Vince Gill and Paul Franklin Share Their Take On 'Danny Boy'

07-02-2023

Album art

(MCA Nashville) The internationally recognizable song "Danny Boy," is the second track to be released from the upcoming album Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys, the latest project from country music icon Vince Gill and legendary musician Paul Franklin due out August 4.

Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys contains material that might be surprising to even the most die-hard of Price's fans. Franklin and Gill chose particularly obscure songs for this collection, selecting from the less familiar of Price's catalog, but the iconic "Danny Boy" was a leap of faith.

"This was a daunting and challenging choice, and we had to consider if it was the right one," Gill explains. "It's the one song on this whole collection that I would have been most skeptical about because it is so iconic. Paul and I decided that it could be incredibly beautiful if done the right way, for example if it was treated like Ray's version of "Night Life," so we decided to make the steel guitar predominant like it is in that particular song."

Although there are currently no plans for Gill and Franklin to tour together in 2023, on August 3 they will make an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry followed by an exclusive event. The first 300 ticketholders that purchase Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys in the Opry shop that evening will receive access to an exclusive Q&A with Gill and Franklin in Studio A directly following the show.

Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys is an 11-track masterpiece of musicianship and arrives ten years after the release of Gill and Franklin's critically acclaimed Bakersfield album, which paid tribute to Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.