Vince Gill Releases Secondhand Smoke, the Second EP in His 50 Years From Home Series

For Vince Gill, a project like 50 Years From Home (MCA)—a year-long set of monthly EPs commemorating his departure from his native Oklahoma for a music career that became legendary—is deeply personal.

And, how could it not be? “I’m drawn to melancholy,” Gill explains. “I’m drawn to sad songs probably way more than the zippity do-dahs, as Townes Van Zant 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,” he adds with a smile.

On the second EP of the series, Secondhand Smoke, out today, Gill is sentimental and nostalgic, yet also outward-looking, examining big issues and addressing some tough questions, albeit from the same humanistic perspective he’s brought to all his work. The EP contains six never-released songs along with the Gill classic “Tryin’ To Get Over You.”

“Some Times,” a poignant tear-jerker co-written with Mary Gauthier, is “a distant cousin to ‘March On March On,'” according to Gill. It hails from a conversation with Mavis Staples some 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.”

“The Whole World” is equally topical, although in this case more of a rumination—and lament— as Gill sings that he feels like the whole world has got a broken heart…How did we get so far apart?

Gill co-wrote “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!”

Gill acknowledges that “Leaving Home,” written with Abbey Cone,  is “a song about abuse, which is a tough subject.”