This album includes some of the most poignant and moving songs of his career, such as the current single, "Threaten Me With Heaven," as well as "Bread and Water" and "If I Die." But the album also features fun, upbeat songs as well, and serves as a wonderful showplace for his guitar playing. Gill wrote every song on the album, which was the first project recorded from start to finish at his new home studio.

"I feel like the emphasis has been on the songs and the songs have gotten better," he says. "They really run the gamut of what they are about, how they feel, how they sound. It's not an all-traditional record, it's not an all-contemporary record; it's all over the map, like I kind of have always been. But it doesn't feel out of step with anything I've done previously."

Guitar Slinger is the follow-up to his critically acclaimed four-CD, 43-song box set, These Days, which was certified platinum, won the 2006 Grammy for Best Country Album and received an overall Grammy Album of the Year nomination.

Guitar Slinger epitomizes coming home for Gill for several reasons. Not only did he record in his home, but he is joined on the album by his wife, Amy Grant, and their daughters Jenny, Sarah and Corrina. "Corrina makes her debut at nine on this record in a very dark song," he says of "Billy Paul." "It's a song about a friend of mine who took his life after he took someone else's life. It's very, very dark, but I love that in music. I was always drawn to music with those kinds of things."

Despite his unbelievably pure tenor voice and his jaw-dropping guitar playing, Gill always keeps the song first and foremost in his focus. "All I ever want to be is honest, truthful and authentic," he says. "The thing I've learned as a musician, record producer and part of a cast that does what it is that we do is that the most important thing is to serve the song. It's not to show off and play the most you can play or sing the most you can sing. It's all in how do you serve this song the best and what keeps the song the real focal point of what you're doing."