Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Ashley McBryde, and Carly Pearce performed at All for the Hall New York on Tuesday (September 12) at Irving Plaza in New York City. The benefit concert for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum education programs was modeled after a “guitar pull,” where a group of musicians are seated beside each other onstage with their guitars and take turns performing.
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Harris, Gill, McBryde, and Pearce kicked off their guitar pull by sharing stories, impromptu harmonizing, and other banter, throughout the hour-and-a-half concert. The event was produced by museum board members Rod Essig, Clarence Spalding, Jody Williams, and Ken Levitan, and co-hosted by Gill, museum board president, and Harris, a trustee emeritus of the museum.
“The music you will hear tonight will exist one time, in this room, in these moments,” said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, at the start of the evening.
After being introduced, Gill joked, “Truthfully, I’m just the best they could get for free on a Tuesday,” and performed two unreleased songs and his 1994 hit “Whenever You Come Around” during the concert. I just wanted a seat at the table / Maybe carve a path of my own / I’ll sing all my sad songs ’bout heartache / ’Til my heroes are calling me home, sang Gill in the chorus of one new song, which he dedicated to his music heroes.
Gill opened the show with Jimmy Buffett’s 1973 song, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.” He encouraged an audience sing-along in honor of the late artist who died on September 1 at 76.
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“I just love ‘love songs,’” said Harris after the Buffett tribute before going into her 2011 “Home Sweet Home,” her tribute to Father Charles Strobel, a longtime advocate for the homeless in Nashville. Throughout her set, Harris also moved through “Old Yellow Moon,” “If This Is Goodbye,” “Prayer in Open D,” and “My Name Is Emmett Till,” the latter inspired by the black teenager who was murdered in 1955.
More tributes flooded into the set with McBryde’s 2016 song “Bible and a .44,” which she wrote for her preacher father, William C. McBryde. McBryde wrote the song on his 1982 Martin D-35S acoustic guitar, which she was forbidden to touch as a child.
“Everybody’s gotta be good at something, and I’m good at being nervous and saying the just-dumb-enough thing,” said McBryde during her set, which also included tracks off her 2023 album The Devil I Know—“Light on in the Kitchen,” “Single at the Same Time,” and “6th of October.” Pearce also joined her for their 2021 duet “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” which earned the duo a Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.
For her set, Pearce shared “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” “29,” “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” and her recent single, “What He Didn’t Do,” featuring Chris Stapleton.
[RELATED: Behind the Song: “Bible and a .44” by Ashley McBryde]
“I decided to do it because so many of my heroes—and I’m sitting up here with two of them [Harris and Gill],” said Pearce. “They never shied away from being themselves. They’ve just unapologetically been themselves, and I didn’t feel like it would be right to me as a human being to not tell my story.”
The concert also highlighted the education program Words & Music, which pairs students with professional songwriters, and featured the song “When Hearts Come to Life,” which was written by first-grade students from PS32 in Brooklyn, New York.
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Joining the students were mentors Phil Barton, who penned Lee Brice‘s 2012 No. 1 hit “A Woman Like You,” and recent Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Liz Rose, known for her work with Taylor Swift and writing songs for Carrie Underwood and Little Big Town (“Girl Crush”) with her fellow Love Junkies Lori McKenna and Hillary Lindsey.
Launched in 2005, the All for the Hall has raised nearly $6 million to support the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s educational programs and serves more than 130,000 people annually.
Photos: Jared Siskin / Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
