There isn't much Vince Gill can't sing, but even he doubts his abilities sometimes. The Country Music Hall of Fame member paid tribute to Ray Price in 2023, with Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys. Gill, who created the record with multi-instrumentalist Paul Franklin, almost didn't include "Danny Boy" on the project.
Videos by Wide Open Country
"We did "Danny Boy" on this record, which I would have never thought I would have recorded," Gill says (via American Songwriter). Gill adds that they decided to include the song only by making it their own.
"Because we had this idea of maybe making the steel kind of predominant and maybe in the spirit of what nightlife was.," Gill reflects. "You know, every steel guitar player plays nightlife. It's like every girl singer sings crazy, right? There are certain things that are just so."
"So I thought, 'That's a neat idea to take 'Danny Boy,'" the husband of Amy Grant adds. "But maybe if we could point this towards how iconic the thought is between nightlife and steel guitar is maybe we could do that again.'"
"Go Rest High On That Mountain"
Gill might have been hesitant to cover "Danny Boy," but there are few songs he can't sing, or play. The 67-year-old has spent almost 50 years performing songs, wowing audiences with both his vocals and skill as a guitarist. But perhaps his best song, and also most challenging, is "Go Rest High On That Mountain."
Gill was inspired to write the song by the loss of both Keith Whitley and his brother, Bob.
"When you look back at my life and my career being musical, that'll be the one song that I'm known for," Gill tells I Miss...90s Country Radio with Nick Hoffman on Apple Music Country. "And it carries more weight in that people went to that song when they really were hurting, when they're struggling and going through the hardest part of their life, not the best part of their life. When you lose somebody that you love and you go, you want comfort. You need to feed that melancholy thing that you're going through. I had no idea I was even going to do any of that."
