I Gave You Everything I Had drops next week
It’s been 50 years since Vince Gill chose a path toward music and left his home in Oklahoma to launch his career — a journey that’s taken him to Kentucky, then California, and finally Nashville, and, as a touring artist, around the world. It has seen him find success as a member of bands such as Mountain Smoke, Bluegrass Alliance, Boone Creek, Sundance, Pure Prairie League, Rodney Crowell’s Notorious Cherry Bombs, The Time Jumpers, and, most recently, the Eagles, and as an iconic recording artist in his own right. Last week, Gill signed a lifetime deal with his longtime label MCA.
Gill is honoring this 50-year career milestone by curating a series of EPs to be released over the next year. Thematically titled 50 Years from Home, the first EP of the series is I Gave You Everything I Had, and will be released worldwide on October 17th.
“I have this treasure trove of songs,” Gill explains, “and I started wracking my brain about how I could find a way to really celebrate this music.”
His creative juices are every bit as strong as they were 50 years ago. Gill has culled from over 100 songs he has written, either by himself or in collaboration with others, over the past few years. This is an endeavor unlike anything in his career up to this point.
All sole compositions by Gill, I Gave You Everything I Had, contains six new songs as well as one recording from his award-winning catalog, in this case, “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” which includes a new third verse.
Each of the 50 Years From Home volumes has been meticulously selected by Gill to reflect a particular theme, idea, or aspect of his life. “I’m really trying to find songs that sit well with each other, that are cohesive,” he explains, “and then something from my catalog that complements the other tracks.”
Gill has even taken part in the design of each EP cover by thoughtfully choosing an instrument from his personal collection to be featured. For I Gave You Everything I Had, he has chosen to use a photo of his 1942 Martin D-28 Herringbone guitar purchased in 1975 by selling a Martin given to him by his parents, and using his entire life savings, an important investment in himself at the onset of his career.
“The more I’ve done it, the more I’ve learned how to do it better — how to be more patient, where not to waste my time, what to do and not to do, to be willing to edit myself and keep digging. Experience is experience; there is no shortcut. This is what comes from doing this for 50 years,” Gill shares.
Gill describes the songs on I Gave You Everything I Had as “all very personal.” He continues, “I love the emotion of music; that’s what I go to it for. It stirs something inside me that I can’t describe. I just feel it, and the songs I do and the way I sing them and the way I play them, try to convey those emotions.”
Produced by Gill, the songs feature a cadre of musicians he’s been working with, including pedal steel virtuoso Paul Franklin, fellow guitarists Tom Bukovac, Jedd Hughes and Jack Schneider, keyboardist John Jarvis, multi-instrumentalists Stuart Duncan and Jim “Moose” Brown, banjo player Russ Carson, with Gill’s wife of 25 years, Amy Grant, and daughters Jenny Gill and Corrina Gill singing background vocals. The songs were recorded at Gill’s The House studio.
Nostalgia, sentimentality, and mourning are the hallmarks of I Gave You Everything I Had. The title track and “Made Me” are unabashedly about Gill’s journey in music, gentle, acoustic-laden paeans that reflect the joy and pride that came from the sweat equity of the past five decades. With “Her Heart,” Gill honors Grant’s kindness and welcoming spirit toward everyone who crosses her path. “I Hope Everybody Lives to Be 100,” meanwhile, is a country-flavored wish that Gill wrote shortly after John Prine passed away. The EP is interspersed with mortality. The aching “Benny’s Song” is specifically about the morning Benny Garcia, Gill’s oldest friend and longtime guitar tech, passed away, “When a Soldier Dies,” is another tear-jerker that’s from the viewpoint of the ones left behind. “Go Rest High on that Mountain,” the extended version, closes out the EP.
- I Gave You Everything I Had (Vince Gill)
- I Hope Everybody Lives To Be A Hundred (Vince Gill)
- Her Heart (Vince Gill)
- Made Me (Vince Gill)
- Benny’s Song (Vince Gill)
- When A Soldier Dies (Vince Gill)
- Go Rest High on that Mountain [Extended Version] (Vince Gill)
