‘Bonnie Raitt of Country’ Gets His Due : The Recognition That Came With Vince Gill’s No. 1 Hit Last Year Was Long in Coming

“I kind of feel like the Bonnie Raitt of country music,” says singer Vince Gill of the whirlwind success that came with “When I Call Your Name,” his No. 1 country hit last year. In its wake, Gill has won shelves of awards, including a Grammy and, earlier this month, three Country Music Academy awards, including a best male vocal trophy wrested away from reigning country king Garth Brooks.

As when Raitt achieved platinum success with her 1989 “Nick of Time” album, after nearly two decades of recording and touring, there were plenty of peers who felt Gill was long overdue for recognition. Though still only 34, the singer, writer and guitarist has made music his life since he was 17, and he’s flirted with fame ever since 1980 when, as lead singer of Pure Prairie League, he had a Top 10 pop hit with “Let Me Love You Tonight.”

Besides subsequently pursuing his own career, the Nashville resident lent his pure tenor voice and peerless guitar style to hundreds of recordings and scores of hits by others, including Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Tammy Wynette, Dire Straits and Reba McEntire, with whom he shares a bill Friday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

“It’s a real good feeling to know a lot of people have been in my corner,” he said by phone from Waco, Tex. recently. “There have been a lot of people in music who maybe something should have happened for long ago, and I think it makes everybody feel good when they do finally make it. I’ve certainly felt that way for others.”

There does seem to be something of a renaissance in country, with both newcomers and artists who have spent decades on the fringe finally getting recognition.

“I think there always have been a lot of good new artists, but what’s different now is that for the first time in a long, long time you’ve got radio being receptive to new music and the record companies receptive to signing new music,” Gill said.

A native of Norman, Okla., Gill initially pursued the instrumental side of music, having taken up the guitar at 10, influenced by the likes of Chet Atkins, James Burton and Buck Owens’ guitarist Don Rich.

“I was too shy to sing and I didn’t know people wrote songs. I didn’t start writing until I was 18 . . . when I realized that people made that stuff up. Then I started trying it,” Gill said.

He grew up loving country because “I was the youngest of the family so I never got to buy any records. For several years I had to listen to what everybody else bought, and my folks were big country music fans: Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and tons of great stuff. And I never stopped loving it. Of course, I went through my period of the Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, and still love them today as much as I do Bill Monroe.”

One rock group he doesn’t evince much love for is Kiss. Through a fluke, a bluegrass band Gill was in when he was 19 wound up opening a 1976 gig for the glam ‘n’ gore band.

“We got a call saying, ‘Can you get down here to the auditorium tonight? The opening act canceled.’ We didn’t know we were opening for Kiss, and putting a bluegrass band in front of them didn’t go over. It was pretty funny though. I never heard 7,000 people boo at one time before.”

Along with his stint in Pure Prairie League, Gill worked with fiddler Byron Berline and guitarist Dan Crary (now an Orange County resident) in Berline’s bluegrass group Sundance and also in Rodney Crowell’s band. Outside of the PPL hit and a few ‘80s solo singles that performed modestly, Gill’s career often didn’t get much more encouragement than the Kiss fans gave it. In the ‘70s, he worked such out-of-the-way places as Costa Mesa’s Crystal Saloon (now the Newport Roadhouse) “and far smaller places,” he said.

One positive result of his sojourn in California was meeting his wife of 11 years, Janis, who is one-half of the sister duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo.

“It’s funny,” Gill said, “but a friend of mine told me before I moved out there about this girl guitar player who played bluegrass, and he said, ‘You’ll make the perfect couple. You’ll fall in love and get married.’ Then sure enough it was Janis. We palled around and did a lot of playing and singing before we did any dating.”

The Sweethearts were racking up hits when Gill was still struggling. While he may have temporarily surpassed them, the sisters are readying a new album that includes a song Janis claims is about Gill, with the lines, “He can watch TV for hours and hours / He never thinks of bringing me flowers.”

“Yeah, that’s fairly accurate,” Gill said with a laugh. He said he made partial amends recently by delivering a bouquet at a Sweethearts’ show while they were in the midst of the song.

Some months the two are each so busy with music that they only get to spend three days together. “It’s pretty crazy. But the fact that it’s a two-career family where it’s both the same career makes it 10 times easier, because we both know all the parameters of what it is we’re doing. So there’s no ‘I can’t believe you have to go on the road for three weeks. Why do you have to do that?’ because we know why. So there’s no major problems.

“People are always saying, ‘Well, why don’t you work with your wife?’ But I kind of like keeping it separate. For one thing, they’re already a duet, and that would leave her sister (Kristine Arnold) out. I don’t think that’d be a fair thing. At some point maybe we’ll do something together, Janis and I, when the time is right.”

For a happily married man, Gill sings a cavalcade of sad songs.

“I’m just a much bigger fan of sad songs than I am of happy songs,” he said. “I don’t want to sit there and hear some guy sing about how happy he is, you know? That’s what I’m a fan of, and I’ve certainly got my sad days as much as anyone. That part of being human.”

He cites John Hiatt, Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark and Harlan Howard among his favorite songwriters, along with newcomer Beth Nielsen-Chapman, with whom Gill wrote Alabama’s No. 1 hit “Here We Are.”

Though Gill could likely write, produce, sing and play all the parts to make a record, he prefers the collaborative process. “In most cases, the other person enhances what you’ve got started or vice versa. I don’t think it would be a lot of fun without that, because I enjoy the camaraderie. I enjoy a team. I think I could write my own songs and produce my own records but I don’t want to. There’s too many cool people out there to hang out with.”

Before “When I Call Your Name” took off last year, Gill turned down an offer from Mark Knopfler to join Dire Straits. “I told him I’d put too much into my career in country music to bail on it,” Gill said. “It’s really flattering to have been asked, and guesting on their record (the new ‘On Every Street’ album) is my proudest credit. . . . It helped me feel that while I may not be the biggest (country star)--I’m not the guy in the big hat and boots standin’ there--I’ve got a few other little things I do that make me different.”

* Reba McEntire, Vince Gill and Aaron Tippin will sing Friday at 8 p.m. at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $17.25 to $24.75. Information: (714) 855-8096.