Vince Gill delivers with Hanover show

By Stuart Munro TELEGRAM & GAZETTE REVIEWER

Shortly after he started his set at The Hanover Theatre Tuesday night, Vince Gill remarked that early on in his career, when he was allotted the opening act’s usual 20 or 30 minutes of playing time, he made a promise to himself. If he ever got to be a headliner, he would play for a lot longer than that. As usual, he kept his promise Tuesday, playing for the better part of three hours for a crowd that seemed to appreciate every minute of it.

And as usual, now that he finds himself on the other, descending side of fame, Gill was less restricted in what he chose to play, and ranged across the length and breadth of his catalog, pulling out obscurities such as “Ridin’ the Rodeo” alongside his hits. So it was a typical example of what a Vince Gill performance has become over the past few years, although the marriage proposal that Gill facilitated midshow was likely not so typical. Happily, she said yes, so that Gill could serenade the newly engaged pair with his supper-club-jazz love song “Faint of Heart.”

There were more of the singer’s vintage love songs, too (“Look At Us,” “I Still Believe In You”), counterbalanced by what the singer said every country show needs to qualify as country: hard-core hurtin’ and cheatin’ songs. He qualified Tuesday’s performance with the likes of “Pocketful of Gold,” the shuffling “Take Your Memory With You When You Go” and the distilled heartache of “Tryin’ to Get Over You.”

He looked back to his musical upbringing and influences with his Haggard-styled nod to Merle, “Real Mean Bottle,” and with the smooth country-soul of “If You Ever Have Forever In Mind,” his recreation of the sound of what he called one of the pivotal albums in the history of country music, Ray Charles’ “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.”

Several songs also paid tribute to Gill’s own upbringing and family, and displayed the importance those things play in his songwriting. As he always does, he did his memorials to his brother (the beautiful gospel song “Go Rest High on That Mountain”) and to his father (“The Key to Life”). He paid a different sort of tribute to his father with what he labeled the “strange country” of “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long),” a song that his father demanded he write after giving him that provocative title.

On the spur of the moment, he played “Jenny Dreamed of Trains,” a song he wrote about his daughter when she was a child that doesn’t often find its way onto his setlist. And he unveiled a couple of new songs, one about his wife, and one Gill characterized as inspired by his brother’s life and what it taught him about character.

Gill was his usual loquacious self throughout the evening, too, entertaining the audience as much with his stories, jokes, asides and banter with the audience as with his singing and ferocious instrumental talent. All of that, along with the quality of his music, old and new, once again demonstrated that a typical Vince Gill performance continues to be typically fine.