It’s still 80 degrees in Nashville, and Vince Gill has a stuffy nose and scratchy throat, and he’s huddled on the couch with Amy Grant, his bride of 24 years, talking about what used to be one of his least favorite subjects—Christmas.
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Hundreds of sentimental guitars surround the couple in Gill’s home studio. Each one, he said, has a story. And while Christmas was still nearly three months away on that early October day, they were very much in a festive mood.
In September, Gill and Grant released their first joint Christmas album, When I Think Of Christmas. They return to Ryman Auditorium for their popular Christmas residency Christmas at the Ryman from November 29—December 21. The couple marked over 100 headlining shows at the historic venue last year, the first co-headliners to achieve the milestone. Tickets for the event are on sale now.
“Last year, I said, ‘Thank you for doing this for me,’” Grant tells American Songwriter, looking at her husband. “He said, ‘Amy, I’ve come to love it, too.’”
Gill has always admitted he co-headlined the Christmas shows with his wife because they were meaningful to her—not because he brims with yuletide cheer. Gill’s hesitation wasn’t because her husband is a Grinch, Grant said. He just likes productions to change and evolve.
“He doesn’t like to do the same set list twice in a row,” she explains. “But now he’s got seven years of experience.”
“She likes it a lot,” Gill says. “Me, not so much. And that’s fair.”
However, the pair plan to change the show up a little bit this year as they’ve released When I Think Of Christmas, an 11-song collection inspired by their Ryman shows that includes Grant’s new song “When I Think Of Christmas,” and the couple’s new duet “‘Til The Season Comes Round Again.”
“We’ve never put anything out together,” Grant says, explaining the couple wanted to celebrate the season and their record-breaking residency with a project. Most of the album is earlier recordings. And, like the residency, Grant and Gill take turns singing the songs.
“Those evenings are just us going back and forth, and we thought, ‘Well, we should just have a (nostalgic) Christmas record the way we do these Christmas shows,” she adds. “Vince makes everything sound fantastic. He is a modern-day crooner, and we were trying to pick songs that reflected what we did in the live show.”
The album includes “The Christmas Song,” “Winter Wonderland,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” “Tennessee Christmas,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “O Holy Night” and more. Gill used many of the guitars surrounding the couple’s studio couch in the recording process. He knows the collection looks excessive, but after the 2010 Nashville flood that destroyed a practice space where local artists stored vast numbers of guitars, Gill doesn’t want to keep his instruments in cases anymore.
“I love the stories behind some of these guitars,” he says. “Somebody will come in here and say, ‘This is over the top. This guy’s got a hoarding problem.’ But I said, if I told you some of the stories behind some of these instruments, you’d change your mind.”
Gill uses the guitars like a diary. When he looks at them, the instruments prompt memories. Classic Christmas songs work the same way.
“When you think about it, we’ve sung these songs now for (decades), and that spirit of familiarity is in us,” Gill says. “We heard all these songs growing up, but we’ve also sung them half our lives.”
Gill notes the longevity and relevance of traditional Christmas songs every time he sings them. He has played with The Eagles for the last eight years and has noticed the same phenomenon with the group’s signature hits.
“The Eagles have been what they are because their songs are so great,” he says. “It’s the same thing with Christmas.”
The Country Music Hall of Famer can’t fathom playing a Christmas show without “The Christmas Song” because, he said, “it wouldn’t feel normal.” He looks forward to singing the crooner-style holiday tunes because they aren’t reminiscent of what he does in country music. And, as Grant said, he likes a change.
“You have to treat these songs with the respect that they deserve,” he says. “People are accustomed to hearing them. And if you deviate from what makes them so special, then I think you’re doing it a disservice.”
Grant says her husband makes everything sound better through guitar playing and singing. Last year, Gill couldn’t come to any of the Christmas rehearsals, so she compiled the setlist alone. She thought it sounded pretty good, but when the couple ran through the show during a long sound check, Gill jumped in with some changes.
“I went, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t happening, was it?’” she recalls. “He’s thinking tempo and key. I’m always thinking storyline. So, in my mind, it’s the lyric arc, and in his, it’s musically where it goes. And I think that’s a nice combo.”
Gill wrote out the new set list, which prompted Grant to quip that she was “totally lame” without him.
“Our strengths are in different places,” Grant says. “I’m not sure how we fell into this, but I’m glad we did.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Gill adds.
Grant loves the history of the Ryman, and Gill has long said country music’s Mother Church is his favorite place to place. Since it was built to be a church, Grant notes, Christmas music feels even more soulful within its walls.
“It’s beautiful to have slowly built a tradition in our hometown,” she says. “Every year, sometimes we’ll say, ‘Should we be done with this? Where’s the 35, 40-something year-olds who want to step up and do this?’ Nobody’s stepping up yet. So we go, ‘Well, I guess we’re still holding the baton. Alright, we’ll do it another year.’ But we just try to take it just one season at a time. It still feels like our time to be doing this.”
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