Vince Gill Shares New EP 'Secondhand Smoke'
(MCA) For Vince Gill, a project like 50 Years From Home (MCA)-a year-long set of monthly EPs commemorating his departure from his native Oklahoma for a music career that became legendary-is deeply personal.
And, how could it not be? "I'm drawn to melancholy," Gill explains. "I'm drawn to sad songs probably way more than the zippity do-dahs, as Townes Van Zant would say. He said, 'There's only two kinds of music, the blues and the zippity do-dah. I don't do zippity do-dah.' I think I fall into that category, too," he adds with a smile.
On the second EP of the series, Secondhand Smoke, out today, Gill is sentimental and nostalgic, yet also outward-looking, examining big issues and addressing some tough questions, albeit from the same humanistic perspective he's brought to all his work. The EP contains six never-released songs along with the Gill classic "Tryin' To Get Over You."
"I think with songs you can tackle any subject," says Gill. "Even though some might be divisive, if you tell your story with a little bit of grace-not finger-wagging or finger-pointing, telling everybody else how they should feel, but in such a way that the song has a grace about it-then you can sing and write about any subject."
And he dives in head on beginning with the title track, "March On March On" a soulful civil rights anthem featuring The War & Treaty in which Gill declares that the world needs healing, both yours and mine -- not playing sides but searching for a greater truth.
"Some Times," a poignant tear-jerker co-written with Mary Gauthier, is "a distant cousin to 'March On March On,'" according to Gill. It hails from a conversation with Mavis Staples some years ago; "We talked about equality. We talked about race, all the trying times of civil rights. After a long conversation she looked at me and said, 'Brother, we have seen some times.' I thought, 'My God, if there was ever a good idea for a song, that's it!' I hung on to that idea for probably 15 years, maybe 20, and never wrote it. Then when I was writing with Mary and started telling her about that conversation with Mavis, and she said, 'That's what we're writing,' and away we went."
"The Whole World" is equally topical, although in this case more of a rumination-and lament- as Gill sings that he feels like the whole world has got a broken heart...How did we get so far apart?
Gill co-wrote "Hill People" with Ashley McBryde, who he considers "just the coolest singer, and she has a great wit about her lyrics. We both love bluegrass, and that song's pretty bluegrass in its sentiment, killing two people in the first two lines; The rifle rang out in the still of the night/Two lovers lay dead on the floor. It doesn't get more bluegrassy than that!"
Gill acknowledges that "Leaving Home," written with Abbey Cone, is "a song about abuse, which is a tough subject."
"The more I've done it, the more I've learned how to do it better -- how to be more patient, where not to waste my time, what to do and not to do, to be willing to edit myself and keep digging. Experience is experience; there is no shortcut. This is what comes from doing this for 50 years." VINCE GILL
The EPs title track is the last of the un-released material. "Secondhand Smoke" was co-written with Derrick Southerland. "My father was a chain smoker," Gill says of Stan Gill, a judge who taught his son to play guitar and banjo. "Derrick had this title for a long time. I said, 'Man, that's my life. Can I write it with you?' All I had to do is remember my dad. So that one is pretty autobiographical." Closing out the EP is Gill's "Tryin' To Get Over You" featuring Gill's hallmark soaring vocals.
Secondhand Smoke was produced by Gill and recorded at The House studio in Nashville. It was recorded with Gill's regular corps of musical cohorts, including fiddler Stuart Duncan, Paul Franklin on steel guitar, guitarists Tom Bukovac and Jedd Hughes, drummer Fred Eltringham, bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas, keyboardists Gordon Mote and John Jarvis, and harmony vocalists Wendy Moten and John Meador.
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