A Conversation with Vince Gill – HuffPost 11.7.11

Mike Ragogna: Hiya, Vince. How are you, man?

Vince Gill: I’m doing good. I’m up in New York City working my tail off. I’ve just about lost my voice talking for about four days straight. I sound a little bit like Mr. Haney from Green Acres.

MR: Okay, Mr. Haney, let’s talk about your new album, Guitar Slinger. What was the inspiration this time out?

VC: Well, I never grow tired of being creative. That never changes. Since I was a little boy, I’ve just pursued it so hard to get better at it, and I think I’m still doing that. My ears tell me that I’m still doing that. I really feel like the songs are a cut above the last record, and the record before that. My playing seems to be getting better in subtle ways–in ways maybe only a handful of folks are going to pick up on. I think that as you do this longer and longer, you really learn more about what not to do than what to do. It’s a space that you leave that creates the real good stuff.

MR: You have an incredible career with a collection of industry awards and platinum records. Do you ever take a breath once in a while and go, “Man, I’ve had a pretty good career.”

VG: It’s shocking, it really is. It’s almost uncomfortable, because I don’t possess the personality that really tries to say, “Hey, notice me!” I’m not a good self-promoter. I like doing the work, and then I like people responding to it, and I’m okay if they don’t like it. I think the reason I’ve done what I’ve done is because of my willingness to share–my willingness to be a collaborator with other people. I think I’m as proud of all the other people I’ve worked with on their records as I am of my own career. It’s of equal importance to me to collaborate. When I was young, I think I probably aspired more to be someone who was a session musician that would be hired to play on records or get hired to sing on records, and then I’d develop into a songwriter who got better at it and hopefully people would think enough of my songs to record them. So, I never had to always be front and center with the attention because I’ve always been a musician and I probably have much more of a mindset of a musician than a country music star or artist or whatever. So, I come at it from maybe a little bit different of a place than most.

MR: Since you brought up “collaboration,” let’s talk about “Threaten Me With Heaven.” You co-wrote that with your wife, Amy Grant, and also with Will Owsley and Dylan O’Brien.

VG: It’s the first time I’ve gotten the opportunity to do anything with Dylan, and he’s a ridiculously talented fellow. And my friend Will Owsley, who unfortunately took his own life after the recording of that particular song, was the one that put all of us together. He knew Dylan from the West Coast and it was a great collaboration and an awfully fine song.

MR: Were you and Will close?

VG: We were great friends. He actually played guitar with Amy for about ten or fifteen years off and on, and because of that, we became friends and wrote some songs together. We both were lovers of guitars and old guitars and collecting and trying to find them. He was a great pal and, unfortunately, the struggles in his life were too great; he couldn’t quite get over the mountain. He was a really talented guy. He made two solo records of alternative and pop music. He was viciously talented. He had a great melodic mind and a great hook-y mind and was a unique guitar player. He was really talented.

MR: Let’s talk about the title track of Guitar Slinger for a minute. It includes the line, “I married that contemporary Christian singer,” which, of course, is about Amy.

VG: I know what you’re talking about. The line before it sets it up just right too: “I was living it up as a guitar slinger, women and wine and whiskey for dinner, I knew I was in trouble the first time I’d seen her, I went and married that contemporary Christian singer.”

MR: What did she say when she heard that?

VG: I sang it for her and she just hung her head and shook it and said, “You’ll say anything, won’t you?” (laughs) I said, “Sometimes I will.” I just think that it has a great sense of humor to it, that song does. It’s as much poking fun at myself as anything else. I’ve always been fairly good at being self-deprecating, and I think it makes people comfortable if you’re willing to poke fun at yourself.

MR: When you’re playing in the studio, how judgmental do you get of your own playing? How often do you go, “That sucks, I’ve gotta do that again.”

VG: All the time. It’s an interesting process, but I really believe that greatness is defined by the subtleties. It’s all about the holes you leave–it’s not about playing as much as you can. That’s very uninteresting to me and always has been. I think, when it comes to guitar playing, it has to tell a story. It has to have a beginning, it has to have a middle, and it has to have an end. To me, great guitar playing and great soloing and all those kinds of things are still centered somewhat around a melody. There is a melody to these songs, and oftentimes, when it comes time for somebody to play, they just are going to go play you a bunch of stuff, but where’s the melody in there? So, I always have a sense of where the melody is and I dance around it. If I play something and there’s nine notes in it, I go, “Well, I wonder if I played seven notes if it would speak more?” It’s just like a conversation. The guitar makes sounds just like your voice does. I try to play what I would sing, and I oftentimes try to sing what I might play. I hear it in my head, and it just comes out through my fingers.

MR: I also wanted to talk about “Tell Me, Fool,” which you do with Bekka Bramlett. It reminds me of a couple of tracks you recorded with Amy. What was the experience like singing with Bekka again on this album?

