Vince Gill closed his four-night Ryman Auditorium residency Sunday night, delivering on a promise–his new songs are the best he’s written.
Gill played for about four hours each night of the residency. His voice soared into the rafters on sing-along favorites, showcasing classic country sounds and spotlighting a storytelling gift so honed that he had the audience in tears sometimes before the song even started. Fans belly laughed at his punchlines, marveled at the dexterity of his voice, and luxuriated in his ability to make the hallowed Ryman Auditorium feel as intimate as their living room.
But most of all, they remembered why they fell for Gill at the first notes of “When I Called Your Name” in 1989. Then they sat enraptured for the next four hours, falling all over again.
Gill launched the evening with a hit parade beginning with what has become his staple show opener, “One More Last Chance.” He flowed into “Take Your Memory With You” and “Pocket Full of Gold.”
On stage with a 10-person band, Gill quipped he would sing a song from an old record. Then he joked that all of his records are old. The song was “You and You Alone.”
He said that “Young Man’s Town” was inspired by a lunch he had on Broadway. Gill said he could make a song out of anyone or anything, then joked it might not be any good. This particular lunch conversation was about career longevity in the music industry.
Vince Gill: “They Stopped Playing Elvis on the Radio, and They’ll Stop Playing You”
Gill remembers he told him: “I tell people all the time, ‘They stopped playing Elvis on the radio, and they’ll stop playing you, too. It’s a young man’s town. That’s the way it should be.”
“Young Man’s Town” from his “Next Big Thing” album followed.
Gill got particularly animated when he finished singing “When Love Finds You,” joking that he was excited about the evening’s future because he’d just sung the show’s highest note.
The singer situated his first No. 1 hit, “I Still Believe In You,” towards the end of the first set and introduced his co-writer, John Jarvis.
“I had a good run of these songs 30-35 years ago,” Gill said. “They allowed me to buy a house I can no longer afford to live in.”
He added: “Then I married (Amy Grant), and everything was fine.”
“Look at Us” was next in the setlist, followed by one of Gill’s more unexpected originals–an idea gifted to him by his father. Gill’s father was a hobby musician who knew a little bit of banjo. Gill’s dad was proud but often his toughest critic. When Gill hosted the CMA Awards for the first time, his dad was irritated at him for being funny and told him he wasn’t Jay Leno. But his dad apparently considered himself a funny man, too. The idea he gave Gill to write: “It’s Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.” Gill wrote it with Rodney Crowell and cross-dressed to play Crowell’s nagging wife in the music video.
“That’s just wrong,” Gill said after the song. “It’s funny as Hell, but wrong.”
The second half of Gill’s set was packed with new songs and stories to match. As promised, Gill played his song inspired by Brown’s Diner, where he has loved the cheeseburgers for decades. He talked about the graffiti on the bathroom walls and how he once read an unflattering scrawl about one of his friends.
Grant’s father lived near the eatery and suffered from dementia. Gill shared the story of taking the man there to pick up burgers. While waiting, his father-in-law leaned over a table full of people, picked up someone’s burger, and took a bite.
“I’ve been going into Brown’s Diner for about 50 years,” he said. “I decided it was high time I wrote about Brown’s Diner.”
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“I knew I was going to like writing songs with her when she said, ‘I like that you killed two people in the first line of the song,’” he said. “That’s right up my alley.”
Gill was inspired to write “Nobody Held Her Like Me” after he spent the day with a friend who had lost his ability to play guitar.
His love of John Prine inspired Gill to write “Everybody Lives To Be A Hundred.”
“Some Times” is a hair-raising co-write of which Gill is particularly proud. The song sprung from a conversation with Mavis Staples about “real-life stuff.”
“We’ve been friends for a long, long time,” he said. “We were talking about struggles with civil rights and marches and how hard it’s been for everybody. She looked at me and said, ‘We have seen some times.’ And I thought, ‘That is so beautiful what she just said.’”
Gill saved the idea for a long time and then shared it with friend and co-writing buddy Mary Gauthier.
“We spent a good few days trying to figure this out and came up with this song,” Gill said. “What’s sweet about it is that Mary and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on the way it should go.”
They both had different ideas about the song’s direction, so they wrote two versions, and each performed their preferred version.
“They’re a little bit different, but the spirit is the same,” Gill said. “I’m really, really proud of this song.”
Vince Gill Breaks the Room with ‘Benny’s Song’
But nothing captivated the room like Gill’s tribute to his childhood best friend, Benny. Gill and Benny met when they were in the sixth grade. Gill was playing guitar on his porch when Benny walked up. Gill said they were friends their entire lives and did everything from double-dating to school dances to touring together. Gill hired him to be his guitar tech as soon as he could.
“We played in all our first garage bands and school functions together,” Gill said. “When I turned my career around, I called him up and said, ‘Is there any chance you want to go on this journey with me?”
When Gill told Benny he wanted him to come be his guitar tech, Benny asked what that meant. Gill told him he didn’t know but that they would figure it out together.
“It was so cool to get to get to go on this journey with my oldest friend,” Gill said. “It just killed me when he checked out.”
Benny died in 2020. Gill got the call in Nashville that Benny only had a day or two left to live. He immediately hopped in his car and drove as fast as he could to Oklahoma. Gill arrived in town at his mom’s house in the middle of the night and planned to take a nap. They called while he was asleep and said that Benny had died.
Audience members wept and wiped tears from their eyes.
“I drove over there, and we sat waiting on the people to come take him to the funeral home,” Gill emotionally recalled. “They loaded him up to take him out on the gurney, and I said, ‘Would you all mind if I take him out of his own house instead of a couple of strangers?’”
A Thousand Birds Were Singing
Gill got outside with his friend just as dawn was breaking. He remembers it was beautiful outside and at least 1,000 birds were singing.
“It was nothing like I ever heard in my life,” he said. “It’s how this song came about. It’s simply titled ‘Benny’s Song.’”
Gill played other new songs and more of his hits Sunday night, continuing the emotional ups and downs with the familiar refrains of “Pretty Little Adriana,” “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” “What The Cowgirls Do” and “Liza Jane.”
The Country Music Hall of Famer made the audience laugh and cry, feeling almost every emotion on the spectrum. Gill is so much more than a world-class singer and guitar slinger; he’s also the storyteller of many generations.
“I never want to not write songs,” Vince Gill said. “You never want to stop being creative. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you’re on top of the charts or if you’re popular. You want to do it because it’s so deeply ingrained in you, and you love it. If you ask a songwriter, ‘What’s your favorite song,’ they’ll always say, ‘The next one.’”
(Photo by Ed Rode/Getty Images)
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