connected him with keyboardist Tony Brown, who was just starting in A&R for RCA Records. Brown felt that Gill was not only a great guitar player but a great singer, and convinced him to make the move from Los Angeles to Nashville.
Gill signed a three-record deal with RCA, but his career there was marked with fits and starts: Two Top 10 singles and a 1984 Academy of Country Music Award as Top New Male Vocalist were the highlights, both swallowed whole by mediocre sales for albums that were unimaginatively produced.
To complicate matters, Sweethearts of the Rodeo was having substantial chart success, with six Top 10 country singles between 1986 and 1989. Gill forged ahead as a much-in-demand session guitarist and singer, most notably for Roseanne Cash, but a lot of country music fans knew him only as Janis Gill’s husband. Existing in the shadow of his famous wife, and with his own solo career stalled, finding an audience continued to be a struggle. If Vince Gill doubted himself through any of this, he never let it show.
“There was plenty of support from people in the industry that I respected,” he explains. “I was still making music. It didn’t matter if it was on one of Emmy’s [Emmylou Harris’] records, or Conway Twitty’s records, or one of my own. I was still a part of the process and doing something that I loved. I didn’t have to be the center of attention. It didn’t have to be about me. Besides, the people I respected the most all said the same thing: ‘You sing good, you play good, you write neat songs, you just haven’t had the right record yet.’”
Tony Brown helped find the right record.
Pissed that he couldn’t produce the acts that he’d signed to RCA, Brown moved on to become the president of MCA Nashville. He knew that Gill was greatly undervalued as an artist, in large part because RCA didn’t understand exactly what they had in the straight-shooting Oklahoman – an underrated songwriter with world class guitar skills and a voice tailor made for ballads. How could RCA hope to make Vince Gill a star if they couldn’t make the most of his strengths?
Gill, for his part, was facing another pivotal career choice – Dire Straits wanted him to join the band as a second guitarist. It was a tempting offer for someone still struggling to find his identity. Gill thought long and hard about making the jump, but ended up turning down Mark Knopfler’s offer, instead continuing to chase his country music dream. Into the void stepped Brown, convincing Gill to make the jump from RCA to MCA. Brown then went to work producing Gill’s first album for MCA, When I Call Your Name. The title song exploded, reaching Number 2 on the country charts and earning Gill his first Grammy, for 1990 Best Male Vocal Country Performance. The album was certified platinum for selling over a million copies and established Vince Gill as a bona fide country music star.
From there, Vince Gill simply dominated the 1990s. He was asked to host the 1992 Country Music Awards broadcast, bringing a warmth, sincerity, and humor that was an immediate hit with television audiences. He hosted the show for 12 consecutive seasons, a record for hosting a television awards show. Fourteen of his 21 Grammys came during the decade, with Brown producing virtually all of his work. In ’91 he was named the CMA Male Vocalist of the Year for the first time, an award he would go on to win in five consecutive years. Throw in Seven Grammys for Best Male Country Performance, two Grammys for Best Country Song, back-to-back CMA Song of the Year awards, and a CMA for Album of the Year, and that’s just scratching the surface of what Vince Gill accomplished during the 1990s. He was Michael Jordan with a pick, Tiger Woods with a guitar, Wayne Gretzky with a microphone.
Not bad for a guy content simply fitting in.
For Vince Gill, the 1990s weren’t entirely paved with gold. His father passed away in 1997, and the following year, his marriage to Janis came to an end. His 1998 album, The Key, marked a return to a traditional country sound. It was the bestselling country album of the year, with the Grammy-winning hit, If You Have Forever in Mind, and a duet with Patty Loveless, My Kind of Woman, My Kind of Man. He stepped outside of the country music mainstream to sing a duet with Barbara Streisand. He was arguably as popular as ever, but there was a problem: Everyday Vince Gill wasn’t nearly as happy as Vince Gill the Entertainer appeared to be onstage.
Enter Amy Grant.