VG: Well, I’ve been singing with Bekka for about fifteen years, off and on, on different records of mine. She’s been in my band at different times, and I believe that she’s one of the finest singers I’ve ever heard. She’s just one of the most gifted voices I’ve ever heard. She brings an energy and a different thing to a record than just about anybody I know, and I adore singing with her. I always have and I always will. She just bumps it up a notch. That song’s very much steeped in an R&B kind of song. It’s soul music, and she’s about as good as it gets. When being creative, you try to plug in people that do the things that not only enhance the record, but lets them shine too. Bekka shines as much as I do on that record. I don’t look at things like, “You’re the background singer and so you just stay in the background.” I look at music and I look at records and I create a process that’s very democratic. I want every note to speak and have a purpose. If it’s something the bass player plays that inspires me to play something off of it, or something the piano player plays, it’s the same thing. Everything has to work together or it doesn’t work. It’s amazing what musicians can accomplish when they listen to each other. You can’t be a control freak, I don’t think. I like everybody else’s mind in there–what they do, what they contribute, what they think.

MR: In addition to having Bekka on the record, you have Ashley Monroe from Pistol Annies singing on “Who Wouldn’t Fall In Love With You.”

VG: We wrote that song together. She has one of the most captivating voices you’ll ever hear. It’s not a big voice–she’s not a big singer–but she’s just got this cool, quivering, haunting, beautiful-sounding voice. It’s one of a kind. Her voice is so unique. I think with people like Dolly Parton, her voice is unique, it sounds only like Dolly. Nobody sounds like her. Alison Krauss, the same thing. I think Ashley possesses that and is somebody that’s young–that’s coming up–that I really champion. I wanted to write some songs with her. I think there’s a chance that I might produce some music with her–for her–next year. I just think the sky’s the limit for that kid.

MR: I’d love to talk about “True Love” as well. Amy wrote that about you, which I suppose is only fair since you wrote the line about marrying the Christian singer.

VG: (laughs) Yeah, Amy had written that song about me. We’d been playing it, and I made some suggestions to put a bridge in it and change the melody and the chords a little bit and she liked it. She said, “Well, let’s say we wrote this together,” and I said, “We don’t have to, but I’m grateful.” So, it really is her lyric and her story, but I might have a little bit to do with the music and she was kind enough to include me. That was the first song we recorded in the new studio at the house. That was important to me. I wanted to record that song first because it was hers and mine. It wasn’t originally going to be a duet, but I said, “You really should sing on this with me,” and she graciously agreed, Then, as we did it, there were those answers that I’d always heard in my head, as it went along. I asked our daughter Sarah if she would do those, and she did. Sarah has a really unique sounding voice. Once again, I’m not trying to go, “I want all of my family to sing on my records,” but I just like the voice. (laughs) I just like the songs that they make. I said, “That would work here.” It’s really just trying to fit the right piece into the puzzle.

MR: There’s something sweeter than that familial sound.

VG: There’s no question about it. My daughter Jenny sings on a few things on this record, and I get to hear what it sounds like to be an Everly Brother.

MR: Let’s talk about “Billy Paul.”

VG: Well, it’s a true story, unfortunately. I hate the fact that it is a true story. It was a friend of mine that caddied out at the golf club where I play golf, and we’d been buddies forever. He was everybody’s favorite out there, and it just blew everybody’s mind that he snapped and did what he did. He unfortunately took a woman’s life and then took his own. I went to his funeral and I met his family. His mom was just the sweetest lady in the world, and I was compelled to write a song about it just to let her know that somebody cared about her son even though he did something horrible. I tried to tell the story with some sense of compassion and a little bit of forgiveness in there. Oftentimes, you can have this whole life you’ve lived, and the one or two mistakes that you’ve made are what everybody defines you by, and I don’t think that’s fair. So, there’s a line in the song that goes, “I’ve seen you at your best and now your worst, but the best of you is what I’ll remember first.” It’s a dark story, but I sure tried to tell it with a little bit of kindness. And then Corrina, my ten-year-old, is singing the high part on it, which is really unique. It makes it even more eerie because of what the song’s about and all that. To have this little kid’s voice–that little wispy voice up high–singing those words, “What made you go crazy Billy Paul?”

MR: Guitar Slinger seems like a more personal album than not.

VG: Well, there’s an awful lot of real life in this record. Some of these songs, even as personal as they might be, they’re inspired by the truth and it doesn’t necessarily mean that every line is exactly the truth. You have to take the truth and massage it a little bit to make it interesting and make it a song and things like that. A bunch of years ago, when I first met Amy, I came home and just said, “I met Amy Grant this last weekend and she had the most beautiful smile. It just lit up the room. It was beautiful,” and so I wrote this song, “Whenever You Come Around” that was basically inspired by her smile. Her smile was something that just completely bowled me over. I thought it was beautiful. I went home and a friend of mind, Pete Wasner, and I said, “I want to write a song strictly about the beauty of that smile.” Then we had to obviously tell a story. It was inspired by Amy but it certainly didn’t mean that every line was verbatim about my life. It’s weird because when you’re the songwriter and the artist, everybody assumes that most of this stuff is autobiographical. It can be, to a point, but not every ounce of it is because you’ve gotta make it interesting.

