Stars Are Keeping It Country
If country music has a public face, it doesn't hurt that it's Vince Gill's .
He's a four-time president of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and hosted the Country Music Awards for a dozen years. (His 18 CMAs, the most for any artist, sit alongside 17 Grammys.) He also has served as unofficial ambassador for the Grand Ole Opry since legendary King of Country Music Roy Acuff inducted him in 1991.
Oh, yeah: Gill is also a triple threat as singer, songwriter and picker.
He'll do all three as he co-headlines the March 31 concert with Lee Ann Womack and Wynonna (which raises the possibility of a Judds reunion since mom Naomi is also on the bill) and heads up an all-star Nashville house band that will back Country Music Hall of Famers Ray Price and Kris Kristofferson .
"You look at the music of all those people, and it's pretty diverse," says Gill, noting that "the real beauty of this music is its willingness to be collaborative. To me, it's the magical thing about it."
Plus, he adds, "as time goes on, country music becomes more and more eloquent in its storytelling. It's a place where you can still go to get a story told in a song, where you can still have a melody played for you."
Expect a lot of socializing around Gill's dressing room backstage at the Concert Hall. At the Opry, he's usually assigned the most prestigious dressing room, No. 1, for decades occupied by the legendary Acuff.
"I don't ever request it, never one time," Gill says. "But they always give it to me, and I think it's only because of one thing: I never close the door. I paid attention to that when I was an up-and-comer going out there for the first few times -- Roy Acuff's dressing room door was always open, and people were always welcome. There were jam sessions in there, people would come by to get a picture, just the fact that the door was open. That made an amazing impact on me."
Marty Stuart -- he of the flashy vintage country suits and, at 47, the now-salt-and-pepper pompadour -- first made his mark at age 12 as a guitar and mandolin prodigy touring Southern Pentecostal churches with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. At 13, he moved to Nashville and made his first appearance on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as a member of Lester Flatt's band. In the late '70s, Stuart became part of Johnny Cash's band and, by the mid-'80s, a headliner in his own right, thanks to a repertoire mixing traditional country, honky-tonk, bluegrass and what Stuart dubbed "hillbilly rock."
When the Mississippi native reached that plateau, he began traveling in Ernest Tubb's old tour bus. That's because along the way, Stuart's archivist impulses led him to amass one of the most important collections of country music artifacts and memorabilia around. Estimated at 20,000 items, it includes Hank Williams's handwritten lyrics, Jimmie Rodgers's railroad lantern, Patsy Cline's make-up case and Tubb's bus.
Stuart's appearance on the Grand Ole Opry's 80th anniversary road show with Travis Tritt and the Del McCoury Band is fitting: He's an Opry regular and spearheaded the drive to save the historic 1,200-seat Ryman Auditorium from the wrecking ball. The Opry's original home and the mother church of country music, the Ryman closed in 1974 when the Opry moved into a new $15 million theater (the largest broadcasting studio in the world, with a seating capacity of 4,400), but many country artists prefer the Ryman. Stuart's most recent album, "Live at the Ryman," is a bluegrass collection recorded there with his band, the Fabulous Superlatives. (Stuart and Superlative guitarist Kenny Vaughan will offer a guitar master class Thursday -- see schedule.)
Of the Kennedy Center's Opry lineup, Stuart says, "It's pretty hard-hitting, hard-driving kind of music. It's bringing a bunch of fun and the essence of Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry."
