Relaxed, sublime

CLEARWATER - When a top-drawer musical talent takes the stage looking tanned and relaxed, it can be a good sign of things to come.

But when that performer is country crooner Vince Gill - a guy who, if he were any more laid back, would be horizontal - there is good reason to be downright alarmed.

Fortunately for the 1,559 audience members lucky enough to catch the first of his two concerts Sunday evening at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Gill showed up ready to earn his keep.

To the eternal frustration of many fans, Gill seems too modest or disinterested to fully unfurl his prodigious musical gifts on a regular basis. But he held nothing back Sunday, turning in one moving vocal after another, even investing the wordless oooo oooo's at the end of Pretty Little Adriana with mournful passion. His gorgeous tenor treated his first megahit When I Call Your Name with the respect it deserved, delivering the lyrics with a palpable sense of soul-shredding hurt.

"Oh the lonely sound of my voice calling/Is driving me insane," Gill wailed on the song's chorus, making the men in the audience wishing they had a beer to cry into.

Veteran pedal-steel guitarist John Hughey lent a timeless air to the arrangements, his instrument crying beautifully on Look At Us and Take Your Memory With You. But the most notable aspect of the band's instrumental attack was Gill's own ferocious six-string skills. He provided a veritable feast for guitar lovers, trading stinging licks with slide guitarist Tom Britt on What the Cowgirls Do and running his fingers all over the fretboard of a cream-colored Fender guitar during Oklahoma Borderline.

His playing even impressed on lesser material. He introduced the first encore number by solemnly declaring into the microphone, "the blues." That introduction seemed like a cruel joke when the band proceeded to launch into the middle-of-the-road treacle of Nothing Like A Woman. But at the song's end, Gill gently coaxed lovely blues-inflected phrases from his guitar, rendering the lyrics' sticky-sweet sentiments not only palatable but affecting.

Gill said he will soon have a new album out that he recently recorded with his former band the Cherry Bombs. He provided a sneak peak of that project with a riotous number that would have done Shel Silverstein proud.

"It's hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your a- out all day long," a grinning Gill sang as the band played it straight behind him.

"This is country music at its scariest," Gill quipped.

Meanwhile, the entire concert showed off country music at its most sublime.

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