Vince Gill doesn’t give interviews; he gives conversations – lengthy, engaging conversations filled with the same reflection and storytelling that make his songwriting so relatable and successful. Factor in his enviable mastery of guitar and other instruments and the result is a well-rounded artist who has won 18 CMA awards, 22 GRAMMY awards, and eight Academy of Country Music Awards.
In 2025, he was presented with the CMA Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, and this year, on May 6, he will receive the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize. He’s been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1991 and in 2005 was entered into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Two years later, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Over the course of 21 albums his sales exceed thirty million with 45 chart singles. Coming up is a summer tour, which will wrap with a six-night residency at the Ryman Auditorium, while continuing his ongoing schedule with the Eagles. All of this is only a cursory glance at his many accolades.
Gill’s accomplishments, and the experiences that accompany them, are at the core of his latest project, 50 Years From Home, a yearlong series of monthly EPs marking the fiftieth anniversary of his leaving home to pursue a music career. Each collection features themed new songs and revisited classics, with photos of select guitars on the covers. The EPs are introduced via detailed conversations with friend and colleague Charlie Worsham – watch all episodes on Gill’s YouTube channel.
Down At The Borderline, released February 13, is the fourth and latest EP in the series, while the next installment, Lonely’s What I Do, already arrives this Friday, March 13. A few weeks prior to the release of Down At The Borderline, Gill made himself available for more interviews and conversations, including a talk with Good Country.
At this point, it’s difficult to imagine anything Vince Gill hasn’t done. In fact, there are two key things, neither of which he cares to pursue:
“I’ve never sent a text,” he says, “because I prefer talking to people. What you find out [with texts] is how many people really don’t want to talk to you!” And, “I’ve never posted anything on the internet,” although he does have a scrolling habit, which he gladly admitted to during this discussion.
As you move through endless interviews around these EPs, is there something you’ve always wanted to talk about but have never been asked? Now’s your chance to tell the world!
Vince Gill: I wouldn’t have a clue! I never was much of a planner. I think it’s a blessing that I just live in the moment. I don’t look ahead, I don’t look back much, and there’s not a lot of regrets in my life. I figure the mistakes I made were valuable to learn something. I never planned any of this. I didn’t sit down and have a diary that I’d go, “When I’m this age, I want to have done this and this.” I just answered the phone.
You should probably give classes on that, because this is an industry of nonstop worry: What’s going to happen? Will this work? Will this not work? To move from project to project, stage to stage of your career with that mindset is impressive.
I started out with absolutely not one dollar, so money has never been the reason for any of it. I bought a guitar when I was 18 years old and I moved away from home. It was an old pre-war Martin that was perfect for bluegrass. I spent every dime I had on it and I didn’t worry. I said, “My rent’s $15 a month, I’ll make a couple hundred bucks a week when we work, so I’ll be fine.”
Amazing.
Speaking of going from stage to stage of your career, the EPs are each a chapter told with collections of songs. Tell us more.
The majority of it is fairly new. From the time I started in 1975, there was no reason to have a publishing deal for a long time. Even after I had a record deal, I didn’t see the need because I had a place for my songs to land on my own records. I never partnered up with a publisher, to give away half the money, to give a monthly draw to help pay my rent or whatever. I was able to always pay the rent somehow – my house note, whatever it was – with playing and singing.
Three or four years ago, Jody Williams, who’s a lifelong publisher in Nashville and a friend of mine for 40-something years now, called me and said, “You’ve never had a publisher. Would you consider letting me manage your songwriting for a while? I think you still have a lot to say as a songwriter.” I said, “Yeah, I’ll try that out.”
He would call great songwriters and say, “Would you like to write a song with Vince?” I was never a very good self-promoter, so I would never do that on my own. I just let it unfold with people I would meet. So it started me down this path of writing a lot of music, and over the last three or four years I’ve written twice as many songs as I’ve recorded on this new 50 Years From Home project. I think I’m writing the best songs I’ve ever written. With time you should get better, and I think I have.