Gill’s 2000 marriage to the contemporary Christian/pop crossover artist was a game-changer, fulfilling him in ways that his superstar status never could. They had been in each other’s orbit since 1993, when they met to record a video for House of Love, their duet from and the title track of Grant’s 1994 record. It was, essentially, love at first sight. Fast forward to the end of the millennium. With Gill single and Grant divorced from Christian singer Gary Chapman, the two reconnected and began dating. They were married on March 10, 2000, on a rainy hillside outside Nashville, with Grant barefoot and bagpipes in the background – forming Nashville’s newest power couple. While it took time for their blended family to coalesce – Grant and Chapman had three children during their 15-year marriage – the birth of Gill and Grant’s daughter, Corrina, proved to be the missing ingredient.
“She’s the glue of this whole family,” Gill says. “She came along and bonded us all in a way that nothing else could.”
The rest of the 2000s have been a star-crossed blur. Seven albums have followed, along with seven more Grammys, induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His most recent album, Okie, is Vince Gill at his straight-shooting best, tackling such weighty issues as sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and race, and doing so with the Oklahoma sensibilities that make him who he is today.
No doubt his father is looking down proudly at the man Vince Gill has become.
Take me back to your Oklahoma roots.
I was born in Norman, Oklahoma, a small college town just south of Oklahoma City. It’s a great town. We moved up to Oklahoma City when I was four, so I really grew up there. Both of my parents were farm people in that they grew up on a farm and had a great sense of the earth. They knew about hard times, and they knew what it was like to work for everything that they had.
My father was a lawyer, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of my life. My father was quite a character. I like to say that he was a lawyer by trade, but a redneck by birth. He’d go to work in a suit and tie, his hair slicked back and his sunglasses on, and then he’d come home, put on overalls, no shirt and a ball cap. He was a very imposing man – six foot three and over 300 pounds. It was like having John Wayne, Patton and Clint Eastwood all rolled up into one guy.
Were your parents musicians?
My mom played the harmonica a little bit. My dad played the banjo and the guitar. He and some friends had a little band that would occasionally play at outdoor events, which was just for fun. I always got to play along, and just being around musicians was a thrill.
What was your childhood like?
I was a Beaver Cleaver kid. I was pretty normal. I liked reading and still do, and I liked reading books about the Civil War. I also loved biographies of sports people that I admired, so if there was a book on Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, or whoever the great baseball player of that era was, I was going to read it. I also played all the sports. I was a decent golfer. I played on the high school golf team, and I played a lot through high school.
You knew very early on that you were born to play music. Were your parents supportive of your dream?
My folks never forced me to follow a blueprint, never said that I had to get an education before I jumped into music. They knew from the time I was seven years old what music did to me. I invested my whole life in it, and they didn’t throw up any roadblocks or try to talk me out of it.
When did you start playing guitar?
I can’t remember the exact age, but I’ve seen pictures of me when I was one or two, and I’ve got this small parlor guitar that I’m dragging around. It was broken and didn’t have all of its strings, but I beat around on that thing every waking moment. My father had two guitars of his own, and I played them as I got a little older. I learned the rudimentary chords from my dad. At one point he got me a tenor guitar, which only has the first four strings, and I tuned it like the first four strings of a regular guitar. I played at the show-and-tell during second and third grade.
When did you get your first “serious” guitar?
I was 10 years old. I can still remember finding that gift under the Christmas tree. My folks scrimped and saved, and they took that old tenor guitar of mine and traded it in on this new electric Gibson ES-335. It was the best Christmas gift ever, a great instrument – in fact, I still have that guitar today. It’s an instrument that I would have sought as a grown, matured player – there are a lot of great guitar players that play the 335 today. I might not have fully appreciated how great that guitar was at the time, but it was inspiring to have something that great to start learning on.
What kind of music did you grow up on?
I grew up with Western swing. Bob Wills was king, so the basis of their sound is in my blood. It was the music of dance halls all over Oklahoma and Texas, partly because it was such a perfect way for rural towns to get people together. There wasn’t much to do in those small towns, but people would come together for a night of swing. I was later able to join the Time Jumpers, which gave me an avenue to play that kind of music.
