Interview: Vince Gill
Country Music Hall of Fame

Let's just start at the beginning. Where were you born?

Vince Gill: I was born in the United States in Norman, Oklahoma, small college town just south of Oklahoma City. It's a great town. And as a kid -- I guess I was four -- before I started school we moved up to Oklahoma City and I really grew up there, Oklahoma City.

Who were your parents?

Vince Gill: My father was a lawyer, Jay Stanley Gill. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of my life. Her name is Jerine, and she's still alive. My father passed in '97. Kind people, sweet people. They both were farm people. Grew up on a farm and had a great sense of the earth, in that they knew hard times. They knew what it was like to really work for everything that they had. So there was a great wisdom of common sense that prevailed in our household, and things you did better make sense or you'd suffer the wrath.

Who was the disciplinarian?

Vince Gill: Oh, they both were. They both got it done. My dad was real strict, very firm. But I'm grateful for it as a grown man. And I knew how far to go, and I knew when I screwed up I'd get in trouble, and I was okay with that. My father passed away in '97. I've enjoyed telling people that he was a judge the last half of his life and a lawyer the first half. And he said, "Son, nobody likes a lawyer until they need one."

My dad was quite a character. He was really strict, really fair. If I screwed up, I got in trouble right away. There was no messing around much. My father was pretty gruff. He was a lawyer by trade, but a redneck by birth. He'd go to work in a suit and tie, slick his hair back and put on glasses and stuff, and then he'd come home, put on overalls, no shirt and a ball cap. He was a very imposing man -- six foot three and over 300 pounds. It was like having John Wayne, Patton and Clint Eastwood all rolled up into one guy. And he was very gruff, and he always smoked a cigarette like this, and he talked like this. He said, "Son, don't make me come over there, 'cause I'll give you something to cry about." Screwed up, you got your butt kicked right away. You know, old school, old school, old school.

I would like to have seen my father's reaction to somebody telling him that "time out" would be a good thing. "You want me to do what? You want me to set him in a corner for 30 minutes? I don't think so. I'm just gonna kick his ass and that'll be the end of it!" That was my life. Oh, man. But he told me that he had an idea for a song and he told it to me. And through the years, he was so great, and I didn't realize it at the time. When you're young you don't know much. I didn't anyway. Wrong room to say that in! but y'all are smokin'. I knew how to play a few chords on the guitar and sing high and that was about it. But you know, I went out there and took off at 18, and I had a dream of just playing music. And I didn't care where I wound up. I loved to play more than anything. It wasn't about the result. It wasn't about how much money I could make or how famous I could get. I just wanted to play music. Through all the years that I struggled, my dad would often send me words of encouragement when I was really struggling, you know. Stuff like, "Hang in there, boy. You're getting' better. Your songs are getting better and I swear you're gonna make it. Just keep after it." That was the kind of stuff. And then, I started doin' good and started having some hits and selling some records. Then he turned into my biggest critic. I remember the first year -- I hosted the Country Music Awards for twelve years -- and the first year I did it I was excited, had a lot of fun, did a good job, won a couple of awards. I stayed up all night to party and celebrate. My dad decided to call me with his review of the show at about 7:15 on his way into work. I answered the phone. I hadn't been to bed for a couple of hours. I hear this, "Who in the hell do you think you are?" "What are you talking about?" "Let me tell you somethin', pal. I watched you last night. You're no Jay Leno." It was his way of keeping me level.

How did you begin playing the guitar?

Vince Gill: Well, I started playing -- you know, I cannot consciously remember an age where I started playing. I know that I had a very small parlor guitar that had like a lampshade cord on it, and it was broken and probably didn't have all of its strings. I don't remember, but I've seen pictures of me when I was one or two, you know, just getting around, dragging that guitar around. So I know that I had always had one around to play on, beat on, and all that. And I played my father's. He had two guitars, and I played them. And then he also got me, when I was very small, a tenor guitar, which only has the first four strings. So the neck is much smaller, not as wide as a six-string guitar. So I learned to play on a tenor guitar, and tuned it like the first four strings of a regular guitar. There's a lot of different tunings for a tenor guitar, some are much different. But I tuned it like a regular guitar and started learning the rudimentary chords from my dad, and he showed me. But I was playing, you know, at show-and-tell stuff in grade school -- second, third grade. And so I don't have a conscious memory of when I started, but all I know is it's all I've ever done.

I got my own guitar when I was 10 years old, and that was -- I can still remember finding that gift under the tree. What an amazing, you know, I didn't know it at the time but it was easily the most incredible Christmas gift I'd ever got, more than a football and more than any of that other kind of stuff. Because at that time, being a 10-year-old kid...

My folks scrimped and saved, and they actually took that old tenor guitar of mine and traded it in on this new electric Gibson guitar called an ES-335. And for me to have the opportunity to learn on a great instrument! I think, unfortunately, what happens to a lot of young kids that want to maybe learn to play, or have an interest in playing is -- because they don't want to invest in a good instrument -- they get them something that's not good enough, and nobody could play it no matter how great of a guitar player they are; the instrument wouldn't be ever decent enough to really play. So at 10 years old, the fact that my folks got me something that grand and that great and so playable that it was inspiring, you know, even at 10 years old. And I still have that guitar today. And you know, as it turned out, it wound up being a guitar I would have sought as a grown, matured player, because of the type of instrument it is. You know, there are a lot of great guitar players that play the 335. And so I had no idea at the time, when I was 10, that it was a great instrument to have, but it sure was inspiring to have something that great to start to really learn on.

Was guitar the first instrument that you learned to play?

Vince Gill: Yeah, I played the guitar first. I was telling Joshua Bell, who comes to the Academy of Achievement -- we've become friends this trip and we have a lot of mutual friends that play music. I was telling him that I started taking violin lessons and playing in the school orchestras and stuff when I was in grade school. And I said I got a mean teacher in the sixth grade and that was the end of the violin for me.

Were you a good student, or were there subjects in particular you were good at?

Vince Gill: I don't think I was. I was never as smart as my sister. My sister always made better grades. She was a couple of years older than me. I was a fine student, but I wasn't a hard worker. I wasn't any trouble, I just went through the motions and loved my music and loved playing sports. I was a Beaver Cleaver kid. I was pretty normal.

Was there anything you read as a kid that inspired you?

Vince Gill: I don't know that there's anything that I read as a kid that was inspiring to me, musically. I like reading, I like reading books about history. I loved Civil War books, things like that. And I loved biographies of sports people that I admired. If there was a book on Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, or whoever the great baseball player of that era was, I would love to read stories about sports, because I played all the sports.