I don’t want to check out someday and have all these songs lost in a desk drawer somewhere, so I’ve started recording them all. It’s a different world now, a different way. If you want to release 75 songs, you can do it. You don’t have to have one album with 10 songs on it anymore. So I started thinking about what it would be. My first conception was to release two songs a week, like an A-side and B-side of a 45. “It’s Monday, it’s time for a couple new Vince songs.” The record company came up with the idea of, “Why don’t you do a series of EPs and have six or seven songs on each one?” I said, “That sounds cool. We’ll put one out a month.”
That’s where the whole thing started. I was trying to find a way to put all this out. I realize at this point in my life, I’m almost 69, I don’t have as much time left to be creative as I’ve had to this point, obviously. How much more it matters now is palpable. It really means something to me to be creative, and if I see myself improving, I want to nurture and foster that and continue, because it’s so dear to me, being musical, being creative, coming up with an idea, coming up with a story that could potentially move somebody, touch somebody. It’s unbelievable to be able to have that gift, to be able to do that. So I’m trying to take full advantage of it.
But 68 or 69 today is not the 68 or 69 of our parents’ years. When you’re a kid, your parents turn 50 and it seems ancient.
That’s true. My mom’s a hundred years old.
See? You have many more years to go, especially if you’re still 17 in your head, which happens in this business.
Yeah, and I am. I don’t feel any different than when I pulled out of the driveway and took off. I still have the same love and I’m so drawn to playing music. It’s such a huge part of me. I tell everybody, “My mom’s a hundred and I hope I’m really her son, so I have those genes! For all I know, she might have rented me out of a yard in southern Oklahoma somewhere!” But my dad checked out early. He died at 65 – and I was afraid of being 65. There’s so many instances of people passing at the same age as their parents and whatnot.
I’ve heard from others that it’s a strange feeling when you reach the age when a parent passed.
Absolutely. But my dad drank a lot, he smoked two packs a day, and he didn’t take very good care of himself. I don’t think I have too many of those qualities. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. I eat bad, but that’s about it.
You’ve stated many times that your goal was always to be a recording musician. With reality shows and social media, do young players have that same goal, or is a lot of it about chasing clicks and stardom? Are you concerned about the future of musicianship?
No, because there are plenty of young kids out there that can play their brains out. There’s so many of them that you don’t worry about it. I tell people all the time, “If American Idol was on in 1948, Little Jimmy Dickens would’ve been on it.” I don’t really care for those shows – and not in a bad way, because a lot of talented people go on them – but sadly, you don’t see that really bear out with a lot of artists coming from those shows that have longevity. They have that moment, but we’re so ready to slide our thumb and move on to the next scrolling thing. It’s the same way with those shows: “The season’s over. Okay, who are the new ones?” And I never like seeing creativity be a contest.
But I don’t worry too much. You see someone like Sierra Hull, who can play better than anybody in the whole world, and Michael Cleveland, and so many that come along that can completely annihilate their instruments. It’s beautiful to watch. I don’t think that’ll ever go away.
Does AI-created “music” concern you?
Of course, but when I’m asked about it, I say, “The people who create it, deep down, they know they haven’t done anything. They know they’ve done nothing.”
As a recording and performing guitarist, singer, and songwriter over a lot of years, how has your approach changed? Your technique, your picking style, your ear, your tone?
It’s a combination of all of those things. I’ve spent the latter years realizing what I don’t need, what I don’t need to do, what I don’t need to play, what I don’t need to sing, what I don’t need to say in the lyrics. To me, the beauty of it is your willingness to try to say the most with the least.
I like my singing better now than I did when I had hits. I much prefer the way I sing and play my songs today. That’s motivation enough, that I feel like I’m better now than I ever was. My ears have never lied to me, and with that, if I feel like I’m making progress, that’s all the reason in the world to keep doing it. If I start wheezing like an old woman, I probably won’t wanna go out there and sing. But, thank God, that hasn’t happened yet,
With music, the more you do it, the more you learn. The point of it is not to impress, but to move people. If you can move people with what you play and sing and write, that’s the real gift. That’s when you really get something that matters out of it, rather than a big “Woo, that was incredible! That was impressive.” That’s fleeting in a way. I like the long haul.
