Artist:     Vince Gill

Album:     Okie

Label:     MCA Records

Release Date:     8.29.2019

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There’s little can be added to the Vince Gill story. A true country great, a Nashville hero and music giant, Gill seems never to have put a foot wrong in a career that now stretches back over forty-plus years, decades of top-of-the-tree music and musicianship. Awards inevitably have been showered upon him down the decades. Now, with Okie he turns a look back to his own youth and roots while turning out yet another likely award-nomination release.

Okie is a twelve-tracker filled with Gill’s trademark guitar chops, licks and intricate picking, an album that again highlights the guy’s immense talent and power. Songs ripple through self-composed tributes to his own, personal heroes, Americana legends like Merle Haggard and Guy Clarke. As might be expected, we have some notably sweet sounds and delights aplenty slipped into the marvelous mix. If there’s a worry it might be that Gill can be both sweet and sickly. But, then again, we have a guy prepared to step into the shoes of the late Glen Frey and the Eagles burden causes him no pain, difficulty or trial.

But this is, if anything, a positively minor gripe. Okie is a superbly executed, engineered and delivered album. Gill is on top form—indeed, has he ever in been anything else?—throughout. His fretwork is always nothing short of stunning, acoustic mastery at its highest. His vocals purposeful and precise and the lyrics generally thoughtful, enjoyable and at times revealing. This is an album that is destined for multi-award nominations, no doubt. A work of significant quality and importance well worthy of Gill and well worth discovering.

—Iain Patience