I loved listening to records and trying to emulate what I was hearing. I’m self-taught and all by ear, and just by hearing the music come through the speakers. I’d ask, “How do they do that?” and just sit and practice and mess around until I made the same sounds. I also had my favorite records. I loved Chet Atkins, and I loved the Beatles. Merle Haggard was my biggest inspiration. The way he led a band, the way he played, the way he sang, the way he wrote songs…what gave him the greatness that he had was that he went to prison and knew what it felt like to have his freedom taken away. He sang with an angst and a hope that was different than most people. Merle was the pinnacle on every level to me. Nobody equals Merle in my eyes.
When did you start playing in front of people?
My parents were not real strict. They let me go play in bars while I was in high school in different bands. They said, “You keep your grades up and don’t give us any reason to not let you.” That’s all I needed to hear. All through high school I was out playing gigs and traveling around with bands, sometimes out of state. Then somebody called me – I was 18 – and said, “Hey, do you want to come be in this band in Kentucky?” So I packed up everything and I moved there.
When was the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
The first time I ever heard myself on the radio was in Oklahoma City, on I-40. It was the first record I ever made, and I was 17 years old. I can’t even begin to tell you what that meant. It gave me this amazing sense of hope that I could make a career out of doing what I love.
You moved from Oklahoma City to Louisville right out of high school. That’s a big jump, especially at such a young age.
The opportunity was too good to pass up. There was a band called Bluegrass Alliance, which was one of the really well-known bands in bluegrass during the ‘70s. A lot of great musicians went through that band. My folks supported my decision even though I was young and didn’t know anything. I had all the stuff that I owned in my van – a guitar, a few t-shirts, my golf clubs, and whatever else I had – and I went off to Kentucky to play in this band. I found a little place to live. My rent was $15 a month. I stayed in an attic in this old house in Cherokee Park, with a house full of musicians that all loved bluegrass music. It was a great experience. It gave me a chance to travel around the United States a lot and play at different kinds of festivals. It was a really fun, innocent period in my life.
Were you prepared for life on your own?
One of my favorite memories of those days was when I ran out of clean clothes. Obviously my mom wasn’t around, and she’d always washed my jeans and my t-shirts. I had this pile of dirty laundry, and I said, “Now what do I do?” So I went to a laundromat and I started watching people, and that’s how I figured out how to wash and dry my clothes.
I remember finishing my first load of laundry and trying to fold everything. A woman was there at the time and saw me struggling. She was laughing her head off. She said, “You don’t know how to fold your clothes, do you?” I said, “No, ma’am, I’ve never done my laundry before.” She showed me how to fold my shirts, and it’s something that I still do to this day.
Your next move was to Southern California. You were a 19-year-old-kid.
I moved to Los Angeles to play bluegrass music and be in this great band. It was a great time in Southern California. The music scene there was unbelievable. I got some session work playing and singing on other people’s records.
You weren’t there long before your talent was noticed by the likes of Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell.
The first real gig that I did with a band that I’d joined was a gig at the Troubadour in L.A. It’s one of the most iconic music clubs in history. We opened for Guy Clark, who was a great singer-songwriter from Texas. I couldn’t believe who was there that night – people like Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. I think Linda Ronstadt was also there that night. I couldn’t believe it. Here were all these people that I’d seen on the backs of records and studied my whole life, and suddenly I’m performing in the same world as them.
That performance led you to join Pure Prairie League.
I trusted my instincts – I made friends and networked. Back then it was about jumping in the water and see how deep it was. Joining Pure Prairie League was a big step because they had a major label record deal. That was an exciting period in my life. I was part of three records over three years with them. I remember they asked me if I had any songs, and I wound up getting five songs on the first album I did with them. That shocked me because I had only been writing for about a year. Overall, I wrote about half of the songs on the three albums I did with them.
What came after Pure Prairie League?
I started playing with Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. Rosanne was having big hits, and I was her guitar player, which was great because her music featured the guitar a lot. It was flattering because she had worked with people like James Burton and Albert Lee, arguably two of the greatest guitar players that ever lived. James played with Elvis for years, so I was occupying a pretty heavy seat for a guitar player. One of the guys in the band was a guy named Tony Brown, who also used to play with Elvis. He was a piano player, and he was also an A&R guy – a talent scout – for RCA Records in Nashville. He said, “Man, you need to start making country records!” And so he played a major role in RCA signing me in 1983.
