Time was when Vince Gill would amble onstage, check his set list, roll up his sleeves and launch into whatever the heck he wanted to do for the next couple of hours.
Sure, the affable Okie, roundly considered Nashville's nicest guy, would pick and sing the many hits that propelled Gill to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year in 1993 and 1994. But Gill's sweet tenor may have soared with just his guitar over his tender ballad "Never Knew Lonely," rather than using the full band. Or, Gill and the fellas would turn the fiery "Liza Jane" into an extended jam session.
Alas, knee-jerk impulses are unlikely when Gill brings his 17-piece entourage to the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, on Saturday. At least, not this time around.
Gill is touring this fall and winter in support of his just-released album "These Days," an incredibly ambitious four-album set written entirely by Gill that explores every facet of his remarkable career -- bluegrass, ballads, rock and, of course, country.
"We were kind of a jam band before," Gill admitted on the phone from South Bend, Ind., where he was playing later that evening. "We spent a lot of time rehearsing this show. Altogether we have 17 people onstage. There are different configurations, along with a four-piece horn section. I have an orchestra now, so I can't just call out a tune."
While the live show isn't a note-for-note reprise of "These Days," Gill said it closely mirrors the new album. He opens the show with two or three hits, then bookends the new country material and contemporary ballads with a couple of more hits. The same holds true with bluegrass and finally with what Gill calls "the rockin' stuff."
"I let the new project point me in how to set up the show; it's like four separate entities," he said. "One sets up the next. We do it in halves. I sing a few of the country and ballads, then come back with just me and my guitar. That sets up the bluegrass, which we do in a semicircle. Then we bring up everyone and we blow and go.
"It's pretty fun. It's a long show, and the crowd really gets into it. It's about 3 1/2 hours before we shut up."
Considering that Gill has to keep all these moving parts coordinated not only onstage for three-plus hours, the tour itself is on a rigorous, disciplined schedule as well. There are 30 dates over a roughly six-week period that started on the East Coast, moved across country to the West Coast with one stretch of five consecutive nights and several back-to-back-to-back performances. The 2006 leg of the tour concludes with three nights at the Las Vegas Hilton in early December that coincide with the annual National Finals Rodeo.
While it wasn't necessarily planned, Gill also managed to squeeze in an appearance on the CMA's 40th annual awards show earlier this week.
Singing "What You Give Away" from the new album with Sheryl Crow, the pair also sang harmonies with Brooks & Dunn on their hit "Building Bridges."
"I've sung on every recorded version of that song," Gill said, noting he lent his vocals on songwriter Larry Willoughby's original version back in 1983 and with Nicolette Larson in 1985.
It's a trait Gill has worn with pride since his earliest days in the music business. Tallying his guest appearances with other artists would take several pages, and counting the stars who have guested on Gill's records is just as voluminous.
"These Days" quite literally adds a whole new chapter. While the quantity of guests is impressive, the quality is even more remarkable.
There's Crow, of course, the Del McCoury Band, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Gretchen Wilson, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Leann Rimes, Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski and even Gill's daughter, Jenny Gill.
Yet, Gill maintains the album's growth and artistic guest list was wholly organic.
"This isn't a record of duets," he said. "A duet is where both people sing separately. This is me trying to be creative. What happened occurred pretty honestly. It was mostly just who happened to be on the other end of the phone."
Still, Gill said it took a certain touch between himself and co-producer John Hobbs to find the right matches for the songs.
"I couldn't imagine doing 'Faint of Heart' with Del McCoury," Gill said of the torchy lounge ballad he sings with Krall.
Gill had written intensely in 2005, producing several albums' worth of material. Yet the recording process began at a leisurely pace.
"I wanted to do a song a day, so we could spend time with each one," he said. Soon he found himself with three albums' worth of music. Inspired by a Beatles poster citing the release dates of all their albums hanging in Nashville's Blackbird Studio where he was recording, Gill realized how prolific they were releasing three albums of new material in less than a year.
Yet, rather than releasing three separate records, Universal Music Group exec Luke Lewis urged Gill to record a fourth album steeped in Gill's love for acoustic music.
"I had no intent of doing a box set," Gill said. "I told the record company I had three unique records, why don't we stagger them. They were thinking outside the box a bit and said, 'Why don't you record a bluegrassy record and we'll do it as a box set. It wasn't like a 'Hey, watch me, look at what I am doing' thing; it just unfolded that way."
Gill plays down the album as something of a watershed for country music, yet a solo artist has never released a four-album project of all-new, self-written material. Even the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's landmark 1972 album "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," which for the first time merged traditional country artists with country rock, was a three-album set.
"Did 'Circle' change things? Yeah, in many ways, but it wasn't new material," Gill said. "(Willie Nelson's 1975 album) 'Red Headed Stranger' achieved a level of greatness that may never be matched. I can't worry about that right now. I'm very proud of what we've done here, and only time will tell."