As I look back, I really feel that the records were my books, you know, and I would study the -- it was back in the day when the albums were large. You could read the credits, you knew who played on things, you knew who wrote the songs, who sang on things. And I was one of those kids that loved all the information on a record. I spent years buying records of artists I'd never heard of, just because I knew the guitar player, or I knew somebody that played a certain instrument that, I said, "Well if this guy played on this record maybe there's something good in there," because I liked that musician. So I felt like those records told me stories in a way that related to me more, because of -- my brain was stimulated by sounds more than sights, I think. I loved listening to records and trying to emulate what I was hearing. I'm self-taught and all by ear, and just by hearing it come through the speakers. I'd say, "How do they do that?" and just sit and practice and noodle and mess around until I made the same sounds.

So you never took singing lessons or music lessons?

Vince Gill: No. I took some guitar lessons in junior high school, but as I look back, I don't think they were really informative. It was something to do, and he was a neat old guy, and I enjoyed him. But I just basically learned songs. I didn't learn any theory. I wish I'd have stayed with the violin lessons, the piano lessons, to where I could have learned the theory of music on paper, so I could be able to read, you know, because I don't read music. I can kind of go through there and remember the very rudimentary things of how the notes are, and what they are, but I couldn't sight read and play what I was reading. So that's all I know about that. I sound like Forrest Gump, don't I?

Teachers aside, was there somebody who inspired you or opened up new possibilities to you?

Vince Gill: All of those musicians did. They were countless. I had my favorite records. I loved Chet Atkins, and I loved the Beatles, and I loved the people that I loved. But just that element of collaboration, of people gathering together and playing music. I saw it as a kid, didn't realize it. You know, my mom played a little bit, she played a harmonica, and she played two or three songs and ran out of breath and she was done.

My dad played the banjo and the guitar, and he had some friends, and they had a little band that would occasionally go play at an outdoor thing. You know, not professionally, but always just for fun. And I always got to play along, and just being around musicians was to me the neatest thing. I had garage bands, you know, where you found two or three guys in school that played. "Hey, let's start a band!" you know, and away we went. We'd go in the garage and bash away. I still work with a kid that I grew up with since seventh grade. We started playing music together when we got in junior high school and we're still together. He works with me and travels on the road and takes care of all my guitars. So it's remarkable to have your oldest friend out there, going through this experience with you. I called him when I had a couple of big hits and said, "Hey, do you want to go on this ride with me?" He was like, "Yeah, sure. Why not?" He was a musician too. And that to me was -- the beauty of collaborating was what I was really drawn to. I never wanted to just be me by myself with music. I liked a lot of people playing it.

What did your parents think when you first told them you wanted to be a professional musician? Did you tell them? Did you know yourself?

Vince Gill: I think they knew early on that that was the only thing that was in store for me. I mean, I was a decent golfer. I played on the high school golf team, and I went through high school and I played out a lot.

My mom and dad were not real strict, in the fact that they would let me go play in bars, you know, while I was in high school in different bands. And they said, "You get to school and keep your grades up and don't give us any reason to not let you." So I tried to be respectful of all of that. So I had so many years under my belt, even when I was a freshman, junior, and all through high school, that I was out playing gigs and traveling around some with bands and to different parts of the States. I think they saw the writing on the wall, and they weren't surprised when I didn't really have a plan to go to college when I got out of high school. I wouldn't advise that for anybody, it just worked for me. Somebody called me -- I was 18 -- and said, "Hey, do you want to come be in this band in Kentucky?" and I said sure. So I packed up everything and I moved there and started playing with that band for a while. That led to another band, and then I moved to California, and that led to another band. It's just interesting. Everything that happened to me was a result of just going and trying to get better.

I've tried to always play with better musicians. That's how I got discovered, I guess, if you want to use that word. But that camaraderie that you had. You know, one musician would say, "Hey, if you're looking for this kind of player, this guy is really good." And your reputation would then be with some of the people you were associating with and playing with. I didn't have goals, I didn't have dreams of stardom. I wasn't saying I have to be famous.

I have the best time playing music. And my folks saw that. And so they never said, "When are you going to go get a real job?" because I had really put a lot of effort into it long before it was time to move on and go to college and think about something else. I think that's another reason maybe a lot of young musicians fall by the wayside. They're not willing to do what I did, which is go out there and play on street corners once in a while to make enough money to pay your rent and be willing to starve. You know, they only want that safety net. They want that cushion. And I never needed it. I don't feel any different today at 52 than I did at 18. And what's in the bank account has never changed one ounce of what I loved doing. I'd still be doing it at 52, if I was still playing those same beer joints.

I think that was the objective of my mother and father in a sense. I talk to my mom these days. She said, "I think my job as being your parent was to make you be a happy person." And that to me is what parenting is. It's not about how much money can you make. She said, "I feel like I've done a good job, because he's getting to do what he loves and he's happy doing it, and he doesn't seem to care that he's struggling to pay the rent most of the time. So why should I worry? He's a happy boy."

Setting out on your own, were you ever afraid of failure?

Vince Gill: No, I wasn't. I didn't know any better. There's some beauty in that, you know. The best part was I didn't need much. If you don't have much, you don't need much. That felt good to me.

To me, progress was not how much more money I could make, but how much better I could be. How am I as a guitar player, at this point, versus what I was three years ago? And then, who am I playing with? Am I playing with better musicians? Yes. So every step that I felt like I made was progress in my mind. It might not have been financially the same thing. There was one point when I was in my early 20s, I'd spent a few years playing with Pure Prairie League, and I had a few hit records and was on television shows and was the front man. I was the lead singer, and I quit to go be a side man with one of my favorite musicians and songwriter-singers, a guy named Rodney Crowell, to just be his guitar player, harmony singer. He said, "What are you doing? You were the guy in the front!" "Yeah, but this band's better. These songs are better." To me it was a move up. To most people it wouldn't look like that, but I knew in my heart, and my ears told me this is a better thing.

It's not always about the attention you get and the dollar bill and how many of them you get. Sometimes you make decisions that defy logic, I guess. But I made one, and years later I was invited by Mark Knopfler to join Dire Straits. And it was at a time where I was pretty broke, you know, I was really struggling. I had had a record deal for several years, but couldn't turn that into hit records, and couldn't turn that into a big career, and even though I was trying. And this would have been a very lucrative, very great move financially, and in a lot of ways. Musically it would have been a great move. But I said, "I can't do it right now.
I said, "I just changed record companies and I've invested a lot of my life in country music," and I said, "I don't want to bail on it, because I think I have something to offer it." And you know, it was like, it was the golden egg being dangled in front of me, and I turned it down. And I was lucky, because then the next record I had was this massive hit, and it completely turned my life around. So I made a decision based on my heart, and it hasn't let me down very often.

Why wasn't Dire Straits the fork in the road that you picked? Was your relationship with Mark Knopfler an important factor in that?

