The Latest EP in Year-Long 50 Years From Home Series Featuring Cyndi Thomson
NASHVILLE, TN – August 4, 2026 – The theme of Eighteen Summers, the ninth volume of Vince Gill’s 50 Years From Home EP series, is established early on, when he sings, I’m old school country ever since I was young.
Wide-ranging master instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer that he is, Gill never gets too far from country, of course. Since his first solo album in 1985, he’s put more than five dozen singles on the Billboard country music charts, including seven No. 1 hits of his own and in collaboration with others. His 22 Grammy Awards are the most of any country artist, and last year he received the Country Music Association’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award.
So, rightfully, Eighteen Summers “is kind of steeped in that,” according to Gill, whose father played in country bands around Norman, Oklahoma. “I got to listen to everything, growing up,” Gill recalls. “Bluegrass kinda got ahold of me in my teenage years, then I found my way into wanting to be a country artist—and that kind of worked out,” he adds with a laugh.
Those familial musical roots are also celebrated on the guitar featured on the cover of Eighteen Summers. It’s been around Gill his whole life, though he doesn’t know where it came from initially. “It’s a tiny little thing I used to drag around with me everywhere and bang and beat on it,” he remembers. “My mom has a picture of me sleeping face down on the couch when I was about a year and a half, maybe two years old, with my arm around that guitar.”
The upbeat, slightly Cajun-flavored “Eighteen Summers” kicks the EP off as a duet with co-writer Cyndi Thomson, a fellow country singer who had one album and some hits during the early 2000s but had stepped away from the business. “I saw her at my breakfast haunt, so I introduced myself and said, ‘Man, you should be making records. You’re too good not to do this!’” Gill remembers. “She decided to make her way back in, so this made a perfect song for us to do together,” adding “It’s a story for everybody having to watch their kids take off, from the perspective of both parents, as a duet.”
Gill wrote the smooth, swinging “I’m All the Mississippi You’ll Ever Need” with Belle Frantz, but credits Steve Earle with inspiring the title. “Steve had this bass player named Dennis Crouch, who has played with everybody—a world-class musician. Steve used to introduce him and would say, ‘This cat over here is all the Arkansas you’ll ever need.’ That always stuck with me, and when Belle and I were writing I asked her where she was from and she said Mississippi, so I said, ‘OK, maybe this is the time.’ Some songs just show up a whole lot later than you ever anticipated.”
The two-stepping, twangy and slightly sinister “I’ll Haunt Your Memory”— “Everybody wants to get even when they’re pissed off, don’t they?” Gill quips—marks his first co-write with Carter Faith, whose 2025 debut album Cherry Valley was nominated for Album of the Year at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards, along with Ashley Monroe of Pistol Annies. Gill was producer for two of Monroe’s studio albums, Like A Rose and The Blade. Featured on harmony vocals is John Meador from Gill’s touring band.
Gill wrote the mellow, lovelorn “Gone Like Yesterday” himself, wallowing in how Misery keeps me company. “It’s just another broken-hearted song,” he says. “I really love the chord changes in it; chords you don’t normally associate with a country song. It’s really musical, and Gordon Mote’s piano solo is just fantastic.”
The tone is decidedly happier on “Dancing In Texas,” a collaboration with Catie Offerman whose three-quarter time sway invites listeners to leave all your troubles and worries behind. “I’ve lived in a waltz tempo.” Gill notes. “Waltzes built my house— ‘When I Call Your Name,’ ‘Pocket Full of Gold,’ those kinds of songs. I’ve always been drawn to waltzes because when I was a little boy my mom taught me how to do it, and the only kind of dancing I still do is an occasional waltz.”
It’s another mood shift for “Last Night at Closing Time,” penned with Brad Warren, Brett Warren, (The Warren Brothers) and Preston Cooper. The mid-tempo paean to loneliness, featuring a soul-piercing pedal steel solo by Paul Franklin, introduces a protagonist who passes away in the last verse. “I don’t mind sad songs. Everybody knows that—the sadder the better. The guy dies on his bar stool; it doesn’t get more country than that!”
For the EP’s previously released single Gill chose “What the Cowgirls Do,” his hit from 1994’s When Love Finds You album. “It fit the theme, and it mentions Texas in it and other parts of the country, Mississippi and whatnot. It felt like the right song to follow the others.”
Like the other 50 Years From Home EPs, Eighteen Summers was produced and recorded by Gill at his home studio near Nashville, with engineers Justin Niebank and Matt Rausch and a core group of musicians that includes Franklin, Meador and Mote, as well as guitarists Jedd Hughes, Jack Schneider, and Tom Bukovac, Jim “Moose” Brown and John Jarvis on keyboards, bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, and drummer Fred Eltringham. Commemorating his departure from Oklahoma to begin his music career in earnest, Gill has been releasing a new EP each month, drawing from songs he’s written mostly over the past few years.
Episode 9 of 50 Years From Home with Vince Gill and Charlie Worsham provides a deeper dive into the recording of Eighteen Summers. Previous episodes can be seen HERE.
TRACK LISTING:
(For complete EP credits, download HERE)
“Eighteen Summers” (Vince Gill, Cyndi Thomson)
“I’m All The Mississippi You’ll Ever Need” (Vince Gill, Belle Frantz)
“I’ll Haunt Your Memory” (Vince Gill, Carter Faith, Ashley Monroe)
“Gone Like Yesterday” (Vince Gill)
“Dancing In Texas” (Vince Gill, Catie Offerman)
“Last Night At Closing Time” (Vince Gill, Preston Cooper, Brett Warren, Brad Warren)
“What The Cowgirls Do” (Vince Gill, John Jarvis)
Photo credit: David McClister Download photo HERE
ABOUT VINCE GILL:
One of the most popular artists in modern country music, Vince Gill is famous for his top-notch songwriting, world-class guitar playing and warm, soaring tenor, all wrapped up in a quick and easy wit. Gill achieved his big breakthrough in 1990 with “When I Call Your Name,” which won both the Country Music Association’s (CMA) Single and Song of the Year awards as well as a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male. In total, Gill has won 18 CMA Awards, 22 Grammy Awards, and 8 Academy of Country Music Awards, and in 2025 was presented with the CMA Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1991, Gill was invited to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and in 2007 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2012 he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A gifted songwriter, Gill’s compositions earned him entry into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and the prestigious BMI Icon award in 2014. Throughout his career, he has released 21 albums, sold over 30 million albums, and charted 45 singles. In 2022, Gill was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame. Always considering himself a musician above all else, Gill has over the years been a part of some iconic bands, including Pure Prairie League, The Notorious Cherry Bombs, and The Time Jumpers. In 2017, Gill was asked to join the Eagles on the road, and he continues to be a part of that historic band’s tour. 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of Gill leaving home to pursue a career in music. To honor that milestone, he signed a lifetime contract with his record label MCA and is releasing an EP series of brand-new music every month for a year, titled 50 Years From Home.