Vince Gill Interview (page: 6 / 7) Country Music Hall of Fame	Print Interview

You said you've played as an opening act, headliner, and everything in the middle, but when Eric Clapton asks you to play at the Crossroads Guitar Festival, do you have a different reaction to that?

Vince Gill: Yeah. I had no idea the impact that that would have on me, because he called me and he said, "I'm only inviting people I like." And I was the only guy from the world of country music that got invited to come and play at the festival in '04.

And I was going through a period where they'd stopped playing my records so much on radio. My popularity was, in a sense, declining, and I was kind of going through that, "Man, I'm doing some good work here and nobody -- I don't know why they're not responding to it like they used to." And so to be seen once again in the definition that I always had for myself, to be seen by him as that was such a great gift. I said, "Man, he sees me as just a guitar player. That's all I ever wanted to be. So I'm okay again."

It felt great, and we became friends and I got to play the next one in '07. And the beauty of all that is, you know, we've got a healthy dose of insecurity in us, you know, and self-doubt. And I'm the king of self-deprecation. I love to pick on me first. It puts everybody else at ease. But in saying that...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. In saying that we're all a little bit insecure, I'm in New York, Eric is recording one of my songs, and he asked me to come up and play on it. I'm scared to death, you know. And for, really, for the reason that I'm going, "Okay, I'm not afraid to play," but I'm afraid that he has such a great gift for sounding great. His tone is always like unbelievably great. I said, "So my fear is my tone won't be great. I know I can play, but I have to sound great." So I'm insecure, and I'm scared, and we'd been tracking for a few hours and having a lot of fun, and he's playing electric guitar and I'm playing acoustic guitar, and I'm great because I've got a little part that's working and fitting right in there. And I'm comfortable and not really beating myself up too bad. And he says, "All right Vince, you play electric this time and I'll play acoustic." And I went, "Well, why do we want to do that? You have just completely obliterated this song and torched it into the dirt, you know. It's so good." And I didn't really, that didn't last too long. He said, "We'll both play electric." So we started tracking again, and we had a take that we liked, and we were listening to it, and it was just him, myself and the engineer sitting in the control booth. And here, arguably, one of the greatest guitar players that ever lived -- in Eric Clapton -- is sitting behind the board. I'm sitting over there on the other side of the board on the couch and I'm looking over between the speakers, and he played something, I went, "Oh God, that sounds so good, that's so great," you know. And then I played something, and I'm sitting there thinking, "Oh man, my tone is just, it sounds small compared to Eric." And right at that moment Eric says, "Has his guitar got reverb on it?" The engineer said, "No." And he said, "Make mine sound that good." And I'm just going, "I give up," you know, we're all the same. And once again, there was a neat lesson in that. Even though here's the -- arguably the greatest of the great -- he's still got a few insecurity issues like the rest of us!

Could you tell us about your experience hosting the CMA (Country Music Association) Awards on television. What was that like the first time?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. They called and asked if I would co-host the Country Music Awards with Reba. And we were great friends and we had just had a semi-hit with a duet together, and I said, "Yeah, I'd love to." I had no expectation of being a great host, and I knew I'd have her and we'd have a lot of fun together because we were great friends. And I enjoyed it and it went really well, and I made people laugh, I made people feel comfortable. And I won an award that night, I think, or two. And so it was a win-win for me, and everybody liked it, and they asked me to do it the next year and the next and the next. And so I felt like my role was to make everybody look good, even at my own expense sometimes, and that was okay with me too. And I did it for 12 years. And I promised myself, I said, "Man, if I ever walk out there and I'm hosting this show and I get this vibe from the people of 'Oh God, not him again!' you know," I said, "Then I want to quit." And as it turned out, I was the one that walked out and went, "Oh God, not me again!" And I had just kind of grown tired of it. I enjoyed doing it, I enjoyed doing that role for all of country music. But in the later years, I didn't feel like I was quite in the mix as an artist as those first seven, eight, nine, ten years, whatever it was. And I just said, "I have a feeling people are seeing me more as the host guy than that musician that burns inside of me and that artist that burns inside of me. I don't want to be that guy, I'd rather be this guy." And so I said I need to quit doing this. I want people to see me as an artist again. So I quit doing it, and I'm glad that I did.