Vince Gill: When it happened -- it happened I think in 1989 or 1990. And he came to see me play in New York. I was a huge fan of Mark Knopfler's and the band (Dire Straits) and loved their records, and loved the way he played the guitar. Once again, that common bond that would have drawn him to me and me to him was that we liked the way each other played. So there was that, we had something in common. And at the time it was a fork in the road. And the obvious choice, because of what had happened up until then, would have been go and go play with this nationally known band, do a world tour, make a bunch of money, get your family healthy and pay for your house and all that. But I chose the other one, just because I believed in myself. And it was not the decision that would have probably made the most sense for the circumstances that I was in. But once again, I just felt like making that decision was the acceptance of failure.

I don't know that I was willing to accept that failure. To me, it would have derailed what I was trying to accomplish. And most people would have thought the smart decision would be go get healed up. Musically, I wish I could have. I wanted to badly, just because I would have loved the experience musically. But like I said, in a sense it kind of accepted defeat, that I had not done what I'd hoped I would do. So I kept believing in myself, and that's why I think that I made that decision.

I felt like I had a new shot, with a new company, and new people saying they liked what I did. Because the relationship is still very good that I have with the people that ran RCA at the time, we're still great friends. But you know, everybody knows it didn't work, and who knows why. I can say that my name's on the record, so I can take the fact that they didn't work and I'm okay with that. But it ended in a way where I knew that they didn't believe in me, you know, as a songwriter. Maybe they did as a singer and a player and all that, but they didn't as a songwriter, and that was of equal importance to me, being a songwriter. So I made that move to change and try something else. I wanted to write my own songs. So if I had made that record, When I Call Your Name, and then turned my back on it and gone on to do something else, I just didn't feel like I was giving myself the opportunity that I'd created for myself for some new life, new blood, and a new shot. I don't know that it made any difference which record company it was. I don't think they'd like to hear that, but, you know, they all worked hard with every record I ever made, both companies. I still believe it was the song. It was the right song at the right time.

When you made the decision to not go with Dire Straits, it was because you believed in yourself. Where did that confidence come from?

Vince Gill: I don't know that it was as much confidence as it was my fear of saying I have not succeeded in what I wanted to do. I think that's a much harder bridge to get over. That's a struggle, one that might be associated with failure. You can always react favorably when things are great. That's easy. Anybody can accomplish that. That's confidence in a sense, because you're reacting to something that's done very well. But how you react when something doesn't go very well is really a much truer test of character and a much truer test of who you really are. I really think that it might have been more of a decision based on fear than of confidence.

When you were a kid, living in Oklahoma City, you decided to pack up and go to Louisville, Kentucky. Were you just going to land in Kentucky and figure it out, or had you set some things up? What took you to Kentucky?

Vince Gill: A job. There was a band called the Bluegrass Alliance in the world of bluegrass in the mid 70's and early 70's. They were one of the really well-known bands in bluegrass. A lot of great musicians went through that band. So once again, it was a step up for me and an improvement over the situation I had been in before. I didn't know anything. I had all the stuff that I owned in my van. A guitar and a few t-shirts and my golf clubs and whatever I had, and I went off to Kentucky to play in this band. I found a little place to live. My rent was $15 a month and I stayed in an attic in this old cool house in Cherokee Park, a house full of musicians that all loved bluegrass music and, you know, I just followed my muse. It was a great experience. It gave me a chance to travel around the United States a lot and play at different kinds of festivals. It was a really fun time because of the innocence of it.

I think one of my favorite memories of those days was I ran out of clean clothes. And obviously my mom's not around and always washed my jeans and my t-shirts. And I had this pile of dirty laundry, and I said, "Now what do I do?" So I went to a laundromat and I started watching people. Okay, they put those in there, and they put all the white stuff in there, and they kind of put the money in and dump that stuff on top. And I figured out how to wash my clothes and figured out how to dry them. Then they were all dry, and I said, "How do you fold them?" And this woman was over there just laughing her head off. She said, "You don't know how to fold your clothes, do you?" I said, "No, ma'am, I've never done my laundry before." "Well, God bless your mother, but come here. I'm going to teach you how to fold your shirts." I still fold my t-shirts that way today. So life's about stepping in there and learning and making mistakes. You're never going to learn anything if you don't make a mistake. That's where you find, to me, the real beauty in life, is screwing something up and learning from it. And I did it plenty.

It was a great time. I moved from there to Southern California, a 19-year-old kid, and I moved to Los Angeles to play bluegrass music and be in this great band. It was a great time in Southern California. The music scene there was unbelievable.

The first gig that I did with a band that I had joined was a club there called the Troubadour in L.A. It's like one of the most famous clubs in history, one of those great music clubs. We opened for a guy name Guy Clark who was a great singer-songwriter from Texas. I walked into this gig and I couldn't believe who was there. It was all the people that I was aspiring to be like: Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, all these guys that were all playing with Guy, and I think Linda Ronstadt was there that night. And I couldn't believe it, you know. Here are all these people that I've seen on the backs of these records that I've studied my whole life, and there they were. And I made friends, and you know, they heard me play, they heard me sing. And that just kind of was another rung in the ladder, so to speak, you know. I wouldn't call it networking, but that's exactly what it was. Just getting out there and jumping in the middle of the water and see how deep it is.

Well, the Troubadour is smack in the heart of the Sunset Strip, and it's notorious for agents and who's in the audience. Did that lead you to sign with RCA?

Vince Gill: Yeah. I spent several years in Southern California and loved it, and I got some session work playing on people's records, singing on people's records. I joined Pure Prairie League for three years, three records. They had a major label record deal and that was exciting. Then I stopped doing that, and I started playing with Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. Rosanne was having big hits, and I was her guitar player, and it was a great job to have for a guitar player, because it featured the guitar a lot. And the people that played before me were James Burton and Albert Lee, arguably two of the greatest guitar players that ever lived. James played with Elvis for years, so I was occupying this pretty heavy seat for a guitar player.

One of the guys in the band was a guy named Tony Brown, who also used to play with Elvis. He was a piano player, and he played with Rodney and Rosanne, and he was also an A&R guy for RCA Records in Nashville. He said, "Man, you need to start making country records!" And so he signed me to RCA in 1983, and I made my first record and not much happened. I made my second record and not much happened. I made my third record and not much happened. And then I got another chance. I moved over to MCA Records a few years later and got another opportunity. You know, I really am grateful for the years of struggle in looking back. I think at the time it was hard, because you feel like you're beating your head against the walls, saying, "Why isn't this working?" You know? Well, maybe if you go around the wall... you know, so I found some way to go around the wall. In hindsight, I think all those years of struggle was a humbling experience.