Let’s talk about this period in your life. While you achieved some success with singles like If It Weren’t for Him, Oklahoma Borderline, and Cinderella, stardom wasn’t immediate.
I made my first record and not much happened. The same thing with my second and third records. Then I moved over to MCA Records a few years later and got another opportunity. Looking back, I am really grateful for the years of struggle. It was a humbling experience. There were times when I felt like I was beating my head against the wall and saying, “Why isn’t this working?” Then at some point you realize that maybe there’s another way. Maybe it’s better if you go around the wall instead of trying to run through it. So I found a way to go around the wall.
Did the fear of failure ever enter your mind?
No, because I was young and I didn’t know any better. There’s some beauty in that. The best part was I didn’t need much back then. When you don’t have much, you don’t need much. That felt good to me. Progress was more important than success. It wasn’t about how much money I could make, it was about how much better I could be. Was I improving as a guitar player? Was I playing with better musicians? Every step felt like I was making progress, even though it might not have looked like it financially. I was satisfied with that.
Why couldn’t you break through during those early days with RCA?
Who knows why. I can say that my name’s on those records, so it’s on me that they didn’t work and I’m okay with that. I left RCA on good terms. They believed in me as a singer and as a musician, but I knew that they didn’t believe in me as a songwriter. That was important to me, so I decided to move on.
What did people like Tony Brown and Emory Gordy teach you about songwriting?
Tony and Emory knew the value of a good song. That’s why they both wound up being great producers and having successful careers. They produced the majority of my records. Emory produced the first two, and Tony produced all the ones I made in the ‘90s. They believed in me as a songwriter, which was really a great gift.
If I learned anything, it’s that songwriting is about being a good communicator. Songwriters are like painters. They paint pictures with their words and in their songs. Hank Williams used to write songs that were simple, but there’s a real genius in not cluttering up a song. There’s an undeniable beauty in the simpleness of a Hank Williams song.
You were also a prolific session musician in Nashville during the 1980s.
I sang on so many records during that stretch. It’s how I made a living. It meant something that people thought enough of what I did as a supporting cast member to be a part of those records. And in all honesty, I would have been fine had that been my career, because I didn’t have to be at the center of it to have it matter. I just had to be a part of it. I still work on a ton of people’s records.
What did you learn from being a session musician?
Being part of the supporting cast teaches you to know your place. You come in and you do the work that they want you to do, that you’re hired to do. You don’t get to just do what you want and play what you want to play. You’re a small part of something bigger. You have to make something work, you have to make something fit, you have to be a chameleon.
In 1990, you were adding background vocals to Dire Straits’ On Every Street album. What happened as a result of that?
I was invited by [lead singer and guitarist] Mark Knopfler to join Dire Straits. It was at a time when I was broke and struggling. I had had a record deal for several years, but couldn’t turn that into hit records, and couldn’t turn that into a big career, even though I was trying. This would have been a very lucrative move, and musically it would have been a great move, but I turned it down.
You bet on yourself.
I had just changed record companies and I had invested a lot of my life in country music. I didn’t want to bail on it and then wonder years later what might have been. But it was a tempting offer. It was as if the golden egg was being dangled in front of me. Looking back, it was the right decision. My next record completely turned my life around.
That record was When I Call Your Name. Why do you think it was such a massive hit?
I think it’s as simple as having the right record at the right time, and having the right song at the right time. I moved from RCA to MCA, had seven years of struggles, and had a few records that landed on the charts, but I never had that out-of-the-box home run, that real career record. I’d made my first record for MCA, and we released two singles but not much happened, so the pattern wasn’t any different. Then here comes the right song at the right time, and that was When I Call Your Name. There was just something about it that struck a chord. After all of those years it was fun to go, “So that’s what having a hit record feels like.”
What are you most proud about with this song?
One thing is that it is a traditional country record. I really like a deep-rooted, hardcore, twangy kind of country music. The old school stuff, like those great old records of the ‘50s and ‘60s that I grew up on. To me, that’s country music. There’s a lonesome piano intro on that song, and as soon as it happens you know what record it is. The piano player was a guy named Barry Beckett. He came in late one night and played the intro to When I Call Your Name. It was perfect. That’s why I love making records, because you just never know when that special moment is going to come. In this case, the piano gave the song its definition and identity. You knew exactly what song it was as soon as it started.
