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Vince Gill

Vince Gill: 'Hopefully this is best album I've ever done'

Bob Doerschuk
special for USA TODAY
Vince Gill's new album is out Feb. 12, 2016.

NASHVILLE --   Vince Gill has sung with, picked for and/or produced pretty much every worthy artist in Nashville over the past 30-plus years. Long before his election to the Country Music Hall of Fame, before the first of his more than 26 million album sales and 20 Grammy Awards, Gill left his Oklahoma home at 18, not to seek stardom but simply to play with artists he admired.

“That was actually what I aspired to do,” he says. “I had just as much interest in being a session player and singer as I did to be an artist. I still do. It’s a much harder job. When you have to follow what somebody else is doing, that’s harder than you doing what you do and everybody having to support you. To me, that’s more of a testament to talent than fame.”

'Down to My Last Bad Habit'

Gill's talents as a singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, shine on his latest album, Down To My Last Bad Habit, out Friday. It’s a diverse collection, tapping gritty blues on the swaggering Make You Feel Real Good, evoking Fleetwood Mac with help from Little Big Town’s harmonies on Take Me Down  and dipping down into the warm bath of traditional country on Sad One Comin’ On (A Song For George Jones). Every note, whether sung or strummed, bears the Gill brand: soulful yet sophisticated, emotionally raw yet gleaming with studio polish.

“All this is is where I am today,” he says, shrugging. “People always say their newest album is the best they’ve ever made. That should be the case. You should get better at this. So hopefully, this is the best record I’ve ever done. My ears do tell me I’m singing better than I ever have, playing better than ever and writing better songs.”

Gill sees Down To My Last Bad Habit as a marker of how his thoughts about music have changed. “There isn’t much country music on it, except for the last song," Gill says. "Truthfully, there’s not much of a traditional element anymore at all in the country element. I, for one, miss it.

Vince Gill says of his newest album, “My perspective at nearly 59 years old is different than it was when I was a 25-year-old kid. So these songs are different. They’re age-appropriate. I would also say they’re more honest."

“My perspective at nearly 59 years old is different than it was when I was a 25-year-old kid,” he continues. “So these songs are different. They’re age-appropriate. I would also say they’re more honest. There’s a song on there, One More Mistake I Made: I’m really compelled by the lyric and even more by the fact that my 14-year-old daughter Corrina is singing with me from her point in life and seeing her dad be able to admit to his failures. That’s a powerful song, with each of us singing from our own perspectives.”

Here, in his home studio, Gill is surrounded by reminders of his accomplishments. Awards fill his shelves. Guitars, dozens of them, hang neatly arranged along several walls. What’s more important, though, are the things that can’t be displayed. These Gill carries internally, in and beyond his work.

“You know, a handful of my heroes are still around, so in some part of my life I still feel like a kid,” he says, with a smile. “But not as much as before. Little by little, all of our heroes are going on to the other side. But I watched them enough to know what it means to be welcoming and gracious."

Little Jimmy Dickens inspired Gill the most. Gill shifts to present tense, as if his friend were still alive. “He may not want to hear you go up there and thrash away with whatever music you’ve got going on. But he’s going to make you feel welcome. He’s going to be kind to you. So I’m not going to be that naysayer guy who goes, ‘You’re not as good as we used to be.’ There’s no point to that. You can be supportive and encouraging. That’s all any of us ever want. ”

He leans forward, emphasizing his words. “To all of us who got good enough and learned to play well enough and write songs well enough to get an opportunity, we did it because we loved it. If you ever lose sight of that, that’s when you’re in trouble.”

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