It was a learning experience. I got to spend a lot of years really putting my feet in a lot of different places. I sang on so many records in that stretch of time in Nashville in the 80's. I don't know how many artists' records I've worked on over the years. I know it's -- well, over 400 or 500. Something like that. And not that that's bragging, but it's how I made a living. You know, people thought enough of what I did as a supporting cast member to be a part of those records. And in all honesty, that's what I had really aspired to be, more than an artist even. And I said, "I don't want to be one of those guys that their name is down there playing on the records." Even saying it today, I would have been fine had that been my career, you know, because I didn't have to be at the center of it to have it matter. I just had to be a part of it, and it mattered. That's what I loved, was the democracy of making music in that it takes all of those elements that most people aren't even aware of. And that's fine. Some people just listen to music and they focus on the guy up there singing. But I'm listening to the bass player, and listening to the drummer, and listening to what the guitar player plays. I love every note of it. And so that's to me what's beautiful about collaborating with people is that all the notes are equal, and it takes all those notes to make something great.

What did you learn from being a session musician?

Vince Gill: Being part of the supporting cast teaches you to do the work that they want you to do, that you're hired to do. You don't get to just do what you want and play what you want to play. You have to make something work, you have to make something fit, you have to be a chameleon.

I think some of the best advice I got as a young session musician -- the first time I played on something -- they came back and said, "Now just play me half of what you know. Okay, that was impressive, but that's not what I need here." So it's really an exercise on what's best going to serve the work in front of you, what's the job that will do that the best. And so, as the more you do it, you realize that it's much more of what you don't play than what you do play. And that's learning to play with people, and that's -- I spoke earlier about why music feels like a democracy to me, because it's everybody, it's not yelling at each other, they're all listening to each other. And that's what's great, because I'll play something, he'll hear it, that'll inspire him. That will, in turn -- they respond to each other. It's a call and answer kind of a thing. And that's what you're hoping for when you're playing. You're not just going, "I'm only playing my part and I don't care what everybody else is playing." It's this kind of beautiful experience, when everybody's on the same page and everybody's just bouncing. Then it's just like you're riding the cloud, you know. It's really beautiful.

What did Tony Brown and Emory Gordy teach you about writing songs and making records?

Vince Gill: Tony Brown and Emory Gordy were two great musicians. Both had stellar careers as record producers and session musicians, and were two of the best friends I'd ever made. Along with folks like Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell, they taught me what great songwriters were all about. I never had as much knowledge of songwriters as I did musicians. I was always a little more drawn to musicians than to singers. I eventually started trying to write songs, but that didn't come until much later, after years of just playing music.

Tony and Emory knew the value of a good song. That's why they both wound up being great producers and having successful careers. They produced the majority of my records. Emory produced the first two, and Tony produced all the ones I made in the 90's. They believed in me as a songwriter, which was really a great gift, living in a world like Nashville, where this guy that's parking your car can write better songs than you sometimes. It's a great town. It's a song town, that's really what it is. Moving there was a great lesson in learning about writing songs and getting better at it.

I marvel at coming to something like the American Academy of Achievement, because you see greatness in people, and you see suffering. You see all kinds of stuff, they're so inspiring. This trip to South Africa has been so inspiring, because of some of the struggles that people not only went through to achieve their greatness, but just to hear the spoken word be so eloquent, just to be so beautiful. I play the guitar a little bit, and I sing a little bit, and I pale in comparison to some of these folks.

But there's also a beauty in the simplicity of things too. Because I didn't go to college, because I was not an English major -- or a lot of reasons that my vocabulary doesn't have the depth that some of these people that I have the opportunity to meet here would -- I still have a way to communicate with people, and that's what my world has always been about, being a good communicator.

Hank Williams used to write songs that were simple. There was great beauty in their simpleness. And to me, great songwriters tell stories where you hear those words and you see the pictures. The songwriters are like painters. They paint pictures in their words and in their songs. And that's generally what I think you're trying to do as a songwriter, is paint pictures. Because I've always -- you know, music's in my ears, it's not in my eyes. And so that's what I'm always trying to accomplish, is to get you to close your eyes and see in your own mind and your own heart what these words mean to you. I think that's the beauty of the written word. Everybody has their own interpretation of it. So I believe that there's -- as simplistic as songs are -- sometimes there's a great beauty in them.

You were in the music business a good 15 years before you finally had your breakout record. You'd been in Nashville for seven years, you had a recording contract with RCA as a solo artist, you were well-known inside the business, but you hadn't made the big breakthrough. Then in 1990, everything changed. What made the difference?

Vince Gill: I think it's as simple as having the right record at the right time, having the right song at the right time. As I go back and listen to my earlier records, I'm not surprised that they're not hits. Hit records sometimes are not necessarily that great either. It takes one to have another. You can't have the second one until you have the first one. It's such a Catch 22 that until you get on the radio and have a hit, you can't get gigs, because nobody's ever heard of you. It's just this whole cycle.

Even though I'd moved to MCA from RCA, and had seven years of struggles, and some records would get on the charts for a little bit -- but never that just out-of-the-box home run, slam dunk, giant hit record, you know, that everybody had to have, a real career record. I'd made my first record for MCA, and we released two singles, and not much happened. You know, it wasn't any different. And so I really, I would love to give MCA Records all the credit, they would like to hear me give them all the credit. But as it turned out, it was the right song at the right time, and that was a song called, "When I Call Your Name." And there was just something about it that struck that chord that was -- it was really fun to watch in a lot of different ways. For me it was fun just going, "Oh, that's what that feels like."

There's a totally different reaction from an audience when there's that familiarity of something massive. I'm just trying to think back to those days.

I'm grateful for the years of struggle, because it got a lot of people rooting for me -- industry people, musicians and what not. And then when it finally happened, they felt, they finally went, "Finally!" You know, and there was a collective kind of, "Now all is right with the world. This is as it should be." Because people would say, "I can't understand why you're not having hit records. You sing beautifully, you play beautifully, you play with great musicians. You're writing songs with great songwriters." And it just hadn't happened. And so then that song came along and that got the door open. And once you can get that door opened, then you have the opportunity of longevity, you have the opportunity of making a difference and being heard, and all that was great. It was an amazing run of a great successful period of country music, too. Arguably the biggest in its history as far as record sales and attention and all of that. So yeah, I was beyond grateful. But it never changed my focus on what I loved, what I wanted to do. Even though I was starting to have big hit records, I still worked on everybody else's records. I still loved being part of the process.

"Okay, now I've got the result I wanted. I've made it. I've done great!" and all that. That wasn't what I was after. I still longed to be called on the phone, "Hey, will you come sing on my record?" "Hey, will you come play on my record?" Yeah, I'd love to, because that's what I think has been the most fun. Even more so than my own success as an artist was the diversity and the collaborating that I got to do because I was willing. Most people, they don't want to do that. They don't have any interest in it. And I just love the fact that the phone would ring and who would be on the other end sometimes. Eric Clapton called one time and I answered the phone. He goes, "Vince, it's Eric Clapton," I go, "Yeah, sure. Who's yanking my chain?" You know? And he said, "No, seriously. I want you to come and play on a record of mine. I want to record one of your songs." Yes! You know, this is all great. And you just never know who's going to be on the other end of that phone. To me, I've always been a reactor to life, and not a planner and a worker trying to accomplish something. I just want it to all happen naturally.