I could have very easily stopped working on other people’s records and being a sideman and a harmony singer and guitar player and what have you. But I love doing that so much, because I always thought it was a harder job to complement somebody and what they’re doing, more so than doing what you want and having everybody follow you. It took more talent to do that – better ears, bigger ears, that kind of stuff. So I continue to do that. I’ve worked on over a thousand artists’ records in the last 50 years. The diversity of that, the willingness to go into any kind of world of music and try, and not just be shortsighted and only do this and only do that – I love all of it. I’ll find something good in any of it. If I can play a part in making something better that’s being done, then that’s a good feeling.
Can you draw a through line from your bluegrass roots to what you’ve done and what you do now?
“When I Call Your Name” wouldn’t have sounded like it did had I not played bluegrass. That high lonesome sound was totally taken out of my love and life of bluegrass. A song on one of my new records [Secondhand Smoke, EP 2] is called “Hill People,” with [harmony vocalist] John Meador – great singer, great player, it just blows my mind how good he is. That sounds the way it does, it was written the way it was, because of my history of bluegrass.
I was never one of those guys that [would say], “I can only play bluegrass and it has to be traditional.” I loved New Grass Revival. They were different than Bill Monroe and I loved it all. If you take whatever’s great about something and cast the rest aside, then you’ve done your job. I’m not critical of young people that don’t do it the way I did it, or the way my heroes did it. That doesn’t serve anybody any good, to be critical of stuff. I remember hearing Billy Strings talk about how he would go to jam sessions and felt unwelcomed, and that killed me. I felt so bad for him.
I experienced that once when I was 17. We were playing some bluegrass festival, a hardcore traditional-minded festival. We were up there playing “Rocky Road Blues,” which is a Bill Monroe song, but we were doing it real bluesy. The promoters kicked us out of the festival and said, “You can’t be playing that kind of music!”
As they were kicking us out, Jim & Jesse were playing Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” I said, “Now wait a minute. We’re playing a Bill Monroe song and we’re going to get kicked out, and they’re playing ‘Johnny B. Goode’ by Chuck Berry? What’s cool about that?” They go, “Their suits match. Get outta here!”
I’ve known Sam Bush for 50-something years. The story he tells about Monroe is that he said, “What is it you call that music you play?” Sam said, “We call it New Grass.” He goes, “Yeah, I hate that.” That kills me, but it didn’t impact Sam one bit. But that hardline thing – I don’t go for it.
You’ve said that the role of the artist is to speak for others. Are there songs that speak for you, or to you, in those moments?
I like the things that are the most honest, that are not trying to be something they’re not. I’m not a fan of singers that alter the sound of their voice to make it do something it doesn’t naturally do. I heard Merle Haggard say, “Man, just tell the truth.” That’s where I’m finding the biggest inspiration in songs is being truthful. I think the truth has always been the greatest thing you can lean on.
People talk about country music, and if you could point somebody to what you think country music is, I’d say Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” How it starts– “I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole.” That’s pretty dark. That’s pretty sad. And then, “No one could steer me right, but Mama tried.” There’s your hope.
One thing they’ve never taken away from me is hope. Even though they quit playing my records on radio stations and I don’t have hits anymore, I’m always hopeful that something will slide through and move people. I had hope when I made my first record at 16 or 17 years old, and lo and behold, some radio station played it and I heard it in my pickup truck. That instilled a hope in me that’s never faded. They can pass on songs, they can not play them, they can do all that, but they have never dinged my hope in my heart for what it is that I want to try to do.
Where were you in your truck when you heard yourself on the radio for the first time?
I-40, Oklahoma City. I was driving and all of a sudden they started playing “July You’re a Woman.” It’s a John Stewart song and we’d done a bluegrass version of it. I was singing lead. I think some other bluegrassers had done that same song. I’m driving and all of a sudden they started playing it on the radio station and I get on the CB radio and start screaming, “You’re not going to believe it! They’re playing our record on the radio!” Truckers were coming back saying, “Hey, you sound good, kid! Hang in there.” Wow.
The first record I ever made, I heard on the radio. It put that dose of hope in me that has never faded.
Editor’s Note: Read part two of our Good Country conversation with Vince Gill here.
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Photo Credit: David McClister
