Vince Gill

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #128 (February/March 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Vince Gill

Just Go Play

by Kerry Dexter

In planning for his latest release, country musician Vince Gill took an unusual approach, which had an even more unexpected result. "I wanted to work on, and finish, a song a day -- record it, take our time recording it, do all the overdubs, singing, backgrounds, and even kinda be mixing it as the day went on," he said. "That lasted for the first week, and I said, 'Shoot, I've got so many other songs I that want to hear what they could turn into.' The band was available, and we kept recording, and looked up and had 31 songs. It was, 'Oh boy, now I've done it!' "

As Gill started sifting though the material to come up with the 10 or a dozen sides an album usually requires, he began to realize he had the building blocks of three distinctively different recordings, yet each was very much his own. He began to think that putting out all three recordings in a close time frame might be a way to offer a gift to the fans who have stuck with him over a two-decade-plus career, and that it might also give him room to stretch out a bit in performance and gauge reactions to this sort of project. He talked with his management about it and went to Luke Lewis, the head of MCA Records in Nashville. "I said, 'Maybe this could make sense. Let's maybe all consider thinking outside the box a little bit.' I'm sure tired of the same old way all the time," Gill said.

His management and the label liked that idea, and as Gill was still working on finishing up some of the tracks, Lewis came back with another one. "Luke thought it'd be a great idea for me to just go in a do a bluegrass record, too. We'd put them all out at the same time as a box set. 'Nobody's done a box set of all new music, they've all been retrospectives,' he said, 'and you've written every song, which is unique in itself.' Just to have their support was like gasoline on a fire," Gill said.

[cover #128]