Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett Announce Joint Tour
For the third year in a row, music veterans and longtime friends Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett will team up for a tour encompassing nine dates throughout March 2017. A series of intimate solo and duo performances, the shows will feature Gill and Lovett serving as their own accompanists, with very little preparation in terms of set list.
Late in 2014, Lovett wrapped a solo tour with his 14-piece band when the pair’s first collaborative trek was announced. That four-city stint in January 2015 inspired a longer 13-city stretch earlier this year, sans sidemen. While those dates concentrated on the lower southeast, the 2017 shows will all take place on the West Coast, with the bulk of them hitting California. As with this year’s shows, the impromptu nature of the performances will remain the same.
“I know Lyle won’t have a plan and I won’t either,” Gill said in a statement when their first major trek was unveiled last year. “What he plays will inspire me, and probably vice-versa. It’ll be like playing ping-pong. Whatever song he chooses to sing will inspire the next song that comes out of me.”
The emphasis for the shows, he adds, will be on “just two guys sitting on stools, telling stories and singing songs. No big bands. I saw James Taylor once with just him and his guitar, and after that show I felt like I knew him a whole lot better than I ever did before. That’s what’ll happen between Lyle and me, too, and I’m looking forward to it.”
Gill and Lovett have worked together in the recording studio frequently over the past 30 years. In 1986, Gill played guitar on Lovett’s self-titled debut LP for MCA Nashville, three years before he joined the label and released his breakthrough album, When I Call Your Name.
Here are the dates for Lovett and Gill’s 2017 Songs and Stories Tour:
March 22 – Thousand Oaks, CA @ Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza
March 23 – Mesa, AZ @ Mesa Arts Center Ikeda Theatre
March 24 – Las Vegas, NV @ Reynolds Hall, Smith Center for the Performing Arts
March 25 – Reno, NV @ Reno Ballroom
March 26 – San Francisco, CA @ Nourse Theatre
March 27 – San Rafael, CA @ Marin Center
March 28 – San Jose, CA @ City National Civic
March 29 – Visalia, CA @ Visalia Fox Theatre
March 30 – Santa Ynez, CA @ Chumash Casino