WANT TO GO?
Who: Vince Gill
Where: Rose Music Center at the Heights, 6800 Executive Blvd., Huber Heights
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, May 7. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Cost: $38-$57
More info: 937-228-2323 or www.ticketmaster.com
Artist info: www.vincegill.com
Forty years into his music career, Vince Gill is still a restless explorer, readily following his creative muse in many directions. The singer, performing at Rose Music Center at the Heights in Huber Heights on Saturday, May 7.
Gill — whose summer will be divided between dates with the Time Jumpers and his touring band — says he’s looking forward to returning to the Dayton area because it was the site of a special memory of his late father.
“I have a great fondness for Dayton,” he said. “Back in the early ’90s, I had a chance to get my dad up to sing with me at the arena there. I’ve still got a picture of him and me and he’s so excited. He wore a suit and tie and sang ‘When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.’
“Letting him hear the roar of 15,000 people was one of the coolest things ever” Gill added. “I’m glad he got to hear that one time in his life.”
Gill has worked in country, bluegrass, blues, country rock and other styles.
“I’ve never felt like I had a record company with a gun to my head telling me what I had to do,” Gill said in a recent telephone interview. “When you write songs and make records, you’re really at the mercy of whatever songs show up. I love the creative process and seeing where something will go.
“I don’t think the point of being creative is to limit it by putting restraints on it,” he continued. “You know, ‘We can’t do that because it’s not country,’ or ‘We can’t do that because it doesn’t make any sense.’ On this new record, I wanted to scratch that itch of how I love to sing and play.”
Gill covers a lot of stylistic ground on his 18th album, “Down to My Last Bad Habit,” which was released on Feb. 12.
“It’s not a very country record,” he said. “I operate in the world of country music but the lines are blurry as to what the definition of country music is. I made the ‘Bakersfield’ record with Paul Franklin and I’m working on a new Time Jumpers record, which will be out in the fall. That’s all real traditional so I can scratch that itch pretty good with those two records.
“I didn’t really push too hard for a bunch of traditional country songs,” Gill continued. “There is some other stuff, though. Some sound like a blues record and some sound like an R&B record. There’s a little bit of everything.”
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