Vince Gill Gives Great Concert!

I saw what may have been the best live performance concert of my lifetime yesterday evening.  We were lucky enough to get concert tickets for Vince Gill in Morgantown, WV last night -- and Vince and his entire band were amazing.

If he has a show anywhere near you, I highly recommend snagging some tickets.

Honestly, I had forgotten how phenomenal his guitar skills are because I always tend to concentrate on the purity of his voice.  The amazing thing is that, as a little aside yesterday, he told the audience that he had spent the first several years of his music career not singing at all because he wasn't very confident in his own voice.  And that he still sings with his eyes closed, because some part of him is still afraid someone is watching him when he sings.

Adorable.


The guitar playing, though?  Outstanding.  Great acoustic work, fabulous steel guitar, perfect bass in the background bringing them all together, and a keyboardist who could throw in a little funky jazz and blues where it worked, too.  Loved it.  And Vince Gill's guitar held its own with the rest of the musicians, which is always nice to see in an era when front folks too often take a pass on musician's craft skills and fake it -- there was no faking the guitar riffs coming out of Vince Gill's variety of guitars last night.  (On a side note, his guitar roadie got a serious work-out tuning, re-tuning, and delivering each individual guitar for each song.  Well done!)  Background vocals were really, really good, too. 

Can you tell it was a great concert?

Honestly, he must have handpicked every musician on tour with him, because they were all amazing.

We took The Peanut, who enjoyed herself until about 2/3rds of the way through the concert, when she fell asleep against daddy's shoulder and managed to sleep through a seriously kick butt version of Next Big Thing -- no idea how she managed to stay sleeping through that, a standing ovation and another couple of encore songs, but she did.  (Lesson here:  when you are 8 and tired, you sleep whatever your surroundings.)

If you haven't checked out Vince Gill's musical repertoire, I highly recommend his 4-CD boxed set called These Days. Fantastic stuff, that a guitar-loving reader of mine recommended.  I absolutely love it.  (Thanks GPB!)