Jimmy McDonough’s Gary Stewart: I Am From The Honky Tonks
(Wolf & Salmon)
By James Calemine
Jimmy McDonough met the Kentucky-born songwriter Gary Stewart in 1987. McDonough first watched Stewart perform six years earlier in New York City at the Lone Star Cafe. McDonough confessed, “It remains the greatest live performance I’ve ever witnessed. I entered that show as a fan and left a cult member.”
McDonough wrote in the Introduction to Gary Stewart: I Am from the Honky Tonks: “This story has haunted me for close to forty years now. No doubt I disappointed Gary as a friend, but I will not fail him as a biographer.” Rest assured, no trace of failure exists in this 544-page biography that reads like an adrenaline-laced thriller.
McDonough’s other biographies include Shakey (Neil Young), The Ghastly One (Andy Milligan), Big Bosoms and Square Jaws (Russ Meyer), Tragic Country Queen (Tammy Wynette), Soul Survivor (Al Green), The Exotic Ones (The Ormond Family) and The Most Exotic One (Georgette Dante).
The writer revealed in the I Am from the Honky Tonks Acknowledgments, “The infidels that occupy current-day publishing would not put this book out. Only one person undertook the cause, and he’s done it with Pentecostal fervor: Chris “The Champion” Campion. He is the reason you hold this tome in your hands…”
Gary Stewart informed McDonough before they met, he’d only grant an interview if McDonough found a rare record for him, “Harlan County”, by Wild Bill Emerson on Ace of Heart Records. McDonough acquired the vinyl within days and delivered it to Stewart’s doorstep with a tape recorder in hand, questions ready. McDonough spent hundreds of hours interviewing Stewart over the years in his spooky double-wide Fort Pierce, Florida, trailer. The writer leaves no detail unexhumed regarding the turbulent life and soulful music of Gary Ronald Stewart. Over sixty rare photographs grace these pages.
Mel Tillis advised Stewart to write his own songs in the music business. Stewart moved to Nashville and crossed paths with Kitty Wells, Little Jimmy Dickins, Conway Twitty and Chet Atkins. Stewart played piano in Charley Pride’s band and wrote loads of cornerstone tunes for Roy Dea. McDonough elucidated, “Gary was flying high. Boom boom boom, three hit singles in a row. Touring with Charley Pride. A critically acclaimed album debut. The next single from Gary and Roy Dea would be a stunner, a rocker written by Gary that was just too wild for RCA. And just like that, things would begin to unravel.”
Stewart’s career peaked around 1978 with hits “Drinkin’ Thing”, “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” “Out of Hand”, “Your Place or Mine” and “Ten Years of This” earning him suitcases full of cash. And drugs. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, The Allman Brothers Band, Alex Chilton, Dwight Yoakam, Tanya Tucker, Vince Gill, The Clash and Bob Dylan loved Stewart’s music. Neil Young and his producer David Briggs “were both knocked out” when McDonough played Gary Stewart songs for them.
It offended McDonough that Stewart was ignored by the Country Music Hall of Fame. McDonough revealed his mission: “Gary Stewart slipped through the cracks in country music history, and his music needs to be exalted to the place in history it deserves.” McDonough went on to say, “He was Gary Goddamn Stewart, King of the Honky-Tonks.”
In the spring of 1988, McDonough’s Village Voice profile about Stewart inspired music lovers to seek out his old songs. Stewart trusted McDonough, but sometimes they quarreled. “Just because you don’t like it don’t mean it ain’t good, Jimmy,” Stewart advised the writer. During a visit to Fort Pierce (where the Stewart Family moved to from Kentucky when Gary was twelve), McDonough became frustrated waiting days for Stewart to get out of bed, and “mocked him, calling him Moleman and Howard Hughes, and informed him that he was a drug fiend, a shut in and just plain nuts.”
Then the honky-tonk vampire threw a steak knife at McDonough’s head. Minutes later, Stewart played five songs into McDonough’s tape recorder as a peace offering. The writer proves chapter after chapter, as self-destructive as he was, it’s almost impossible not to love Stewart’s music. McDonough wrote: “Although it was by no means easy for him, Gary had invited me into his life, and shared it all, good, bad, and ugly. I’m ashamed to say I took much of it for granted at the time. Only now, forty years later, do I realize the extent of his kindness.”
Nerve-rattling energy fills every page. A few memorable stories in this book without spoilers involve: Bradley’s Barn, Grandma’s Roadhouse, Music Row politics, songwriting sessions with Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman, meeting Bob Dylan, overdoses, family tragedies, Florida gangsters, Willie Nelson high on Okeechobee Purple, and the haunting “Williamson County” demo.
By the late 90s, Stewart and his wife Mary Lou (to whom the book is dedicated) fell into a wicked grip of addiction. Stewart still wrote songs, cut albums and played sold out Texas honky-tonks to enthusiastic crowds, but the good old days vanished. When Stewart mailed McDonough cassettes, he’d write Howard Hughes as the sender in the return address.
On December 3, Stewart called McDonough a few days after Mary Lou’s unexpected death in late November 2003. “You were her favorite,” Stewart told McDonough, “So I thought you should know.” Stewart invited him to Fort Pierce, and McDonough promised he’d visit soon. “There was an emotional goodbye. I’d never speak to him again.” Two weeks later, Stewart died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age fifty-nine.
I Am from the Honky Tonks provides hundreds of compelling reasons why Gary Stewart’s music deserves worldwide recognition. Jimmy “King of the Crazy Biographers” McDonough just wrote another masterpiece.
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