{"id":4323,"date":"2011-11-13T22:45:40","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T05:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=4323"},"modified":"2011-11-28T15:09:14","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T22:09:14","slug":"vince-gill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/11\/vince-gill\/","title":{"rendered":"VINCE GILL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>VINCE GILL<\/h2>\n

A country guitar slinger takes his craft all the way back home <\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Chris Neal<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Vince Gill was putting the final touches\u00a0on the newly built studio in his Nashville-area home, he had an unlikely burst of inspiration. He needed something to cut down on the amount of sunlight streaming through the tall windows of the room, and he knew just what material had the color and texture he wanted: the tweed from the front of a vintage Fender amplifier. So he placed what must have been one of the most unusual queries the company has ever received. \u201cI said, \u2018Is there any way you guys could hook me up with a bunch of tweed?\u201d he recalls. \u201cThey said, \u2018How much?\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, enough to fill two rooms.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only right that even the windows of Gill\u2019s studio should be covered in something musical. Gill has been singing, writing songs and playing guitar (among other instruments) since his teen years, when he began performing with bluegrass acts in his native Oklahoma. He launched a solo country career in the early 1980s, and since then has built an astonishing body of work under his own name while lending his voice and guitar to albums by a staggering number of fellow artists\u2014and his productivity has only increased since building the studio, a project he\u2019s been working on for two years.<\/p>\n

His first solo album recorded there is the new Guitar Slinger<\/em>\u2014the title indicating which of his many talents Gill has chosen to hone lately. The seemingly endless number of guitars that line the walls and cabinets in the studio testify to his longtime axe addiction. \u201cWhat you\u2019re looking at is a sickness,\u201d jokes Gill, who lost several instruments in a devastating flood that submerged a Nashville storage facility last year. \u201cI\u2019ve never gotten rid of a guitar in my life. I\u2019ve bought a lot of guitars, but I\u2019m not a seller. I\u2019m not looking to turn \u2019em around. Each one of them has its own life, its own story.\u201d We sat down with Gill, 54, inside his comfortably Fender tweed-shaded studio to talk about his lifelong obsession with music.<\/p>\n

Why build the studio? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t believe I would have ever put a studio in my house, but this stretch of life feels different from years past. Obviously the technology has changed so much that you don\u2019t need as much real estate space to make quality recordings. I also thought it would be neat to have all my guitars at home. I\u2019ve got this great collection I never get to play and never get to see, and I get called to do an awful lot of other people\u2019s records. With the technology today they can just send me the files, I do my deal within the comforts of my own home and send it back\u2014I can even be barefooted. So away we went.<\/p>\n

How\u2019d you get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n

This was an obvious space to do it. There was a crawl space underneath, so we decided to tear all that out and build the floor lower to give us more ceiling space. We just closed it all up, built an overdub room and went full tilt. But it seems like everything we did, we eventually tore it out and did something else. It probably wasn\u2019t very cost-effective or smart, but I didn\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n

What are the other benefits? <\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re surrounded by windows, so you can look out and see trees and blue skies. It\u2019s not a commercial space. It doesn\u2019t feel like you\u2019re locked in an empty place surrounded by four walls. The environment here has been fantastic and the sounds are spectacular. You don\u2019t feel rushed and you don\u2019t feel hurried. Sometimes in the past I did. Economics has dictated how records have to be done, when they have to be finished, how you have to record them. You don\u2019t have to worry about that here. I plan to do a good bit of music here over the next 20 or 30 years,\u00a0whatever they give me.<\/p>\n

Why do you still agree to play on so many records by others? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think a lot of people assumed that if I\u2019d had some success I wouldn\u2019t do it anymore. But I always aspired to be thought of well enough as a singer and musician that people would want to hire me to play on their records. As I started to succeed on my own, it meant even more to me that people wanted me to work on their records. Why not, you know? Why hoard yourself for yourself? That doesn\u2019t seem like a fun way to live. So I\u2019ve been playing on a bunch of off-the-wall stuff lately\u2014an Alice Cooper record, a Johnny Winter record, a Joe Bonamassa record, a Jimmy Webb record. I couldn\u2019t have dreamed it up.<\/p>\n

What was your aim for this album? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Just to improve. I\u2019ve always felt like the only reason to do it is to try to get better at it. The first record I ever made was when I was 16, and I\u2019m still trying to do better. I listen to those old records and laugh my head off. Sometimes the improvement is in such subtle ways that people might not pick up on it, but I know. It\u2019s about having 15 notes and thinking, \u201cWhich three or four notes do I really need?\u201d You spend time trying to massage that. The greatest musicianship, singing or even songwriting is in being willing to edit it and say the most with the least.<\/p>\n

Why focus more on guitar?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It just happened. Most people have heard me sing for 30 years or more and not play so much guitar. Now they\u2019re going, \u201cHey, his guitar playing is a little better than I might have thought.\u201d Still, no matter what, all I can be is the result of the songs that I show up with. I hope that those get better, and this seems like a good bunch.<\/p>\n

How do you usually start a song?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somebody you\u2019re working with has an idea, or you plunk around on the guitar and find something that you feel like you haven\u2019t done. There are only so many chords and so many notes, and it\u2019s hard to make them be different. It\u2019s how you bend up to that note. You can bend up to that note quickly or you can bend up to that note very slowly. Which way is the most compelling? What\u2019s coming next and what comes before? I feel like the playing has to tell the same story that the words do. It has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It\u00a0has to go somewhere.<\/p>\n

This is an especially dark record. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It is, in spots. I\u2019ve always been drawn to that. I don\u2019t want happy songs. They don\u2019t do much for me, never have.<\/p>\n

Yet you seem well-adjusted. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I am! Nobody has as much fun as I do. I\u2019m happy, easy-going and friendly. I don\u2019t have a dark personality. Maybe it was all that bluegrass at a young age\u2014learning songs like \u201cThe Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake\u201d and \u201cKnoxville Girl,\u201d songs about mayhem, murder and death. My dad used to sing a song that just would destroy me, \u201cLittle Kid Sister of Mine\u201d: \u201cShe was only 7 when she was called to heaven, that little kid sister of mine.\u201d That stuff is real. I don\u2019t want music to try to trick me. The best music comes from the blues, always has and always will.<\/p>\n

What still draws you to music? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think music is something our bodies crave on a cellular level. I can\u2019t help it, I want music to move me. I\u2019m that nuts about it. Most people like music, but I hang on every word, every note and every part.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you have a goal now? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just trying to write better songs, trying\u00a0to play the guitar better, trying to sing better. There\u2019s nothing like experience to teach\u00a0you what not to do. It\u2019s funny how you spend your whole childhood and young adulthood like a sponge, trying to learn to do as many things as you can, and you spend the\u00a0rest of your life trying to weed them all out: \u201cWhat do I not need here?\u201d I learned a\u00a0lesson a million years ago in the studio. I was playing for somebody and when my\u00a0time came to play, I did my thing. They came\u00a0back and said, \u201cOK, now just play me half <\/em>of what you know.\u201d The object\u00a0is to serve the song.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The greatest musicianship is in being willing to edit and say the most with the least.\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VINCE GILL A country guitar slinger takes his craft all the way back home By Chris Neal When Vince Gill was putting the final touches\u00a0on the newly built studio in his Nashville-area home, he had an unlikely burst of inspiration. He needed something to cut down on the amount of sunlight streaming through the tall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[970,2615,2822],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4323"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4451,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4323\/revisions\/4451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}