GARY STEWART:
I AM FROM THE HONKY TONKS
Jimmy McDonough
Wolf+Salmon
513 pages
Jimmy McDonough took more than ten years to complete his acclaimed, behemoth biography of Neil Young, Shakey. Some sources even say more than thirty years. Well, his long-awaited bio of country star Gary Stewart was nearly forty years in the making, from the first time he showed up at the singer’s trailer till another twenty-two years after Stewart passed.
The opening paragraph doesn’t disappoint:
Gary Stewart, king of the honky tonks, has just thrown a knife at my head. A mere steak knife, big deal. Thwap! It hits the double-wide paneling behind me and falls to the carpet as the clattering air conditioner struggles against the Florida heat. My chuckle only makes him angrier. I’m giving Stewart shit about hiding from the world in his trailer, and it’s pissing him off.
That sets the whole tone right there, and establishes both of them as spirited, stubborn men who cycle through many stretches of palling around and estrangement, getting busy with other projects, then circling back with renewed purpose. They share an almost brotherly connection, with all the closeness and contention that often entails, as well as a unifying love of music and crazy stories. It’s a bit risky for an author to become a character in his own nonfiction book, but in this case, it’s wholly warranted and unavoidable.
To say it’s an exhaustive bio is an understatement, though most of its 513 pages (the last thirty of which are references and index) actually pass pretty quickly with so many wild tales and myriad characters, many of whom easily deserve their own books. Indeed, some of the anecdotes tacked on in footnotes could justify whole movies or mini-series.
McDonough’s decades of dogged research and hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of people (famous and not famous) piece together Stewart’s entire family saga. McDonough charts Stewart’s progression from regional rocker and honky tonker to being Charley Pride’s piano player, his rise as one of the premier country artists of the 1970s, his fall to near obscurity in subsequent years, and his tragic end in 2003.
It becomes clear pretty quickly that this is no ordinary star bio, and Gary Stewart was certainly no ordinary star. Best known for his iconic country hits like “Drinkin’ Thing” and “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles),” Gary Stewart was much more complicated and nuanced, musically and personally. Part of the reason he never got the success he deserved is that Nashville often didn’t quite know what to do with this scrappy guy who was a honky tonker who could rock (on guitar and piano), evoking both Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis, High Lonesome as well as lowdown blues. Too rock for country, too country for rock, and his wild, often drug-addled antics unsettled the more ostensibly buttoned-down Opry crowd. He also hated touring and wouldn’t wear those polyester Nudie suits.
Stewart was one of the oldest of nine kids (not couting the two who died in a fire when his mother was pregnant with him). His dad was a disabled Kentucky coal miner who moved the family to a better life in, of all places, Fort Pierce, Florida, a notoriously rough-and-tumble town even back then. To make ends meet, his mom sold Avon as a supplement—and cover—for running drugs throughout the area. His dad also raised prized cockfighting roosters, some of which sold as far away as South America. And that’s just a taste of Chapter One. So Gary Stewart never had a shot at being anything close to normal or sedate or sober or even-keeled. That both blessed and cursed him as well as his whole family. It made him everything he was, then factored just as heavily into him losing it all.
The whole Stewart clan are portrayed as loud, colorful, sketchy yet soulful, tough but loving people who ran roughshod over all of the rules and all of the people in their lives. They were not always easy—or safe—people to track down and interview. Although Jimmy McDonough wrote the book with the determination of a superfan intent on bringing one of his faves to wider acclaim, he never falls prey to idolizing Stewart or compromising the story to stay in anyone’s good graces. Nobody is spared, not even McDonough himself. And it’s fair to say these are the kind of people who wouldn’t want to be spared and seem to respect McDonough all the more for being so unflinchingly candid.
Dichotomy is an unspoken theme throughout. Gary Stewart certainly embodied his sun sign Gemini twins, often swinging between polar extremes. By turns he could be charming and unreasonable, loving and unfaithful, professional and wildly debauched. I don’t know McDonough’s sign, but he too is by turns personable and wry, unsparing and funny, admiring and contentious—and utterly unflappable in the face of quite a few sticky situations, threats, and even occasional assaults. No other bio writer could’ve pulled off this book. Jimmy McDonough seems perfectly and uniquely suited to bring Gary Stewart’s story to fruition.
He also obsessively details Stewart’s music, from home tapes, early performances, various band lineups and session players and producers, etc., right on up through TV and club appearances, and Stewart’s entire discography, as well as obscure bootlegs and session outtakes. At times it might go into a bit too much detail for the casual reader, but music buffs will greatly appreciate it and likely agree with most of his assessments.
The only thing missing is a catalogued DVD with all of those referenced bits. He certainly piques the curiosity to go check them out. Often the only reason I could set this book down was to go hunt these clips online. I found a good number of them, along with this great promo from McDonough himself. So I thoroughly recommend reading with a computer or some other web device handy to do the same.
Underscoring all of this is the very complicated decades-long love story between Gary and his wife Mary Lou. They got married when he was just sixteen. (She was a “scandalous older woman” of twenty-one.) Their tumultuous union mirrored the wild, drug-fueled life of their family and friends, yet they remained fiercely devoted, often to a fault.
McDonough does a great job of corralling and pacing all of these moving parts, going back and forth between Gary the rising star and increasingly troubled musician and addict, and Gary the doting if not quite faithful husband and family man.
Of course it’s ultimately a tragic story that seemed fated to end no other way. Jimmy McDonough was there for much of it and winds up one of the last few standing to tell the tale.
As a big Stewart fan myself (I was at one of the Coupland Dance Hall shows mentioned fleetingly), I knew he was a notorious addict and could be somewhat unpredictable. So I once chickened out of approaching him at a showcase, which is probably for the best. But I had no idea just how dark and depraved things actually got with him. It was often a tough read about someone whose music I still staunchly admire, and the complicated guy I still just as staunchly choose to remember this way: the scrawny, kinda goofy little guy with big wavy hair, in a simple black suit and white shirt and hat, singing with his trademark quivery vibrato some of the most lowdown drinkin’ despairin’ songs of all time—with a nearly beatific grin on his face, waving and pointing and laughing with people in the audience. That’s just as true to his nature as the darker stuff. I’m a Gemini, too, I get it about dichotomy.
Despite the often rough and sometimes depressing ride, it’s still well worth it to dig so deeply into Stewart’s history and career. McDonough breathes new life into Stewart’s musical legacy. Hopefully that will help shepherd some of those rarities and unreleased treasures into our reach. Most of the current publishing industry wouldn’t have anything to do with this book, just as most of the current country music industry wouldn’t have anything to do with an artist like Gary Stewart these days. So it probably won’t be easy or quick. But nonetheless, McDonough pays tribute (warts and all) to this savant-like genius still worth tracking down. And certainly worth reading about. –L.J. Gouveia
The initial collectible “Cadillac Edition” sold out quickly, and a second printing in April is available for pre-order now.
BONUS TREAT: Here’s Gary Stewart in one of his best clips, “Flat Natural Born Good Timin’ Man.”
EXTRA BONUS TREAT: I ‘friended’ Jimmy McDonough on Facebook a couple years ago so I could stay in the loop on this book. That’s where I came across another McDonough wild ride, his recent four-part article on byNWR.com: “The Most Exotic One: The Hard, Wonderful, Fun Life of Georgette Dante.” She’s a longtime Las Vegas showgirl, real-deal carny, actress, all-around badass, and so much more.