Patty Loveless sang backing vocals on When I Call Your Name.
We had this great intro, we had everything else done, and we wanted to put harmony on it. Patty Loveless had become a dear friend. She has this beautiful, aching voice that is pure Kentucky. I had sung on her records for years and thought we sounded really good together, so I called and asked her if she’d come sing on one of mine. When she sang that first line of harmony I looked at Tony and he looked at me…we both got chills on our arms.
After years of struggle, Vince Gill is suddenly a star.
I’m grateful for the years of struggle. People would say, “I can’t understand why you’re not producing hit records. You sing beautifully, you play beautifully, you play with great musicians. You’re writing songs with great songwriters.” For whatever reason it hadn’t happened. Then that song came along and changed everything. All it takes is that door opening. Then you have the opportunity of longevity, and you have the opportunity of making a difference and being heard. I was beyond grateful because it changed a lot of things, but it never changed my focus on what I loved and what I wanted to do.
How did you handle the fame?
Fame was interesting for me in that your anonymity was gone. Be careful what you wish for – there’s an element of that that is great, and there’s an element of it that’s not so pleasant. In some respects, those years of struggle helped prepare me for the fame, because I watched people react to success – I felt that some reacted favorably and handled it well, and some reacted poorly and didn’t. I saw enough of it to go, “I know I don’t want to act like that.”
In the late ‘90s, the country music being played on the radio changed. Suddenly, artists like Shania Twain were playing what was referred to as “Country Pop.” You stayed true to your roots and released The Key, an album with a hardcore country sound.
My dad died in ‘97, and I went through a divorce and all that, so that period of time was very trying. Those things certainly influenced me, but what drew me to want to make a country record – a real, traditional country record – is I saw that type of music waning in terms of how much was being recorded and getting played on the radio. I missed that style of music. My father’s passing triggered memories of all of those records I’d heard as a little boy. Songs that my mom and dad would play in my house, artists like Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, and Webb Pierce. So the rebel in me wanted to make this record to prove a point, which was that radio had moved on from traditional country music. I was right – they didn’t play that record very much!
The public’s taste may have changed, but you still had street cred where it mattered most – your peers. Tell me about Eric Clapton.
I was fortunate, because having the hit records opened up a whole new world of collaboration. I loved the fact that the phone would ring and you would never know who would be on the other end. Eric Clapton called one time and I answered the phone. He goes, “Vince, it’s Eric Clapton. I’m having a guitar festival down in Dallas, and I’m only inviting players I admire. I’d like you to be there.” This was the 2004 timeframe when I’d sort of fallen out of favor with radio. I couldn’t say ‘yes’ fast enough.
That was Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.
I can’t tell you what that experience did for me. At the time, I had been struggling with my place in the music world, but that one phone call reinvented me. It inspired me to turn my guitar up and let it fly, just to see what came out. I went into the studio with some really creative people, and with no deadlines to meet. Suddenly, all these songs started coming out of me – and they weren’t all country songs. I kept recording with no agenda, other than to see how these songs would turn out. We stayed in the studio for five or six weeks. By the time we came up for air I had recorded 31 songs.
Speaking of peers, the Eagles thought so highly of you that they asked you to join the band. How did that come about?
I’ve known those guys for quite a while – I think I first met them in 1980. After the band broke up, Glenn [Frey] and I became friends through our mutual manager, a man named Larry Fitzgerald, and his partner, Mark Hartley. They managed Glenn during his solo years. Glenn and I crossed paths quite often. He would come to some of my early gigs, and then he became obsessed with golf, like me. Sometimes I’d go along to a Lakers game with him. So we had some things in common.
There were other connections. I recorded I Can’t Tell You Why for an Eagles tribute album that they put together. Later, Joe [Walsh] and I became friends. I also worked with Don [Henley] on his Cass Country album, and we later performed a duet on an Elton John project. There were so many times our lives converged, so after a while I think everybody sort of said, “Well, this might be possible…”
Was it hard to put your solo career on hold?
