Interview: Vince Gill talks about his new album “Guitar Slinger”
A version of this column appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman. To read my “Guitar Slinger” review, click here.
“Guitar Slinger” Vince Gills returns with first album in five years
Column: The new record marks the Oklahoma native’s first release since he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and follows his 2006 Grammy-winning box set “These Days.”
“It wasn’t hard for me to see all I was ever gonna be was a Guitar Slinger,” Vince Gill declares in the boogie-woogie title track to his new album.
While it’s true he hasn’t stopped making music since second grade, when he made his public singing debut crooning “The House of the Rising Sun at Oklahoma City’s Cleveland Elementary School, it’s a bit of self-deprecating creative license for Gill to even jokingly declare himself just a “Guitar Slinger.”
After all, the new album, due out Monday, is the follow-up to the superstar’s four-CD box set “These Days,” which earned the Norman native his 20th Grammy when it was named the best country album of 2006. “Guitar Slinger” also marks Gill’s first record since he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
“When I left home in ’75 — I grew up there in Oklahoma and I was the kind of kid that studied the back of records and knew who played on stuff and who sang on stuff —I think in all honesty what I aspired to do was that. If I aspired to do something, it was not to be a country star, it was not to be a pop star, it was ‘I want to be part of that process.’ I like how this works. I like how a record is put together and all the pieces and parts,” Gill said in a phone interview earlier this year from his adopted hometown of Nashville, Tenn., where Vince Gill Week kicked off last Thursday, Oct. 13.
Although five years have passed since Gill, 54, released “These Days,” the singer/songwriter/guitarist has hardly been resting on his laurels. He has been touring, writing and especially performing with an array of other musicians, from fellow Oklahoma native Jimmy Webb and rock band Daughtry to actress-turned-singer Gwyneth Paltrow and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Alice Cooper. He recently teamed Sting, another legendary multi-hyphenate musician, to tape an episode of the acclaimed cable series “CMT Crossroads” that will premiere in November.
In addition, Gill and Carrie Underwood, who hails from Checotah, performed in April a duet of “How Great Thou Art” during the televised concert special “Girls’ Night Out: Superstar Women of Country” that has viewed more than 8.5 million times on YouTube.
“If it’s Vince Gill, it’s gonna be awesome,” Underwood said last week during a homecoming trip about his new album. “He’s such a great man first and foremost. You know, in a hundred years, nobody’s gonna care what we sang, I’m sure. But somebody like Vince, he spreads good stuff everywhere he goes.”
Homemade album
Gill didn’t go far to make “Guitar Slinger,” the first album he recorded in his home studio. In fact, he made music for the new disc throughout his house.
While “These Days” featured an array of guest stars, including Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, along with fellow Oklahomans Trisha Yearwood and Katrina Elam, Gill kept the new album strictly a family affair. He and his wife Amy Grant, who gets a shout-out on the title track, swap verses on the unabashedly romantic “True Love,” with their daughter Sarah Chapman, 18, backing her mother.
His daughters Jenny Gill, 29, and Corrina Grant Gill, 10, sing with him on one of the album’s most haunting songs, “Billy Paul,” about a golf buddy of Gill’s who killed a woman and then committed suicide last year. While Jenny has recorded with her dad many times before, the dark country-blues ode marks Corrina’s singing debut.
“I played it in the car one morning taking Corinna to school, and it finished and she goes ‘Dad, play that again.’ … I played it again, and by the time it was finished, she was back there just singing like a bird,” he said.
“I took her into the studio, and she sang along with me, and it’s really haunting. So, I wanted to get just a little bit of Disney Channel out of her brain, and now to have her first song be a murder-suicide ballad in the great tradition of country music,” he added with a laugh.
Personal songs
Like “Billy Paul,” many of the songs on “Guitar Slinger” are deeply personal for Gill. He co-wrote two — the first single “Threaten Me with Heaven” and the mournful “When Lonely Comes Around” — with his wife and songsmith/guitarist Will Owsley, who committed suicide last year.
“Now they have flipped and morphed into a totally different feeling for me ’cause he’s gone,” Gill said. “The running gag was she (Grant) employed him and I inherited him, and we were great friends. … He was a really gifted musician and I learned a lot from him. But he was a real troubled soul and checked out.”
“Bread and Water,” a story-song of a homeless man seeking comfort, is loosely based on Gill’s late brother, while the old-timey album closer “Buttermilk John” memorializes steel guitar great John Hughey, who died in 2007.
“This is the first project that I’ve done in 20 years that didn’t have him on it … so it was hard to go in there and play and not hear him,” Gill said.
Gill pays tribute to his home state with the fictionalized tale of “The Old Lucky Diamond Motel” with its references to El Reno, Ted’s Escondido and Route 66.
“It’s the first song that I wrote after I finished the ‘These Days’ record, and it’s totally different than anything I did on that whole record. So I went ‘Oh, neat. You didn’t go back and repeat yourself, you did something different like you’ve never done before,’” he said.
“I really love the story and there’s a whole bunch of history in it for me ’cause I spent a whole lot of my childhood right there on Route 66.”
-BAM
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Comments
Any thing Vince does is awesome, this music will be enjoyed by people of all ages. Corinna was so sweet singing Billy Paul with you.
Dear Vince, I tried to order your CD, poster & T-shirt, but could not get to the checkout. Is it just me, or is anyone else having problems ordering from his Guitar Slinger” website? Love that guitar. Never heard one sing before you!!!
I love Vince !He is more talented then the guys out there now making all the money lol They all sound alike yuck!Vince is unique and his heart is rare these days Love every song he sings.Hope Radio will play him.I do not listen to radio anymore because they ignore him,And I won’t buy the products they sell Big Hugs Bonnie-VINCIEFAN
Threaten me with Vince PLEASE!!! Patiently waiting for the mail to bring Vince’s latest!! Can’t wait to hear where VINCE takes us this time!!! Thanks so much for sharing your guitar slinging with us! 
I’m conVinced~ Josie
I am so glad he has something new! Vince is AWESOME.