Vince Gill has focused on “sadness” for Lonely’s What I Do, the fifth EP from his 50 Years From Home EP series, which is out now from MCA. Instruments featured on the cover of each EP are from Gill’s personal collection. For Lonely’s What I Do, he chose a Gibson J-200 given to him by songwriter Paul Kennerly.

Gill now has 22 Grammy Awards, Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry inductions, and 25 Top 10 hits on Billboard’s Country charts.

One of the latter, “Pocket Full of Gold” from his 1991 album of the same name, is included along with the seven new recordings featured on Lonely’s What I Do. These songs are “lovelorn laments” which feature Gill’s high and lonesome tenor and minor-key instrumentation. 

Gill addresses this theme of sadness, explaining:

I love the melancholy in music. I always have. Maybe it goes back to the bluegrass days of the murder ballads, those kinds of songs. There’s so much more emotion in songs that have a little more despair. I think they’re as powerful as they are because they tell great stories. They paint great pictures that take you to that place — whether they’re true or not.

For “Lonely’s What I Do,” the EP’s title track, Gill teamed with Sharon Vaughn, as well as Belle Frantz. Gill says, “it’s a little tip of the hat to Bob Wills’ ‘Faded Love.’”

Like its 50 Years From Home predecessors, Lonely’s What I Do was produced by Gill at his home studio in Nashville, with engineers Matt Rausch and Justin Niebank and a corps of his regular players including Paul Franklin, guitarists Tom Bukovac and Jedd Hughes, bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas, keyboardists Gordon Mote, John Jarvis and Jim “Moose” Brown, and drummer Fred Eltringham.

TRACK LISTING:

1. “Nothing Like They Used To Be”
2. “A Million Tears Ago”  
3. “How’s The Leaving Going”
4. “Lonely’s What I Do”
5. “The Last Thing You Left Behind”
6. “How Lonely Lonely Gets”
7. “The Book”
8. “Pocket Full of Gold”