Country Music Memories: Gill Releases ‘Down to My Last Bad Habit’

Vince Gill‘s Down to My Last Bad Habit is full of big-name collaborators — you just have to look further than the tracklist to notice some of them. The lauded musician’s 14th studio album arrived six years ago, on Feb. 12, 2016.

Listeners will find Cam (“I’ll Be Waiting for You”) and Little Big Town (“Take Me Down”), as well as jazz musician Chris Botti (“One More Mistake”), as featured artists on Down to My Last Bad Habit, but they’re only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg that is Gill’s list of famous friends recruited for this record.

Gill wrote or co-wrote all 12 of the project’s songs with his recognizable co-writers, including solo artist and Pistol Annies member Ashley Monroe, adult contemporary artist Richard Marx, country singer and songwriter “Big Al” Anderson, fellow artist Jillian Jacqueline, hit songwriters Catt Gravitt and Leslie Satcher, and former The X-Factor contestant Brennin Hunt. Jacqueline and Marx, specifically, co-penned Gill’s LBT collaboration, which became a single from the album.

“I’m crazy about that kid,” Gill gushed of Cam, then a newcomer, around the album’s release. “I first met her a year or so ago: I was doing a benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame out on the West Coast and she was there, and they told us about her and we got her up there to sing a song, and she killed it and everybody loved her.”

Dig into the album credits, and you’ll also see the names of bluegrass great Alison Krauss, ace musician Charlie Worsham, singer-songwriter Ellie Holcomb and Gill’s talented daughters Jenny and Corrina, all of whom contribute backing vocals throughout the record. And then there’s “Sad One Comin’ On (A Song for George Jones),” which concludes the project and tributes the country great, who died in 2013.

MCA Nashville

Down to My Last Bad Habit was Gill’s first new album in three years, following 2013’s Bakersfield. It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Country Albums chart.

“Forty years into this, it’s still as much fun as it’s ever been to play music,” said Gill, who co-produced the album with Justin Niebank, at the time. “At the end of the day, what I get excited about is doing something I haven’t done before. When I record a song, I feel successful if I’ve accomplished something new.”

Gill has maintained a position as one of country music’s visible elder statesmen in the years since the release of Down to My Last Bad Habit. He can often be found at the Grand Ole Opry, and has even working with a number of younger artists — for example, with Chris Young on Young’s chart-topping hit “Sober Saturday Night,” which was released a few months after this album.

Gill has also recently worked with the Time Jumpers, including on their 2016 album Kid Sister (the title track won Gill a Grammy) and the Eagles. In the iconic rock band, Gill and Deacon Frey are helping fill the hole left by co-founder Glenn Frey (Deacon’s father) after his death in January of 2016.

Gill’s most recent solo album, Okie, arrived in 2019.