That feels the best to me, because I just think that music is something that doesn't have an answer in a sense. It's just this thing that you listen to, and you either like it or you don't. It's not like a ball game where it's over and you know who won. And I am so grateful that I am not hung up on the results of what something has done to define it for me. You know, the definition is in the work, hands down. Once that work is done, and I have finished it and done it to the best of my ability, whether it sells ten copies or 10 million, that doesn't change one note of that work. So to me, the answer lies within the work. That's what's motivating to me.

When you were recording "When I Call Your Name," did that process feel any different? Did you have any idea this would be such a hit?

Vince Gill: One thing I was grateful for is that it was a really traditional country record. I really like deep, deep-rooted, hardcore, twangy kind of country music, the old school stuff. I don't like the new stuff very much. The contemporary side of it's okay, I've done some of it. But I'm not as crazy about it as I am those great old records of the '50s and '60s that I grew up on, and to me is the definition of what country music is. "When I Call Your Name," the two elements that made it much more special than it was, were the piano player, a fellow named Barry Beckett, who played all that Muscle Shoals stuff and produced a bunch of great records. He was a dear friend of mine, and he just passed away a couple of weeks ago.

He came in late one night and played the intro to "When I Call Your Name." There's a piano intro on that song, and it's lonesome, and as soon as it happens you know what record it is. And that's another thing why I love being a part of making records, is because the musicians often times define records, make them memorable when they play something -- before the singer ever starts singing -- that gives it its definition and its identity. And they never get the credit, near enough credit for it, but they deserve it. And that's what Barry Beckett did as a piano player to that record. It defined it, and you knew exactly what song it was as soon as it started. And that happened late one night. We called him, it was like two in the morning. I said, "Hey, we need a really cool intro on this song we're working on." He'd been a friend of mine for years and produced some things on me, and we were great friends. And he came in and played and left. My favorite part of that story was, after it had become a hit, he came to the party. We had a big party that I finally had a hit record. And he hugged me and said, "Man I'm so proud of you. I think that's so great, you deserve it, and long time coming." And he says, "By the way, who played piano on it?" I said, "Are you kidding me?" He goes, "No, that intro." I go, "Well it's you." He goes, "Oh, well no wonder I liked it." And he had forgotten that he did it, you know, because he does so many things and it's hard to remember 'em all.

So that's an element that made that song much better than the song was in its original state of a guy playing a song. It's all those elements that turn it into a great record and make it memorable. And then Patty Loveless sang the harmony, and she has this aching, beautiful, crystal Kentucky voice that is one of the greatest things I've ever heard. I had sung on all of her records for years.

We had recorded this song, we had this great intro, we had everything done, then we wanted to put harmony on it. And Patty Loveless had become a dear friend and she just has this Appalachian, Kentucky, beautiful voice that is unlike anything I've every heard. And I thought, you know, we sound really good together on her records, I wonder how it'll sound with her on my record. And so I called her and asked her if she'd come sing on it. And the first line of harmony that she sang, I just looked at Tony (Brown), and he looked at me, and we both got chills on our arms. And that's as big a reason as that song was a hit, you know, for all those reasons. It had so many great elements. That's when a record is neat, when it's not only a good song, when it's also a good record, it's also all the things just kind of line up. I have an old friend that used to say, "Great songs play themselves. Just get out of the way." And hopefully that's what that was, but there were a few elements that really made it stand out and make it special.

I think a lot of artists think that their project -- their film, their record -- is really special. But did this song in particular seem any different than the others you'd recorded before?

Vince Gill: I had no reason to jump up and down and say, "This is going to be the song of the year. This is going to change my life." I didn't know. I was just doing all that I knew how to do. Any time I was in the studio I was just trying to do my best. I think sometimes you kind of can hear a song. I mean, "That really sounds like a hit. That's a great song." Sometimes the stars line up and sometimes they don't.

You've received a lot of awards. We want to ask for your perspective on awards and fame. By the way, where do you keep your Grammy Awards?

Vince Gill: Well, I just think that if you're the guy winning the awards, you think they're the greatest things in the world. If you're not winning them, you think the guy winning them is not any good! You know, it's pretty true. But I really hope and believe that in the majority of cases it's a result of the work. It's just a result of good work. And no different than you painting a painting and everybody looks at it and goes, "I love it!" That's a result of good work. Fame was interesting for me in that your anonymity was gone. And that's -- be careful what you wish for. There's an element of that that is great, and there's an element of it that's horrible. Just which way do you choose to react to it, you know? Because -- and I think I spoke earlier about the years of struggle were a great learning curve for me, because I watched people react to success -- some reacted favorably, some reacted, I thought, poorly. And I saw enough of it to go, "I know I don't want to act like that."

I don't like arrogance. I don't like a guy beating on his chest that just scored the touchdown, "Look at me, look at me!" I like being just one of the flowers in the vase. I don't enjoy a lot of attention. And nobody will believe you when you say that, but I'm a little bit shy. I don't have a problem putting a guitar on and playing and singing in front of 15,000 people, but in front of two or three I might be a little more uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, I really like people. So I never ran from it. I basically ignored it in a sense that I wasn't going to let it change who I was. Whatever the consequences are for doing that, I'm okay with.

Somebody wants a picture, somebody wants an autograph, that's no big deal. That doesn't bother me. It never has. And you know, I didn't want to be a recluse, I didn't want to run from anything, I didn't want to all of a sudden be thinking I was something that I wasn't. And that comes from the fact that I knew I was a musician. I came at things from a musician's perspective first. And I knew that musicians I liked, they wouldn't act that way, so I didn't want to. I married a woman that is the same, and that's been a great gift, because she could care less how successful she's been. She's the same -- always. She's constant in that. She's kind of oblivious to it in a beautiful way, and I try to be too. You know, we just, well okay. We did okay. Don't jump up and down. And I've always felt that God blessed me with some great gifts, you know, and I can't deny that there's a beautiful voice and great hands and great ears that allow me to play and tell stories that people like. I get on well with people and they like these songs. They like the way I sing, and that's not me going, "Oh, great for me," but I realize those are God-given and they're special. But the difference being is that doesn't make me special, it's only the gift that is special. And I think that's what I see people have a hard time really differentiating, is the fact that success, or notoriety, or fame, or lots of money, or power, or any of those things unfortunately -- people -- it affects them in a way that they think they're a little bit better than they were or something.

I never liked seeing that very much. So I run as hard as I can from it.

Was religion a big part of your household when you were growing up? Now, as a dad, is religion part of your household?

