Some of the best country songs start by etching a sense of place — and for the title track of Vince Gill’s recent EP Brown’s Diner Bar, released last month on MCA, that place is a vaunted Nashville establishment that first opened in 1927 in a converted trolley car, and is home to Nashville’s oldest beer license. Over the years, the unassuming place has drawn a steady stream of musicians, such as songwriting legend John Prine and country singer Hal Ketchum. Gill honors both late music artists in the song, weaving in a tale he heard of Ketchum dancing with one of the bar’s longtime servers.
“It’s a true story,” Gill tells Billboard. “Momma — they call her ‘Momma,’ her name’s Daphne — has been there 35 years, maybe more. She’s been serving me cheeseburgers for 35 of the 50 years I’ve been going there. I saw that some of the folks from Edley’s [Bar-B-Que] had brought Brown’s Diner Bar and they told a story about Momma and her favorite memories. She said one night they were closing up and had music playing on the jukebox and Hal and Momma went and danced in the parking lot. I said, ‘That has to be a song.’
“I made up that it was to a John Prine song,” he continues. “John used to go there all the time and was a regular, so it made sense to connect a great, historic guy that used to go there. He’s got to be the music playing when Hal dances with Momma in the parking lot.”
Over the past five decades, Oklahoma native Gill’s distinct tenor, elegant songwriting and versatile guitar work have been highlighted on over 20 albums, which have garnered Gill more than a dozen CMA Awards (including four trophies for song of the year), 22 Grammy Awards, and induction to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (2005) and Country Music Hall of Fame (2007). He’s as known for supporting other artists as he is for his own solo work, including joining the Eagles in 2017 following the death of Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey, making guest appearances on more than 1,000 albums for artists such as Sting and Dolly Parton, and producing for artists including Wendy Moten.
To celebrate 50 years of music, Gill has been rolling out projects as part of his year-long 50 Years From Home project, a collection of monthly EPs that feature new music, while also revisiting select hits from Gill’s catalog. Thus far, the project includes October’s I Gave You Everything I Had, November’s Secondhand Smoke and January’s Brown’s Diner Bar.
As much as Gill is singing about memories of a longtime favorite on the title track, his new EP also highlights new creative connections. He wrote the “This Lonesome Old Cowboy” with Wade Bowen, “Nobody Knows” with Waylon Payne, and “I’m Selling All My Memories” with ERNEST and Jake Worthington.
“I’ve written a couple of songs with ERNEST and this is the only song I’ve written with Jake, but in the middle of it, he goes, ‘You guys know how to write the real stuff.’ And he’s completely drawn to the old-school stuff that I’ve lived my whole life in,” Gill says. It was flattering, and I loved the way he sings, loved everything about him. And ERNEST is a huge lover of country music.”
In 2021, Gill signed a writer/publisher management agreement with Jody Williams Songs, and in late 2025, Williams signed on as manager for Gill, while Gill’s longtime manager Larry Fitzgerald continues as a consultant to Williams.
Gill credits Williams with helping to spark some of the co-writing sessions that led to the EPs.
“Jody called me at one point and said, “You’ve never been with a publisher and never had anybody manage your songwriting and I think you still have a lot to say as a songwriter. Would you consider letting me manage your songwriting?’ He started putting me with all these young people and all these kinds of folks.”
Eventually, Gill found that he’d composed around 150 songs. His original idea was to record as many of the songs as possible and release new music each week, “An ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side, like an old 45,” Gill says. Execs at Gill’s longtime label home MCA suggested he release an EP each month.
“The fact that I’m 68 and don’t know how many more chances I’m going to get to be creative… it’s just me trying to be creative as long as I can and as much as I can, because I know I don’t have as much time left at this point that I have had up ‘til now,” Gill says. “So it matters, and it’s so much deeper and it matters so much more.”
On each EP, the slate of new songs is complemented by one of Gill’s classic hits. Brown’s Diner Bar concludes with Gill’s 1990 breakthrough solo country hit “When I Call Your Name,” which Gill co-wrote with Tim DuBois. The song won the Country Music Association’s song and single of the year, and a Grammy for best country vocal performance, male.
“I’ve always loved waltzes,” Gill recalls of the song. “My mom taught me to waltz when I was a little boy, to ‘The Tennessee Waltz,’ and I’ve always been drawn to three-quarter time. I think we wrote ‘When I Call Your Name’ and ‘Oklahoma Swing’ in the same day. I sang ‘Oklahoma Swing’ with Reba, and then Patty [Loveless] sang on ‘When I Call Your Name,’ and both were pivotal songs for me at radio.”
Gill says selecting the perfect catalog song to pair with newer compositions has been among his favorite parts of putting together the EPs.
“It’s all sequencing and what song follows the song you just heard; it has to sit well with it, play well with it. After ‘I’m Sellin’ All My Memories,’ ‘When I Call Your Name’ comes and it just fits like a glove. I love sequencing records. When I was a kid, FM radio, the segues that [radio] jocks would do were always cool and they followed the song with another song that felt good after it, and, key wise, might have been similar. I just remember all those things. All that stuff I love is the details.”
He’s already cementing the details for future EPs in the series, saying that the next installment will feature “a bunch of up-tempo, guitar-driven, fun stuff.”
“Lainey Wilson is singing on one of the songs,” he adds, “and I’m playing a bunch of Telecaster and obnoxious, loud guitar, really swampy and funky. Then the record after that is a real traditional record, a lot of real traditional country kind of songs. After that, it runs the gamut, it’s all the things I’ve been and continue to want to be.”
In 2013, he teamed with legendary steel guitarist Paul Franklin to record Bakersfield, a collection of songs paying homage to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. A decade later, they joined musical forces again for Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys. Gill has hopes for similar projects with other artists.
“I want to do a record like I’ve done with Paul, like a duet record,” Gill says. “I have someone in mind that I think would be fun to do that with. One of these records that I’m putting out eventually is all songs I wrote with Marty Stuart. I’ve known Marty since I was 16 years old, so we finally got together and said, ‘Let’s write some songs together. We’ve been friends too long to have not written any songs.’ There’s one we wrote called ‘Marty and Me,’ about our lives.”
Outside of recording, he’ll launch a summer tour this year, which will include a six-night residency at Nashville’s revered Ryman Auditorium.
In November, Gill’s five decades of making exquisite music were honored when he was named the recipient of the CMA Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. On May 6, he will also receive the 2026 Ken Burns American Heritage Prize.
Last year, he signed a lifetime contract with his longtime label MCA. “I think that loyalty goes both ways,” he says of the deal. “You have to be loyal to get treated with that spirit. I think I’ve been loyal to them and they’ve been loyal to me, and it just made perfect sense.”
Presently, he’s following wherever his creative muse takes him.
“I’ve had so many great relationships here and am grateful for all the friends I’ve made and the acquaintances that I’ve gotten to work with and play on their records, sing on their records.”
