By Scott Tady
PITTSBURGH — For three-hours, eight-minutes, Vince Gill provided real deal country music to a nearly sold-out Heinz Hall on July 12.
“We’re loaded up on pickles and ready to go,” Gill joked upon taking the stage at 7:30 sharp, referencing the sprawling Picklesburgh festival right outside the hall’s front doors.
Gill’s guitar wizardry is enough to make other guitarists green with envy, as he demonstrated from the get-go, starting the set with a blazing “One More Chance.”
The 68-year-old Oklahoman is a top-notch storyteller, too, stirring up laughs and tears. The funny moments included his tale of a mean-looking cowboy in an Amarillo dive bar telling him he looks just like Vince Gill except much heavier.
Gill also elicited smiles when praising country music for its predilection for cheating songs, noting all that cheatin’ also has resulted in a bunch of gospel songs. Gill performed a few of both those sub-genres.
He talked about sad songs, too, praising an early mentor, Vern Gosdin, for writing the poignant line “you don’t know sorrow till it’s etched in stone.” The only song sadder than that is “Old Shep,” a traditional folk song about a young man having to put down his beloved, crippled dog, according to Gill, who mentioned how his dad tormented his childhood by singing him that song.
“But after years of therapy…’ Gill wisecracked.
The night’s most touching moment came when Gill set up “Benny’s Song,” a tribute to his childhood friend and longtime musical collaborator Benny Garcia, who died in 2020 in hospice care just hours before Gill was scheduled to visit him one last time.
Gill tipped a hat to two of his biggest influences, soaring through Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down” and Buck Owens’ “Together Again.”
Surrounded by a stellar band — Jim “Moose” Brown (keyboards), Tom Bukovac (guitar), Eddie Dunlap (steel guitar), Jedd Hughes (guitar, vocals), John Jarvis (keyboards), Wendy Moten (vocals), Jimmie Lee Sloas (bass), Billy Thomas (drums), and Jeff White (guitar, vocals) — Gill shined on hits (“Look at Us,” “When I Call Your Name”), and deeper cuts like “Colder Than Winter.”
The country star gave well-deserved spotlight time to vocalists Hughes and Moten, who both bedazzled on lead mic, with crowd-pleasing performances, respectively, on “Loving You Is The Only Way to Fly” and a cover of “Ode to Billie Joe.” Some fans in the audience wore Moten concert T-shirts, familiar with her runner-up appearance on NBC’s “The Voice” and her work as a harmonizing vocalist on Faith Hill and Martina McBride tours.
For Gill, songs like “Guitar Slinger” and the delightful pre-encore romp “Oklahoma Borderline” provided a musical landscape to stretch out a bit and thrill spectators with his guitar prowess.
Briefly mentioning his “other gig,” as a member of The Eagles the past eight years, Gill finished one song by riffing a guitar solo snippet from that famed band’s “New Kid in Town.” Later would come a quick Allman Brothers guitar medley that included “Blue Sky.”
Powered by musicianship, songcraft, storytelling, work ethic and a genuinely friendly disposition, Gill captivated from start to finish.