Vince Gill’s Midland show was a master class in country music
Vince Gill. // photo by Mike Dotson
Vince Gill
The Midland
Thursday, August 27
With a deep well of hits and fan favorites going back decades, a clever selection of covers, and a ten-piece band backing him through a three and a half hour set with no intermission, Vince Gill showed that he’s country music’s Bruce Springsteen at the Midland last night. As he would note at the show’s midway point, when he was an opening act only getting 20 or 30 minutes to play, he promised himself that if he ever got a lick, he’d play as long as they’d let him, and last night, he certainly did.
Gill opened his sold-out show with “One More Last Chance,” his number one country single from 1993, and from there on out, his 50 Years From Home tour stop was as though the Grand Ole Opry had set up shop in Kansas City for the night. Alongside everything from early hits like “Cinderella” and “Never Knew Lonely,” Gill dug into his catalog and performed deep cuts like “Young Man’s Town,” calling the latter one of his favorites, despite it not being a hit.
The stage setup was simple, decorated with seven banners showing off Gill’s beloved guitars. While we didn’t see all of them, the guitars Gill pulled out were put to good use, demonstrating the country star’s versatility as he and the band effortlessly switched from country to rock ‘n’ roll to blues. Songs would frequently see Gill sneaking in riffs from other artists’ songs as a complement, as when the end of “Pretty Little Adriana” saw a bit of the guitar lick from the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica,” but Gill also tackled quite a few songs on the mandolin with equal deftness.
If you’re a PBS watcher of a certain bent, you’ve likely seen Gill wax rhapsodic about country music in Ken Burns’ documentary or when This Old House went to Nashville and toured the Opry and come away with the sense this is a guy with whom you’d like to hang, and Gill’s gut-busting, self-deprecating stories of his life in music told from the stage made the packed theater shrink in size to a beer joint somewhere on the back roads of Oklahoma.
Vince Gill. // photo by Mike Dotson
He was equally deferential to his band, granting them time to showcase their own talents. While guitarists Jeff White and John Meador’s high and lonesome version of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and future Opry member Charlie Worsham’s own “Wrap My Porch Around” got the audience hootin’ and hollerin’, it was backing singer Wendy Moten’s takes on both Ernest Tubb’s “Driving Nails in My Coffin” and Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” which brought the house down.
With those songs coming after a digression into the newer material Gill has been releasing all year, it felt like a celebration of both the musician’s career and love of country music couldn’t mix any more perfectly. Gill had combined the old and the new and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, stepped back and lauded his band, so what more could there possibly be to come?
Then Gill took a pause, stepped forward, and said, “I wrote this for my brother and sing it for sister Dolly,” before the band started into the elegiac wonder that is “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” Waterworks ensued, but that was but a trickle compared to the flood which burst forth when he began Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” Before he started, he said he didn’t know if he’d make it through, but he need not have worried. When Gill faltered, the audience sang as though their voices would hold him up with the sheer force of it and, bolstered by their support, made it through. It was a cathartic, communal grieving which took away some of the ache from the country legend’s passing just two days prior.
Vince Gill. // photo by Mike Dotson
Following it with “Oklahoma Borderline” almost felt anticlimactic. You understand not wanting to leave the crowd on a down note, and the upbeat two-step ripper is the perfect show-ender, but the number of people heading out after Parton’s song, sniffling and wiping away tears, shows that the audience might’ve needed a minute to process.
As a masterclass in storytelling, songwriting, and guitar playing, Vince Gill is unparalleled these days. His voice is aged just enough to offer some heft to the songs he wrote as a younger man, but no less clear and clean for it. The band is a modern-day Wrecking Crew. Gill is a legend in his own right, and we’re lucky to have him.
All photos by Mike Dotson