You know, they started going to arenas to do the show, and I never felt like a host has a chance to own the room in an arena like they do in a small room. The years that I did it was at the Opry House in Nashville, and it only seats 4,400 people. So there's that setting of intimacy, but once it turns to 15,000 it's really hard. Even now, I go as a fan, and as a performer, whatever, it's really disconnected. It feels so disconnected because the place is so big. And there's a tradeoff sometimes if you lose that intimacy and you're trying to connect to people in that job. It's a lot tougher, so I just didn't want to do it anymore. I just wanted to step away. I'm just doing this because I can do it pretty good and I have a good time with it. The people like when I mess with them and introduce them. I felt like I did a good job, but if that was the only job that I felt like I was contributing, I needed to honor the musician in me a little more.

You just mentioned being a fan. Whose shows do you go to today as a fan?

Vince Gill: I go to some, I don't go to a lot. I still like clubs. I like small venues. I went to see James Taylor when he came to town, Sheryl Crow when she plays in town. Just whoever I'm a fan of. I like to go out to some shows and see people, because it's still inspiring today, as it was when I was a kid and going to see my favorite bands. I don't travel as much as I used to, so I'm home more and it's easier to get out and see some folks.

How long have you been a member of the Grand Ole Opry? What is its importance to you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Vince Gill: I've been a member for nearly 20 years with the Grand Ole Opry. And I enjoy that place because it really honors the history of the music. You can go on a Saturday night and see a man that's 88 years old, still playing and singing at the Grand Ole Opry, Little Jimmy Dickens. You see a kid that's just made his first record, and everything in between. So it has a reverence for its past, which I love. Anytime I hear music that makes me feel or think of the past, then I think it has reverence and it has honor. And it's been there for 84 years now. Eighty-three. It will be 84 in -- it started the same time as my mother was born, in the fall of '25. And my mom will be 84 this year. And so they're exactly the same age. It holds all the history of country music, not just the top 20 of the charts today. And I like that so much. I love the friendships that I've made out there even more so than the love of their music. I love getting to know them as people and become their friends. And some of those people that made the records that I first heard as a little boy, I'm out there sitting around with on a Saturday night, and telling dirty jokes with, you know. So I feel like I'm living, in a sense, some of my parent's life too, because they were some of the folks that my parents liked as young fans of music. It just has an importance to me, that I feel like all those people paved the way, because that was the only thing that was going on in country music was the Grand Ole Opry.

Radio was the only thing up until the 50's where you ever heard country music. 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. But to me, it has such a beautiful reverence that I'm out there probably a lot more than any of my contemporaries that are also members. I like to play out there all the time, just because I love the fact that they're still playing bluegrass out there on the stage, and Gospel music has a history, and comedy has a history, and old time string band music has a history, and western swing has a history out there. And it's all elements of that music that's gone on since the 20's that you can hear in a single night, and really spend a night that has some impact on where we've been.

We wanted to ask about the parenting style you and your wife practice in teaching philanthropy to your own family.

Vince Gill: Boy, being a parent is a hard job, I think, because in parenting you want your kids to like you. Too much sometimes. It's a hard line to find between doing what's necessary to give them the tools to be good kids and make good decisions and all that, versus just completely not giving them a chance to accomplish anything because you do everything for them. I kind of feel like it's okay if these kids go out and make a few mistakes, because they're going to learn.

The last ten years have been interesting, because I'm a stepparent to three kids, and I'm a father to two kids, an older and a younger. And it's a real interesting dynamic. I don't really have a whole lot of parenting that I do with Amy's three that are 21, 19 and 16 -- Matt, Millie and Sarah. My oldest daughter is 27, and off and gone and succeeding in the world, and is a great kid and happy, and people like her. So that's a great feeling as a father, just going, "People like my kid." She's got a good job and she's out there getting it done, and she sings great.

Our youngest is the one we parent together, and I still try to pull Amy aside and talk about things. She says, "What should I do?" and we go through all that together. But it's different this time around, with an eight-year-old, because I'm on the backside of my career in a sense. Twenty-seven years ago I was trying to accomplish, trying to achieve -- all the things that you want to do as a parent, and also as a person. So I think my oldest sometimes just rolls her eyes and goes, "Well, I'd never have gotten away with that." You learn not to sweat the small stuff quite so much. You just try to arm them with the best possibility to make a good decision. That's all you can ever hope for, to me, in a kid, is giving them a good choice to make. If there's one of the choices in there that's a good one, I think more often than not that the kids will make a good choice.

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