That Eric Alper

Vince Gill has released ‘Secondhand Smoke’, the second EP in his year-long series ’50 Years From Home’, commemorating his departure from his native Oklahoma for a legendary music career. The six-track project features never-released songs alongside the Gill classic “Tryin’ To Get Over You,” tackling big issues with humanistic grace while remaining deeply personal. “I’m drawn to melancholy,” Gill explains. “I’m drawn to sad songs probably way more than the zippity do-dahs, as Townes Van Zandt 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.” The EP opens with soulful civil rights anthem “March On March On” featuring The War & Treaty, declaring that the world needs healing without playing sides but searching for greater truth. “I think with songs you can tackle any subject,” Gill says. “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.”

Poignant tear-jerker “Some Times,” co-written with Mary Gauthier, stems from a conversation with Mavis Staples 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.” Equally topical rumination “The Whole World” finds Gill singing that he feels like the whole world has got a broken heart, asking how did we get so far apart. Gill co-wrote bluegrass-leaning “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!” He acknowledges that “Leaving Home,” written with Abbey Cone, tackles abuse, a tough subject.

The title track, co-written with Derrick Southerland, draws from Gill’s memories of his father Stan Gill, a judge and chain smoker 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.” Produced by Gill and recorded at The House studio in Nashville with his regular corps of musical cohorts including Stuart Duncan, Paul Franklin, Tom Bukovac, Jedd Hughes, Fred Eltringham, Jimmie Lee Sloas, Gordon Mote, John Jarvis, Wendy Moten and John Meador, the EP showcases the 18-time CMA Award, 22-time GRAMMY Award winner’s soaring vocals and world-class musicianship. A special podcast-style series hosted by Charlie Worsham accompanies the project.