Vince Gill on the Best and Toughest Music of His Career

Vince Gill was so certain from a young age he would be a career musician that, when he explains as much, it doesn’t even sound arrogant. “I always felt like my ears never lied to me,” he says. “They’d tell me, ‘You can sing good enough and play good enough and write good enough to be in this world’ — even though other people were telling me I couldn’t.”

Gill’s prolific career began in earnest when he became the lead singer for the already-successful Pure Prairie League and immersed himself in the L.A. country-rock scene, singing backup and playing guitar for artists like Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell before his own country hit-making began in earnest. Twenty albums and 22 Grammys later, the 66-year-old has worked with more than 1,000 artists as a singer or instrumentalist (or both), expanding beyond country and into rock, R&B, and other genres. Currently, he’s got a gig as the Eagles’ occasional stand-in for the late Glenn Frey, and he just released a tribute album to Ray Price called Sweet Memories with the legendary steel guitarist Paul Franklin.