Vince Gill: Growing up, religion was not a huge part of my household. We went to church for a pretty good while, and then my brother had an accident -- car accident -- and it was pretty traumatic for the family, and very devastating to him. He was in a coma for months, and not expected to live. And I don't remember, I don't even know if that's when we quit going to church, but I kind of feel like it. That's what happened. I think sometimes, when something really tragic happens, people either run to God or run away from God, and I think my family had a tendency to maybe run away. And I still sought out a bit of church life, even just as a kid, teenage kid. Some of my buddies went to church, and we played on the ball teams. So church had a great -- it was a great experience for me. But maybe more because of athletics than sermons, you know. I don't know. I don't remember enough to know.

After I took off and got out of school, I had no church life to speak of. And then, as you have children, as you get older and you hopefully gain a little bit of wisdom and whatnot, I've found myself getting back into a church life. I don't think that I was ever a non-believer, it just didn't make a lot of sense for me to wind up in church, because I was never home, and I was never home on a weekend. So church life was not something that I could really accomplish. And then Amy (Grant) and I got married nearly ten years ago, and... I'm back in the church house! Thank God! But I think, as you travel the world, you realize everybody's got to believe in something. It doesn't have to be one thing. It's not the right thing (or) the wrong thing. I always felt like I'd rather be forgiven than be right. I got in my heart what I feel is the way to act, the way to treat people, and (if) people are kind to each other and friendly and fair and all that, that would solve most all the problems right there.

We were discussing music earlier, and you said it might be indefinable.

Vince Gill: Sure. I love the analogy of there is no definition of it.

Count Basie said it best. He said, "There's two kinds of music, good and bad." You either like it or you don't. And it's so subjective, because what you like, I may not. What he may like, I may not. Vice versa. And that's what's so beautiful to me about music is that there is no score at the end of it. There's no bottom line to it. Whether you're -- you do something with math and then there's a solution to the problem. You do something with the budget and there's a solution to the problem. There's an end to the book. With music, it's just floating up there in the air. Especially live music. I love live music because it's just experienced at that moment. And I really am a -- I like to live in the moment. I love the moment. I'm not too concerned about tomorrow and I don't get too worked up over yesterday. I like to experience what's right in front of me, and I don't like to plan stuff. And that's what I love about music. There's really no result in a sense -- of a fact or an answer or a solution -- most things have. And it's kind of like golf in a sense, because golf has a score, but it could always be better and it could always be worse.

Is there a difference between musicians who can play by ear and musicians who read music?

Vince Gill: That's a great question. I don't know how I would interpret it, other than, I think all musicians can hear music. I enjoyed meeting some of the folks here. Joshua Bell is a great violinist, world class, and one of the young girls was at Julliard, and I asked her, "Are you able to play by ear? Are you able to improvise?" She goes yeah. And I said that's rare for a trained player. A lot of trained players can only read the page and they're playing by sight first and foremost. I think I play by feel and by hearing. I think they're both equally as beautiful. I don't think one is better than the other. So I don't know the answer to that, to be honest.

Could you tell us more about the importance of hearing, and listening to others, in your musical process? You spoke earlier about the democracy of music.

We had a lesson in church, Sunday school, it's been several years ago, and it really just stuck with me. There was a go-around question that everybody in the class would answer. They said, "Okay, you have to give up one of the following, what will you give up? Your ability to speak, your ability to see, or your ability to hear?" I was the only one on the whole class that said the ability to hear. Because they said, "Oh it's better to be silent, I'd rather not speak," or "I'd hate to not see, and the beauty of this and that." And I go, "It's a slam dunk for me. If I can't hear, I'm dead," because the world speaks to me through my ears more so than my eyes. And I think that your eyes will lie to you. Your eyes will judge something before you ever know what it is. But your ears won't. And if I have my eyes closed, I don't know whether a man's wearing a tuxedo or he's dressed in rags. I don't know if he's white, I don't know if he's black, I don't know anything about him. And I think that's why I love music so much, and I'm not sold on videos and the music becoming a visual entity. I liked it when I put on a record and I saw my own pictures, I saw the story. It spoke to me through my ears. And so my ears are -- they're kind of the center of it all. They're what tell me what to play. I try to play like I would sing, and then sing like I would play.

My ears tell me to do all that stuff. As far as music, to me, being a democracy -- music without language doesn't have anything attached to it that defines it. It's just sound. Once the language is on it, and it's in Spanish, you may not know what they're saying, so then it's different. But just in its raw state, to me, it's honest and it's universal. It's so many things. We claim to live in this democratic society, and we kind of do, but we certainly could improve it. That, to me, is what music is. It's just people going, "Let's all do this together," and it creates this. I'm just glad I can hear!

You've recorded with an impressive list of people. What is it that makes your voice fit so well with so many different artists, with Dolly Parton or Reba McEntire?

Vince Gill: Once again, I hate to keep belaboring the point of my hearing and my ears, but that's what points me. My ears are listening to what it is, and they're telling me, "Do what's appropriate. Do what fits." And to me, that's the exercise. Do what enhances what that other person does. It's interesting, the majority of the work that I've done -- arguably 90 percent of it -- I'm just part of the supporting cast. It's not always a duet. I'm not always a featured, equal performer, and therein lies the difference. It's my job to go in there and help build this building, and put it together. Each job is different. Like in singing a duet you do a different job than when you're a harmony singer or when you're the guitar player. And you just know what your role is before you get started. Once again, your ears tell you that. You just kind of do what you're supposed to as much as anything.

I hear the difference between jazz and bluegrass, between country music and rock and roll. And whatever it is that you're doing, you want to do what honors that in the most authentic way. That, to me, is what music should be, is authentic. It should be honest, and it should -- you know, you don't want something on something -- well, it's trying to be this but you're making it -- all of a sudden you're sliding it in a different way. So I feel like that my job always in that role was to honor what it is you're doing. When I'm singing with Diana Krall in my latest record, I'm trying to sing like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and those guys, and honor that big traditional pop kind of thing, and croon like that. And then when I'm singing with Del McCoury, who's the greatest bluegrass singer in the world, I'm trying to make it high and lonesome and twangy. And so that whatever I'm doing honors the genre, that it's trying to fit in, and my ears still are kind of the pointing. And you've got to be a bit of a chameleon, you know. I'm proud in looking back at my career that I feel that my talent level is much broader because I don't just do one thing.

Your wife aside, who do you most like to write or play or perform with?

Vince Gill: Oh man, great question! Great question. I have the greatest admiration for the most gifted people. Just recently I got to work with Allison Krauss, Michael McDonald, people like that. I love being around the best of the best. There is nothing more inspiring than being around greatness. It's beautiful.

Coming to these seminars, symposiums, and these things that we do with the Academy of Achievement are inspiring, you know. They're life-changing. I'm hearing things and seeing things that I never would have seen before. I know for a fact I never would have gone to that orphanage like I did yesterday, or heard this man speak that was in prison. When you're only caught up in your own little piece of world and you get a really nice dose of what else is going on... man! I've got songs flying around in my head about what I've experienced. I want to go home and sit down and sing a song about Rosie Mashale, the girl that runs the orphanage, and Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. You get around these people that have done really beautiful things and you're inspired.