MR: When I think of you and Amy, I’m reminded of James Taylor and Carly Simon. Balancing a musical relationship must have challenges, how do you do it?

VG: Well, we found each other pretty late in life, which I think was probably a gift in itself. We’d lived a long life before we wound up together and I think that we were grateful for the kindness. It seems to be the first thing that you think of–to be kind to each other and to be respectful to each other. You learn from your mistakes. You should learn from your mistakes. So, I just think that we both have similar qualities. We’re tender and friendly and easy going and all that, so it makes for a good relationship. And once again, our careers had twenty-five years invested in them before we got married, so there’s not a competition issue at all. I think a lot of times, when you get together two people that do the same thing, it can get competitive or whatever. But we don’t seem to have any of those issues. It’s really pretty sweet.

MR: Making music and recording with Amy has to be such a cool experience.

VG: It is. I got to produce two records for Amy over the last few years. I got to sit in the chair where my job was to lift her up. It was a treat. It was easy to do, because I’m crazy about her. I didn’t have to dance around or walk on eggshells or anything. Like I said, if you get respect, you have to give respect.

MR: Gong back to the title track, I wanted to ask you about the lyric in Guitar Slinger that goes, “There’s a few licks left in this guitar slinger, even though half of my stuff’s in the Cumberland River.” Hopefully that’s an exaggeration.

VG: No, it’s not exactly. It’s the truth. In the flood that came a year and a half ago, I lost a lot of stuff–I think forty or fifty guitars and thirty or forty amplifiers. I collect stuff. I’m not a buyer and a seller, but I just buy stuff that I find and love. Some of it was sentimental, some of it was great, some of it wasn’t. It was painful…a pretty rough loss. But a lot of people went through it. A bunch of us went through it together, which made it easier. Keith Urban lost all his stuff and Brad Paisley lost all his stuff. All these different guitar players and musicians that housed their stuff at this place lost everything and so everybody just kind of banded together. Some guys said, “Here, borrow these for awhile if you need something.” It was really neat to watch all of the musicians reach out to each other. We sold some of the stuff at auction that was trashed and gave it to the guys that needed to get some money to get some more stuff. It was pretty neat.

MR: It united Nashville, didn’t it.

VG: In a big way. It was funny because at the time of the flood, the oil spill was going on in the gulf, and that took up all the national media attention, and so a lot of people never even really knew that that had happened in Nashville. But the people just all rallied around and took care of each other. It was really neat to see.

MR: Every once in awhile, do you think back to the days of Pure Prairie League?

VG: Oh, sure I do. It was a great experience for me. I was really young, and I got to go be in somewhat of a major rock band that had a couple of hits and me on American Bandstandand Solid Gold and all of these great music shows and tour in a bus. In a sense, it was the big time for me in that world. I was young and I paid attention. I tried to learn a lot; I learned a lot about the record business, I learned a lot about touring, about a little bit of everything. It was a great experience.

MR: And then there’s your initial solo career afterward.

VG: I left Pure Prairie League in ’81, and I went to work for Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash as their guitar player and did that off and on for several years and made several records but never really had any big hits. Those were some rough years, throughout ’82 and ’83 until ’90, when “When I Call Your Name” came out. Everything changed quite dramatically then, but those were an interesting stretch of years. I worked a lot in the studio for other people in a lot of sessions and just kept after it. I was never going to quit.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

VG: Oh, gosh. Just remember why you wanted to do this in the first place. You gotta be extremely patient and you gotta have really thick skin, and understand that not everybody’s going to love it. There’ll be times that are the worst in your life and times that are the greatest in your life. I’ve always tried to ignore my success and ignore my failure, and just keep on an even keel and realize that I can’t control any of the results. It’s like the weather. You can’t control the weather, so you can’t get uptight about it. It’s the same thing with your career. You make a record and whether they buy it or they don’t, none of the notes change, if you sell a hundred million or a hundred.

MR: Is that what happened with you?

VG: Yeah, I think so. I think the results have not dictated to me whether I was successful or not. When I quit Pure Prairie League and went to work for Rodney, people said, “Why’d you do that? You were the front man of a big rock band,” and I said, “Well, the musicianship and caliber of songs and all of that stuff that I went to was better. To me, it was a step up.” Any time I got to be in an environment that I think made me better, then I felt that was success.

MR: Nicely said. And by the way, you have some nerve putting out a 43-song album. (laughs)

VG: I know. That’s why I spent five years between records. It took five years for everybody to hear that whole record. (laughs)

MR: Are you on tour with this record?

VG: Yeah, I’m out playing. I’m in New York now doing a bunch of press stuff and all that, and I’ll go home tomorrow. Then in three or four days I’ll go back out on the road for a little bit.

MR: Which trusty guitar do you have by your side?

VG: Today, I just have an acoustic guitar with me. Everything we’re doing up here is just me and a guitar.

MR: Well, I really appreciate your time, Vince.

VG: It was a great time, thanks. Good to talk to you.

Transcribed by Claire Wellin