Before there were trucks in country music, there were trains — and Vince Gill’s newest song is bringing them back. “I Don’t Wanna Ride the Rails No More” will be the first track on his upcoming album, OKIE, set for release on August 23.
“It’s kind of a neat song about yearning,” he told CMT.com during an interview in his Nashville living room. “I don’t necessarily want to quit traveling and it’s not autobiographical — that I’m going to get off the tour bus and stop touring. That’s not going to happen! But it’s just a song of yearning for someone to fall in love and find a companion, and not really necessarily know when he was gonna find one — but he did.”
Gill said he considers OKIE a songwriter record, and while he did indeed co-write several songs on it, “I Don’t Wanna Ride the Rails No More” is solely his own composition.
“Everybody’s always taken back in time a little bit, when they hear a song about trains,” Gill said. “That’s timeless. It’s a really beautiful period of our history with the trains and sound they made. I still like to hear a train headed down track, you know?”