Country standard-bearer Vince Gill widens his range on ‘Down to My Last Habit’

Spend more than a few minutes chatting with Vince Gill and you’re liable to come away convinced that even his epitaph will defer to someone else.

As gifted as the Oklahoma native is as a singer, songwriter and guitarist — the Grammys have heaped more awards on him (20) than on any other male country artist — Gill, 58, remains as self-effacing and disarmingly humble as an eminent musician can be.

For instance, Gill is up for yet another Grammy this year for his role producing country singer-songwriter Ashley Monroe’s latest album, “The Blade,” which is vying in the country album category with Chris Stapleton’s “Traveller,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Pageant Material,” Sam Hunt’s “Montevallo” and Little Big Town’s “Pain Killer.”

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When the subject came up during an interview last week while Gill was in the Southland to join the luminaries honored in the concrete RockWalk just outside the doors of Guitar Center’s Hollywood store, he again shifted the focus away from himself, despite having an album of his own due Friday.

“Everybody’s so excited for [Monroe],” he said, relaxing in a back room of the store, comfortably surrounded by dozens of vintage instruments. “She’s so deserving of all this credit…. That’s all you’re rooting for: You want the whole world to love her like we do. She has so many gifts. The way she writes songs is well beyond her years.... Those kinds of people don’t come along very often.”

Gill’s “Down to My Last Bad Habit” is his 20th studio album as a solo artist, since his time in the late 1970s as singer and guitarist for country rock band Pure Prairie League.

Surprisingly, this standard-bearer for traditional country music says that “to me, there’s really only one real country song on this record, that’s the song for George [Jones], ‘Sad One Comin’ On,’” a reference to the album-closing track Gill wrote after the emotionally overwhelming performance he gave at the King of Country’s funeral in 2013.

It’s not, however, that he’s turned his back on his roots. Rather, having recently connected deeply with country tradition through the 2013 album with steel guitarist Paul Franklin, “Bakersfield,” which saluted the music of Buck Owens and other pioneers of the California country sound, and his membership in the western swing band the Time Jumpers, Gill felt free to explore other styles on this album.

“I’ve always liked diversity in my music,” he said. “I have plans to make another record with Paul soon. The Time Jumpers have another record coming out in June, and that’s steeped seriously traditional. So I thought, ‘Hey, I can make this record and let my guitar playing shine. I can let it be the blues if it needs to be, let it be R&B if it wants to be.’ Once again, whatever it winds up being, my only hope is that it comes out as honest and authentic, not trying to be something it’s not.”

“Down to My Last Bad Habit,” which he’ll support with a solo tour that will make a stop on March 20 in Thousand Oaks, includes what is probably the bluesiest track Gill has ever recorded, “Make You Feel Real Good,” for which he gives major credit — again — to one of his collaborators, drummer Steve Jordan.

“There’s a reason Steve Jordan is Steve Jordan,” he said of the musician who recently teamed up with the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards to co-write and co-produce most of his first solo album in almost 25 years, “Crosseyed Heart.” “He’s wicked the way he plays those drums. The depth of the groove that we got into is different than anything I’ve ever done.”

The title track, which Gill wrote with prolific songwriter and guitar ace Al Anderson, formerly of the genre-bending band NRBQ, is an atmospheric song of redemption about a man who has belatedly given up his vices in hopes of winning back the woman who left him. The album-opening “Reasons for the Tears I Cry” exercises Gill’s much-lauded elastic tenor, which he ramps up into falsetto range on the song’s chorus to embody the high emotions at work.

He also enlists Monroe to sing with him on “My Favorite Movie,” a song he’d written for her album that didn’t make her record, and with another emerging star, singer-songwriter Cam, with whom he duets on “I’ll Be Waiting for You.” His daughters Jenny, from his first marriage to singer Janis Oliver, and Corrina, 14, from his marriage in 2000 to singer-songwriter Amy Grant, also get to harmonize with their dad on a couple of tracks.

But Gill recognizes that he’s putting the album out at a time when veteran country artists know the chances are slim they’ll get played on mainstream country radio, which could be dispiriting to someone who has logged 62 hits on the Billboard country singles chart, 27 of them reaching the Top 10 and five making it all the way to No. 1.

“I heard Kenny Rogers say, when he made a record after he hadn’t made one in a long, long time, somebody said, ‘Do you want the record to be successful?’ He said, ‘No, I’ve had records that have been successful. I just want it to be significant.’

“What keeps me interested is that I’m getting better,” Gill said. “That’s comforting.... My ears are kinda what point me, and my ears say, ‘You’re getting better. You’re singing better.’ I think this is maybe the best I’ve ever sung on a record. To me, that’s why it’s worth doing.”

Twitter: @RandyLewis2