Vince Gill was joined by Lainey Wilson to sing one of his iconic songs. Gill and Wilson teamed up to sing “Go Rest High On That Mountain” at the recent Primetime Emmy Awards. The two performed the song as part of the In Memoriam segment, honoring actors, producers, directors and more who have passed away in the last year.

“The song we’re singing is a song that I wrote about the passing of my brother 32 years ago, Gill tells Entertainment Tonight. “And it’s the 30th anniversary of that song. And Lainey’s just killing it out there, and she’s such a neat kid. I’m just thrilled to death to get to honor some of these folks that I never knew might mean something to them.”

Gill is a big fan of Wilson, even more so after singing “Go Rest High On That Mountain” with her.

“She sings her brains out, for one,” Gill says. “That helps. But it was the folks that put on the show that had the idea, and I said, ‘Man, I’m all for that.’ So it’s great getting to know her a little bit. She’s a great girl.”

 

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The Story Behind Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High On That Mountain”

Gill began writing “Go Rest High On That Mountain” after the death of Keith Whitley in 1989, finishing it when Gill’s brother Bob Coen passed away in 1993. Coen was 22 when he was speeding after drinking too much and hit a semi-truck.

“He’d disappear for long periods of time and wind up at the mission,” Gill says (via American Songwriter). “He finally came home the last couple of years of his life and stayed pretty close to Mom.”

“He was pretty cool,” Gill adds.

Gill never imagined that “Go Rest High On That Mountain” would become one of the most iconic songs in country music.

“When you look back at my life and my career being musical, that’ll be the one song that I’m known for,” Gill tells I Miss…90s Country Radio with Nick Hoffman on Apple Music Country. “And it carries more weight in that people went to that song when they really were hurting, when they’re struggling and going through the hardest part of their life, not the best part of their life. When you lose somebody that you love and you go, you want comfort. You need to feed that melancholy thing that you’re going through. I had no idea I was even going to do any of that.”

It was his longtime producer, Tony Brown, who convinced Gill to record “Go Rest High On That Mountain.”

“I wasn’t even going to record it,” he adds. “Tony heard it and he says, ‘You got to record that song.’ I said, ‘Boy, it’s pretty sad, pretty tough.’ And he said, ‘No, you really need to.’ And that was so [personal] to me, because it was written about my brother’s passing. All that stuff was part of it. But he didn’t know that … years later, it was going to wind up having the impact that it’s had on people.”

The Country Music Hall of Fame member later added a third verse to “Go Rest High On That Mountain.”

“The last thirty years I’ve always felt like something was missing from this song,” Gill explained recently. “With this new third verse I finally feel like the song is complete.”