Vince Gill with very special guest Amy Grant at Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall

Vincent Grant Gill was born April 12, 1957 in Norman, Okla. His father encouraged him to learn to play guitar and banjo, which he did along with bass, mandolin, dobro and fiddle. While in high school, he performed in the bluegrass band Mountain Smoke, which built a strong local following and opened a concert for Pure Prairie League.



After graduating high school in 1975, Gill moved to Louisville, Ky. to be part of the band Bluegrass Alliance. After a brief time in Ricky Skaggs’s Boone Creek band, Gill moved to Los Angeles and joined Sundance, a bluegrass group fronted by fiddler Byron Berline. In 1979, he joined Pure Prairie League as lead singer and recorded three albums with the band, the first of which yielded the Top Ten pop hit “Let Me Love You Tonight” in 1980. Departing the group in 1981, Gill joined Rodney Crowell’s backing band the Cherry Bombs, where he met and worked with Tony Brown and Emory Gordy Jr., both of whom would later produce many of his future solo albums.

In 1983, Gill signed with RCA Records and moved with his wife Janis and daughter Jenny to Nashville to pursue his dream of being a Country Music artist. His debut mini-album Turn Me Loose (produced by Gordy) was released the following year, featuring his first charting solo single, “Victim of Life’s Circumstance.” The Things That Matter, his first full album was released later that year, featuring two Top 10 hits: a duet with Rosanne Cash on “If It Weren’t For Him” and a solo hit with “Oklahoma Borderline.” In 1987 he achieved his first Top 5 single, “Cinderella,” from his album The Way Back Home. In addition to performing as a solo artist, Gill also worked frequently as a studio musician, wrote songs for other artists and toured with Emmylou Harris.

Gill signed with MCA Records in 1989, reuniting with Brown as a producer, and released the album When I Call Your Name. While the debut single “Oklahoma Swing” (a duet with Reba McEntire) reached the Top 20, it was the title cut that firmly established the singer as a new force on the Country Music scene. The song peaked at No. 2 and earned Gill his first CMA Award (Single of the Year) and his first Grammy Award (Best Male Country Vocal Performance) in 1990. The next single, “Never Knew Lonely,” peaked at No. 3 and the album was certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of more than one million copies.