Jimmy McDonough was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, when he was first introduced to the King of the Honky-Tonks. A friend put on a record and McDonough was hooked.
“There are times when somebody shows you art or plays you music,” McDonough tells the Mercury, “and even though you don’t quite get it, there’s something in it—your gut just tells you: I got to know everything about this person.” It took him a year but he eventually caught Stewart performing. “It was absolutely the greatest live performance I’ve seen then or seen since.”
That’s how McDonough came to know the legend that is Gary Stewart. Now, anyone interested in getting to know the man behind songs like “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” and “Whiskey Trip” can pick up McDonough’s massive new 544-page biography of the singer-songwriter, I Am From the Honky Tonks, out in April. “I’ve written about a lot of artists. I’ve been obsessed with a lot of artists, but he was the one who moved me the most,” McDonough says. “I vowed that I would tell his story.”
The book was a long time in the making, starting back in the 1980s when McDonough, who now lives in Portland, was starting his writing career at New York’s famed Village Voice. He knew he wanted to profile the artist, but Stewart wasn’t interested.
“He was living in a double-wide doing a lot of drugs and couldn’t have cared less about most anything in the world,” McDonough explains. There was one thing Stewart was interested in, though—an obscure single by Wild Bill Emerson. “He said, bud, if you find that record, I will give you your interview. Two days later, I found the record, and I insisted on delivering it myself to his trailer,” McDonough says, even though delivering the record meant a days-long Greyhound bus trip from New York to Florida.
When McDonough got there, he found Stewart “zonked out on painkillers” and himself with a lot of time to kill. “I thought if this fucker is going to make me sit here for five days, I’m going to amuse myself,” he says, so he started going through the boxes and boxes of unreleased tapes Stewart had in his trailer. “I just started listening and the depth of his talent was so immense. It just made the mystery of who he was that much more appealing.”
The result of that interview was an article that led to a career in music writing for McDonough, a friendship of sorts between the two men, and an interest in telling the world about the King of the Honky-Tonks. However, life and work and a few other books got in the way. Then Stewart died shortly after the death of his wife, Mary Lou, and McDonough was hesitant to pick up the mantle of his biographer. “I had a lot of reservations about going back to the story,” McDonough says. “But his daughter Shannon was just unrelenting. She just kept saying you’re going to write this book.” And eventually he did.
Stewart was born in Dunham, Kentucky on May 28, 1944. One of 11 children, Stewart’s father was a coal miner and his mother an Avon lady. When his father got hurt in a mining accident, the Stewarts relocated to Fort Pierce, Florida in 1957. (“Fort Pierce is just one of the wildest, weirdest places I’ve ever been in my life,” says McDonough.) While Stewart spent much of his life in Florida, his time in Kentucky inspired songs like as “Easy People” and “Harlan County Highway.” Gary started making a name for himself as a songwriter before finding a career behind the mic with songs like “Drinkin’ Thing,” “Out of Hand,” and “Your Place or Mine.” His biggest hit came in 1975 with “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles),” which went to number one on Billboard‘s US Hot Country Songs.
Stewart’s sound wasn’t purely country; he found inspiration in bluegrass, rock, pop, and blues, crafting a sound that was distinctly his own. “He was not your stereotypical country singer,” McDonough explains. Stewart felt most at home in the honky-tonks, though—country music bars he’d pack with his fans.
By the ’80s, Stewart had fallen off the charts and out of mainstream country popularity, which is when McDonough tracked him down to that double-wide trailer in Fort Pierce. “Gary truly didn’t care. I mean, the fact that I was down there riding on my high horse, trying to reinvigorate America’s love for him. It meant nothing,” McDonough says. “In fact, it was more than a minor annoyance, but he recognized the passion I had for his music, I believe.”
Despite Stewart’s reluctance, he let McDonough in just enough to craft a story that reignited interest in Stewart’s work back in the ’80s. Now, McDonough is trying to do it again with his new biography. “Part of the point of this 544- page book is to convince— or at least compel—the reader to investigate this guy, because I think he is one of the all-time greats, and he is long overdue for an examination.“
I Am From The Honky Tonks was published by Wolf+Salmon on Thurs April 2.