Vince Gill has been a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group The Eagles since 2017. The experience reminded him how essential songs are to building career longevity. He’s seen how fans positively react when the rock group recreates note-for-note their album recordings on stage. He loves knowing his role in the band and says his favorite compliment came from Don Henley. Soon after Gill joined the Eagles, someone asked Henley why he put a country guy in the Eagles.
“He smiled and said, ‘Because he knows how to be in a band,’” Gill recalled, in an exclusive interview with American Songwriter. “That was just such a beautiful validation. I don’t have to have the attention. I don’t have to have the spotlight. I don’t have to do all the talking. It’s proven to me that it doesn’t really matter what role you have, just as long as what you’re trying to do is make it better. That’s what I like.”
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Vince Gill Misses Playing His Hit Songs
Gill has also learned he misses playing his own songs. To remedy that, the Country Music Hall of Famer will launch his four-night residency at Ryman Auditorium on Thursday. The residency runs through Sunday, and tickets start at $65.
“I think that I sing those Eagle songs fine and all of that, but they weren’t written for me, weren’t written melodically for my voice,” says Gill, who planned to start rehearsing for his Ryman shows on Monday. Anybody could sing a great song. A great song doesn’t need a great singer or the original singer or any of those kinds of things. But these songs of mine were kind of tailor-made for the way I sing.”
Gill’s hits include “When I Call Your Name,” “Never Knew Lonely,” “Liza Jane,” “I Still Believe in You,” “Don’t Let Our Love Start Slipping Away,” and “One More Last Chance,” which he says he enjoys starting his shows with.
“I tell people all the time that ‘One More Last Chance’ is my ‘Whiskey River,’” Gill says. “Willie started every show for 50 years with Whiskey River, and I’ve kind of done the same with ‘One More Last Chance.’ I love how that song feels and makes people feel a great groove, all that kind of stuff. I don’t think I’d ever change that.”
However, Gill said the rest of the setlist was up for grabs. He doesn’t typically write set lists, but he was so excited about the opportunity to perform his songs on the Ryman stage that he started compiling them weeks ahead of the shows. Gill thought he might do one night with all hits, another with new songs, an evening with just bluegrass, and another with classic country.
Then he changed his mind.
Vince Gill: “Maybe I’ll Miss, or I’ll Hit a Homerun”
“I thought, ‘Well, people might come and be disappointed,” he says. “They got what they got for the night they got a ticket for. I decided to do kind of the same thing every night.”
Gill explained that the set list includes about 40 songs, 10 or 11 of which are new tracks that no one has heard.
“I played ’em out some, but not enough to where anybody would really know them,” he says. “I’m being pretty tender with it all and trying to figure out quite the right thing to do. Maybe I’ll miss, or I’ll hit a home run. You never know.”
Either way, Gill says, his heart is in these songs, and he’s proud of them.
“More than anything, it’s just me reconnecting with what I love most, and what I miss most is playing and singing these songs,” Gill says. “That’s a lifetime of work that I’ve created.”
(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
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