For 30 years, Vince Gill and Amy Grant have been making sweet music together. It all started when Gill invited Grant to perform in his 1993 Christmas special on TNN, Christmas With Vince Gill. “I was doing a Christmas special and made a record and my guests were my heroes Chet Atkins, Michael McDonald, and then we needed somebody that would be a good guest so people would actually watch,” Gill quipped to the audience who gathered at the Ryman Auditorium for the opening night of the couple’s 2023 Christmas at the Ryman residency. “We met and made the best friend I’ve ever had.”
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[Christmas at the Ryman with Amy Grant and Vince Gill: Get Tickets]
Grant recalled how they filmed the special in Gill’s native Oklahoma, the same year she had volunteered to do a fundraiser for the Nashville Symphony. Seeing a mutually beneficial opportunity, she agreed to appear on Gill’s special if he sang at her fundraiser. It also led to one of their career-defining hits, “House of Love.” “It was the first time I ever heard you sing in real time,” she describes. “I’d been in the studio working on a song that I was supposed to sing harmony with myself and it was way too high and I said ‘I can’t do that.’ Then I heard him sing and I was like, ‘Can you sing the high harmony on this next song?’ And we’ve been singing it for 30 years.”
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“House of Love” was the title track of Grant’s 1994 album and was released as a single that same year. It reached the Top 5 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and the Top 40 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. The couple wed in March 2000 and welcomed daughter Corrina a year later.
Grant later returned the musical favor, as she inspired her husband’s 1994 hit “Whenever You Come Around,” which he wrote after they met at the taping for the Christmas special. “She walked into the rehearsal hall and smiled at me and I have not been the same since,” Gill professed. “The inspiration was simply that smile that brought this song.” “Whenever You Come Around” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and is one of his signature hits.
Christmas at the Ryman continues through December 23.
Photo by George De Sota/Liaison Agency
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