Being in the Eagles was a different animal from my solo career, but it was special because I got to honor my pal Glenn. I think he’d be okay with me doing my best to sing and play his songs. As far as my solo career, it probably pales in comparison to my career as a sideman. The Eagles gig was like that. I just looked at it as helping friends out. I was thrilled that they wanted me to be a part of it.
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As a guitarist, what was it like playing with Joe Walsh?
Joe plays with a great brevity and restraint; there’s always so much thought he puts into each note. That’s what I like about him – his patience. It’s not about whittling a bunch of notes and trying to impress you. It’s the way he’ll bend a note, the time and care he’ll put into it. I’m just in awe of him.
You’ve won 21 Grammy Awards and have been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but you seem very down-to-earth.
I’ve watched plenty of people be the opposite of humble. My folks would have kicked my ass if I had acted any other way. That’s the way we were raised. You’re not going to be a showoff. You’re not going to be an arrogant kid. Being humble is natural to me. It’s not put on.
Do you enjoy the limelight that comes with winning all of those Grammys?
I don’t enjoy a lot of attention. I’m a little bit shy. I don’t have a problem putting a guitar on and playing and singing in front of 15,000 people, but in front of two or three I might be a little more uncomfortable. At the end of the day, I really like people. If somebody wants a picture, or somebody wants an autograph, that’s no big deal. That doesn’t bother me. It never has. I didn’t want to be a recluse, I didn’t want to run from anything, I didn’t want to all of a sudden be thinking I was something that I wasn’t.
Your wife is a superstar in her own right.
I’m lucky in that I married a woman that is the same, and that’s been a great gift. She could care less how successful she’s been. I try to be that way, too. We’ve both done okay, but we don’t jump up and down.
You’ve described your 2019 album Okie as a songwriter’s record. What do you mean?
I didn’t go into this project thinking any of the songs were going to be hits. My intent was to never get in the way of the song. I don’t play any electric guitar on this record. I only played a couple of solos on the entire record. The rest of it is just kind of moody, ethereal, all of us playing together, and nobody trying to stand out above the rest. I think the point of it was, hopefully, that nothing ever got in the way of the song.
To Vince Gill, what does it mean to be an Okie?
Oklahomans are very salt-of-the-earth-type people. We have a common sense that I like. I think what I took most from Oklahoma was common sense. It’s that matter-of-fact, no blowing smoke way of seeing the world, talking and working. I am proud of Oklahomans, and I’m very proud to be one. I try to bring that same focus to my songwriting, to say the most with the least words and to be genuine about it.
Okie has references to your wife, Amy Grant, on Honest Man and When My Amy Prays. Tell me about that.
It’s a running gag between us – you know you live in Nashville when you write your girl a love song and she tells you the third verse could use a little work [laughs]. It’s really great to have a friend that tells you what’s right and what’s not, and what’s good and what isn’t. It’s easy to be inspired by her because she’s so gracious with people. She’s the most welcoming person I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It’s easy to write songs about her.
What goes through your mind when you perform live?
I’ve done every conceivable kind of gig there is, so there’s nothing that’s going to surprise me anymore. I’ve been the opening act, I’ve been the middle act, I’ve been the headliner. I’ve been the act that nobody’s ever heard of. I got booked in a gig one time at a college during spring break, and nobody came. You have to have tolerance. If you have enough savvy, you know what kind of crowd you’re playing to.
You’re a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Until the 1950s, radio was the only way you ever heard country music, and it was the end-all to end-all if you were on the Grand Ole Opry. It’s not that way today, obviously, because of the changes in our country and culture and technology and all that. To me, the Grand Ole Opry has such a beautiful reverence that I’m out there playing probably a lot more than any of my contemporaries that are also members. I love the fact that they’re still playing bluegrass out there on the stage. It’s a place where you can hear all different kinds of music as far back as the 1920s, and you can hear it all in a single night.
Final Question: If you had one piece of life advice for others, what would that be?
That’s easy: Be kind.
- Mario Andretti – Full Throttle - February 4, 2024
- Tim Russ – Star Trek: Voyager - July 25, 2021
- Maeve Press – Everything’s Gonna Be Okay - May 23, 2021