In the late '90s, you returned to a hardcore country sound. Was there a connection between going through tough times and going back to that sound?

Vince Gill: Yeah. I'm sure you're referring to a record called The Key.

My dad died in '97, and I guess more than anything -- I went through a divorce and all that -- but what drew me to want to make a country record -- real traditional country record -- is I saw it waning in the amount of it that was being recorded, and the amount of it that was getting played on the radio. And I missed it. It's that simple. I love it to begin with, but I missed it. And then there was my father passing on. He was gone, and it made me remember all those records as a little boy that I heard, that he and my mom would play in my house, and you know, going through the record collection and singing Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and Johnny Cash and Webb Pierce. You know, on and on and on. All these great, great records. And I wanted to, I don't know, I just always followed my heart and that's what my heart was kind of all about in that period of time. And, you know, a little bit of the rebel in me was wanting to prove a point that they wouldn't play any really traditional country music, and I was right! And they didn't play that record very much!

I always want to follow what's in my heart and be honest about it. I'm at the mercy of whatever songs turn up. I love to write songs, and I love to write songs with people that I have a connection with. I've got a lot of folks that I've written songs with for years and years and years.

I make new friends, I write songs with new people, young people, try to get a perspective from a 25-year-old kid that's really talented, but who's going to see life totally different at 25 years than I will at 50-something. And once again, just trying to experience it, and I want to be welcoming of the next generation of young people. Not necessarily that they could learn something from me, that's not the exercise. The fact is that we could just collaborate together and have something that might be great.

You've played for presidents, you've played for heads of state in small rooms, and you've played for crowds, tens of thousands of seats filled with the energy from your fans. How different is that? What do you love about performing?

Vince Gill: Well, the reason any of us perform is we want to be responded to. We love that instant gratification, hoping what we do is inspiring, is enjoyable, whatever you want to call it. It's not more fun to play for the President than it is a bunch of guys in the honky tonk, you know. There's a fun factor in both, and there's also a factor that's not so fun in both.

You get the best feeling when you're playing live. It's not who it is you're playing for, but it's what they respond with. So if you're playing and you get the polite "golf clap," you feel like, "Man, I'm not doing so good here." Then you get a "Raahh!" That's a great feeling. It's adrenalin, it's all that stuff. You can feel the warmth of a crowd by the way they applaud. I know that sounds crazy, but there's crowds that are screamers, you know, there might be 15,000 people -- and I love seeing it with younger acts. They'll say, "Now watch the reaction. There's 15,000 people in here, but very few of them are going to clap, they're all going to scream, and then there's going to be this giant scream and then it's going to be nothing." And then maybe an older crowd, they're going to all applaud, nobody's going to yell or anything, but that applause is deeper and there's a warmth to it. It's all totally different.

Then there's the indifferent crowd that's still talking while you're performing. There's a Texas crowd that, if they like you, they dance. You know, you're playing a beer joint or a honky tonk. The beauty of a crowd is every one of them is different. Every single one of them is different. It took me years to realize that if you play in Texas and they don't dance, they don't like you. You know, when you play in the beer joints in Texas, if they're dancing, they like you. They don't applaud, but they dance. You always want to play for people that are crazy about you. That's the greatest feeling in the world. It's like a kid, you know. When he does something great, he's looking for... "Where's Mom and Dad?" They want that. And a musician is no different. You can play for a private function where they're paying you a fortune, but you're just part of the window dressing in that sense. Nobody bought a ticket to come and see you. They're all different.

The best feeling I've ever had in my life -- playing for, oh, 40 years in front of people now -- was in Ireland. And they didn't know my music that well there, but there's something about music in that country that it goes deeper. It means more. It has more depth. And I'll never, ever forget that. That reaction was spiritual. And it was unlike anything I'd ever heard, you know. And I've been in front of a lot of great audiences. Being in the world of bluegrass for so many years was a great training ground for me, in that the crowds that came to that kind of music were big lovers of that music or they wouldn't be there. So you're getting started and you're feeling like, "Man, they really love this." And it's the best feeling in the world when you're playing and people are listening, and they show their appreciation. It's the only way you know really how you're getting on.

You've played with Ricky Skaggs, Amy Grant, Barbra Streisand. What is it like to perform with these people and for their audience?

Vince Gill: I've done every conceivable kind of gig there is. There's nothing that's going to surprise me anymore. I've been the opening act, I've been the middle act, I've been the headliner. I've been the act that nobody's ever heard of. I got booked in a gig one time at a college during spring break, nobody came. You have to have tolerance, you know. And the older you get... Before, I'd go out and I'd be real disappointed that more people didn't come. Now I go out and I go, "Somebody came! Yippee!" Your perspective changes, just like with anything else, with a little bit of life experience and some wisdom and hard knocks and what not.

One instance really stands out. I played, when I was playing in Pure Prairie League, and one of my heroes opened for us, it was Larry Carlton. He's a guitar player that most people aren't going to know, not a household name, but he played on Steely Dan records and was one of the greatest session players in Los Angeles. A brilliant guitar player, one of my favorites of all time. And I went up to him afterwards, and I go, "Man, this is wrong! You're one of the greatest guitar players ever and there's no way that you should have opened for us." He goes, "Man, it doesn't matter where you play. Just play." It was great advice to get as a kid.

So I don't worry too much about it. If you have enough savvy, you know what kind of crowd you're playing to. They came to see you, so give them what they want. Striking that balance, after a long career with a lot of songs that are familiar, but you have new songs that you want to play. Striking that balance where everybody feels like they enjoyed what they saw.

My mind is never on the show so to speak, it's about the playing and the singing. And we don't dance around, we don't jump off the stage, we don't do anything other than sing and play. So some people would come to my show and go, "Man, this guy's boring! All he does it just stand there and sing." But that's my definition of what it is that I love and what I like. So I just do what it is that I've always enjoyed in other people. I never went to hear anybody and see how good they could run around. I wanted to hear them play and sing! That was entertaining to me.

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...

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?

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?

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.

In 1993 you started the "Vinny" Pro-Celebrity Golf Invitational to support junior golf. What motivated you to do that?

I had a great experience as a kid with junior golf, with the availability to play golf on all the courses in Oklahoma City, where I grew up. And I felt like if I did well in my career, it would afford me the opportunity to help out, and I've always wanted to be a charitable type person. I wanted to help other people out, and so I started this tournament to raise money for kids to have an opportunity for junior golf, for kids to have a place to play, and ability to play, and talent to play. So I started a fun golf tournament, and it's lasted for 17 years. Raised about $4 or $5 million for kids across the state of Tennessee. And it's got one of the best programs in the country for young people.

