Newest EP in Year-Long 50 Years From Home Series Out Today
NASHVILLE, TN – March 13, 2026 – Sad is the flavor of Vince Gill on Lonely’s What I Do, the fifth volume in his 50 Years From Home EP series. And he’s happy about that. The EP is out today on MCA.
Instruments featured on the cover of each EP are from Gill’s personal collection. For Lonely’s What I Do, he chose a Gibson J-200 given to him by songwriter Paul Kennerly.
Gill left his hometown of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1975 to launch a career that now includes 22 Grammy Awards, both Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry member inductions, and 25 Top 10 hits on Billboard’s Country charts. One of the latter, “Pocket Full of Gold” from his 1991 album of the same name, is included along with the seven new recordings featured on Lonely’s What I Do. These songs are lovelorn laments, demonstrating a hurt that’s exquisite and palpable thanks to Gill’s rich, high and lonesome tenor and minor-key instrumentation.
Gill addresses this theme of sadness, explaining, “I love the melancholy in music. I always have. Maybe it goes back to the bluegrass days of the murder ballads, those kinds of songs. There’s so much more emotion in songs that have a little more despair. I think they’re as powerful as they are because they tell great stories. They paint great pictures that take you to that place — whether they’re true or not.”
The first loss Gill bemoans on the EP is not of a person but a culture. “Nothing Like They Used to Be,” a Texas swing co-written with Sharon Vaughn and Hadlie Jo Pritchard that mourns the classic honky-tonks, where “those swinging doors ain’t swinging” and “they ain’t singing ’bout cheating” anymore. “It just reminds me of the early days of going into a real beer joint and hanging out and hearing some twangy music,” he says.
The hankies then come out for “A Million Tears Ago,” a co-write with Mae Estes, who also sings the harmony vocals. “I’m really crazy about Mae,” Gill says. “She’s somebody who really loves the kind of old school spirit of our music. We got together and made up a song, and this is what turned up.”
The delicate “How’s the Leaving Going” is another trio write, a teaming of Gill, Lee Thomas Miller and Kameron Marlowe, who’s also released his own rendition of the song. Gill’s track, meanwhile, features backing vocals by his youngest daughter, Corrina, from his marriage to Amy Grant.
For the equally gentle “Lonely’s What I Do,” the EP’s title track, Gill teamed again with Vaughn, as well as Belle Frantz. Gill says, “it’s a little tip of the hat to Bob Wills’ ‘Faded Love.’”
Gill says he and Tom Douglas (co-writer of Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me”) were a bit surprised by the brevity of the weepy “The Last Thing You Left Behind.” “The song starts with the chorus, then we wrote a verse, and the verse was great,” Gill recalls. “I looked at him and said, ‘I think we’re done.’ He was like, ‘Excuse me? What do you mean? It’s only one verse.’ I said, ‘Think about how many Merle songs had one verse — quite a few of them. Tell me what else you would say that isn’t saying the same thing.’ He said, ‘You’re right. That’s the least amount of words I’ve ever put in a song!’”
With its old-timey, late-at-night vibe, “How Lonely Lonely Gets” is the EP’s oldest song, one Gill says has been patiently waiting for its time. “I never found the right time to record it or the right record to put it on,” he says. “I saw this stack of songs showing up and knew, ‘Hey, I’ve got an old song I think is pretty good,’ so I dusted it off, cleaned it up a little bit and recorded it.”
Amidst all of this sad material, “The Book” may be most heart-wrenching. Penned with Bob DiPiero – “a knucklehead, funny guy like me” — it was inspired by frequent questions Gill receives about when he’s planning to write a book. “I love how it turns in the second verse,” Gill says. “It’s so mournful; ‘When I watched those six white horses carry you away/Oh, I wanted to go with you/But the children need me to stay.’ That crushes.”
Like its 50 Years From Home predecessors, Lonely’s What I Do was produced by Gill at his home studio in Nashville, with engineers Matt Rausch and Justin Niebank and a corps of his regular players including pedal steel virtuoso Paul Franklin, guitarists Tom Bukovac and Jedd Hughes, bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas, keyboardists Gordon Mote, John Jarvis and Jim “Moose” Brown, and drummer Fred Eltringham.
Episode 5 of 50 Years From Home with Vince Gill and Charlie Worsham provides a deeper dive into the recording of Lonely’s What I Do. Full episode coming soon.
TRACK LISTING:
(For complete EP credits, download HERE)
- “Nothing Like They Used To Be”
- “A Million Tears Ago”
- “How’s The Leaving Going”
- “Lonely’s What I Do”
- “The Last Thing You Left Behind”
- “How Lonely Lonely Gets”
- “The Book”
- “Pocket Full of Gold”
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 Musician’s 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.