Vince Gill has spent his career performing on some of the most well-known stages in the world—and right now is no different. In addition to his upcoming Christmas residency at Ryman Auditorium with Amy Grant, Gill is playing the 20,000-seat Sphere in Las Vegas with The Eagles through March 15.
The band’s residency includes 28 shows over 14 weekends. The Sphere features cutting-edge technology to create an immersive visual experience for fans, elevating the band’s beloved catalog.
Gill jokes that the experience strikes him differently. People can’t believe the magnitude of the show. He said to imagine playing an arena, and the whole back half is content.
“The stage is about this big,” Gill says, making a square with his hands. “Then all the stuff goes to the sides and up to the ceiling. The ceiling is 15, 20 times bigger than all of that. It’s staggeringly massive.”
The singer said the band was running content at soundcheck that accompanies the songs and that he was “getting loopy.”
“I was getting kind of where I felt like I was going to fall over because things are tilted, and you think you’re moving, but you’re not,” he says. “It’s a trip. It’s the most people I’ve ever been ignored by when I’m playing. You’re playing, and they’re all staring at all the stuff on the ceiling. They’re not paying any attention to you. It’s kind of fun, really.”
Being ignored when he’s playing doesn’t upset him, Gill says. But for him, music has never been visual.
Videos by American Songwriter
Vince Gill: “I Never Wanted to See Anybody Running Around on the Stage and Yelling at Me”
“The whole point of that show and that building is the visual side of it,” Gill said. “I never wanted to see anybody running around on the stage and yelling at me and being aerobic and bombs going off and pyro and whatever. And it’s a great show.”
An excellent show for Gill is watching Merle Haggard stand on stage and sing great song after great song.
“It’s still what I want to hear when I go to hear music,” he said. “I don’t necessarily go to see it.”
Gill proved it to himself again recently when he went to see The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. He didn’t like that experience, either.
“I loved hearing the music, but once again, that’s what the music is for me,” he said. “It’s for me to paint the pictures. I never liked videos in my career where I had to go make a video and all that. You’ve got to paint your own pictures to what these songs mean to you. It’s foreign to me, but it’s still fun.”
The Eagles will next play The Sphere on November 1.
Tickets are available here.
(Photo by Ed Rode/Getty Images)
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.