They're very supportive of young people, and I felt okay with doing that because of my past, and because I do all the other things as well, for sick kids and Make a Wish and St. Jude's. I never felt like any cause was more important than any other. Let's just do whatever we have time for. Let's do them all, help them all out. So I don't really just champion the one cause. I know I've done the golf tournament for 17 years, but I've done other things equally as long.

What is the "All for the Hall" initiative?

I'm the President of the Board at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and when I got on the Board I would go to the meeting, kind of looking around, going, "I'm not doing anything, I don't know why I'm here." You know? And I asked the Director, whose name is Kyle Young, I said, "Why do you got me here, I'm not doing anything?" And he said, "Well, we like you," and "Let's find a way to make an impact here. What are the biggest problems we've got?" And one was, they built a beautiful new facility downtown. It cost a lot of money, and it was trying to make it work, pay it off and all that. And I said, "What's the artist community done for the Hall of Fame?" And he goes, "Not much." You know, you've got to be kidding me. And so this was built for them by pioneers that have come before them, and so I had this idea. I said, "I want everybody that plays music for a living to play one night for free." I said, "If you're Kenny Chesney and you play in front of 20,000 people, give us that money. If you're this guy and you play in front of 200 people, give us that money. And just go out and play for the love of music one night during the year." And so I invited, I don't remember, 400 or 500 artists and musicians over to our house for dinner and tried to implant this seed of what they could do for the Hall of Fame. And there's been a few people that have come on board and helped out, and it's just slowly building, slowly growing. And it's really neat, because I just feel like that if you really love music, you know, why wouldn't you go play one night just for the love of playing music, instead of big box office and the big pocket full of cash, you know? Just book one more gig. You'll get healed up pretty quick, you know.

So there have been a few guys that have come on board, and we've raised a lot of money and we've done a couple of neat shows. We did one in New York City with Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, myself and Levon Helm from The Band, and we've had some great people come and help out and do those things. We're doing one in Los Angeles in October 2009. Who's coming, I don't even remember now. Just really neat, great people that have written songs and had great careers. Keith Urban's going to help out. I wasn't supposed to announce it yet. Who else? Rascal Flatts. A lot of people are coming on board, and I just figured that the artists' community should make the biggest difference in the future of the Country Music Hall of Fame, because it houses everything that has been done to this point. And if there's a more reverent place, I don't know what it could possibly be than the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, do you remember where you were when you got the news that they were going to induct you?

Vince Gill: That was a headscratcher. I was so grateful that it happened to me so young. A lot of people felt that I was too young. Me included, to some extent. But they passed a new law in the eligibility of being able to be inducted. The laws that were in place said you had to start your career prior to 1975, and there are so many people since 1975 that would obviously be great additions to the Hall of Fame. So they started, I think four years ago now, a new category that didn't have to be prior to 1975. So the first year was Alabama, the second year was George Strait, and the third year was me.

So I felt like I've had a great career. I like to look at my career in the entirety of all of the supporting roles I've played in music in addition to just my own artistry. And I don't feel quite so weird about being inducted when I look at it in its entirety and think of all the years and all the records and all the things that I've tried to do to help the music.

And I also understand that the only reason it was possible is because they changed the eligibility. So I said, "Well maybe I do have a chance now in my lifetime," and it came quite a bit sooner than I ever hoped it would. It can't get any better than that. I didn't have anything to do with it, other than create what I've created over the years. There's a committee of, I think, 300 voters throughout the industry, and nobody really knows who they are. I know who a few of them are. But there's a list that comes before them of several names and they just vote who they think is deserving. So they voted, and I'm trilled to death.

What do you see as the next great challenge in music, country music, American music?

Vince Gill: The technology is kind of ahead of the curve of the ability for everybody to be paid properly in a sense. That's the biggest issue I see, is the people that are able to get the music for nothing. And that impacts songwriters, it impacts publishers, it impacts so many people that most people wouldn't even think about, that they're part of the income stream that makes a living out of the music business. And I feel like, if you think about a download costing a dollar of a single song, with iTunes, or whichever of those companies you use, that's what you paid for a single record in the late 50's and early 60's. I'd like you to find me something that costs the same thing today as it did then, and wonder how we're expected to survive. So there are great challenges because of the technology being able to decimate our industry. But regardless of all that stuff, they'll all figure out how the new business model is going to work and it will be fine. Because people are always going to want and crave and need the creative process. So I never fear that music will go on. It will live on and it will inspire and it will change the world. It will do all the same things that it's always done. When something's great, it's just great. It doesn't matter if it's 1920 or 2010, you know, great is great.

What do you think you know about achievement now that you didn't know when you were younger?

I think I've learned that the result is not as important as the work. I feel like the journey is more important than where I wound up at the end of the journey. The end of the journey is not the exercise, it's the journey. And I feel the same way with my achievements -- with the tools that I had to achieve them with -- felt as great at 17 as they do at 52. As you grow, and as you get older, all you're hoping to do is get better at what it is that you're doing. I know I sing better, play better, write better today than I did ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. All the above. And I heard Kenny Rogers speak not long ago, and he said something that was pretty impactful to me. He hadn't made a record in a long time, and they said, "Why did you make a record? You haven't made one in a long time. Were you worried that it might not be successful?" And he says, "My interest was not making a record that was successful, it was making a record that was significant." And I just loved the heart in that, because that to me is the equivalent of an achievement.

The things that I've achieved that feel the best, are actually things I received. In the sense that I think I'm giving something to someone, and then in turn I got something back that I never expected. It's the unexpected thing that you receive that to me is a better definition of achievement than what you do for yourself.

What does the American Dream mean to you?

The American Dream to me is, it's a fair chance. I think that's all anybody could ever want and anybody could ever expect. I see an awful lot of people that think they're entitled to things. You've got to earn them, you know. They have to be earned. You're not entitled to -- you know. You parent a kid, and they think they're entitled to every toy on the shelf. And you just go, I don't think so. To me, that's what I'd like to see. The American Dream for me would be a fair chance for everybody, not just the "haves." You see a lot of life where most people are too hung up on the pecking order of things, and not everyone does get a fair chance. It was always my argument with my father about anything was, until there's a level playing field, you can't have a right answer to something. So that would be my definition of the American Dream is a fair chance for everybody.

What do you think will be one of the big achievements in the next quarter century?

Vince Gill: Oh boy. I'm hoping it's wisdom we find in ourselves to think about the world instead of ourselves. If we could find a way to put ourselves last instead of first, I think we'd be better off. I think there are things we do that just obliterate the planet, and it's mostly out of greed and selfishness that that comes from. So hopefully we can find a way to put ourselves last instead of first.

Here's our last question. What advice would you want to give your grandchildren to leave behind as your verbal footprint?

Vince Gill: Be kind.

Thank you so much for sitting down with us today.

Vince Gill: it's been a pleasure.