THE OUTRAGEOUS TALE OF A TRUE COUNTRY OUTLAW
An epic tale of sex, drugs, and country music almost 40 years in the making, Gary Stewart: I Am From the Honky-Tonks is the eighth and final biography by Jimmy McDonough (Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen), America’s greatest chronicler of popular culture.
An unsung hero of 20th century American music, Gary Stewart is regarded as one of the most talented singers, songwriters, and vocalists of his generation. In the mid-1970s, crazed hits like "She’s Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)" and "Drinkin' Thing" rocketed Stewart up the charts and earned him the admiration of Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers, Tanya Tucker, and more. Within a few years, he had flamed out and all-but-vanished from the music scene. Until Jimmy McDonough barged his way into the spooky, Florida doublewide Stewart was hiding out in, beginning a four-decade obsession with the elusive musician.
Utilizing the unique combination of oral history, vivid prose, and personal experience that made McDonough’s Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography a bestseller, Gary Stewart: I Am From The Honky-Tonks follows a feral Kentucky family who surfed success and rear-ended disaster in drug-soaked, 1970s Florida. At its core is the tempestuous, tragic love story of Gary Stewart and his wife, Mary Lou, that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the last page.
AS SEEN IN
Photo by Grandal Stewart
AUTHOR
Jimmy McDonough is America's greatest living biographer, known for a pulp-fiction style that brings underground subjects to life. His work focuses on messy, complicated figures whom he often embeds himself with to research in unvarnished glory. He is the author of eight biographies profiling cultural icons and fascinating obscurities, including Neil Young, Andy Milligan, Russ Meyer, Tammy Wynette, Al Green, The Ormonds, Georgette Dante, and country outlaw Gary Stewart.
REVIEWS
"The Resurrection of Country Music’s Ultimate Vanishing Act"
Bob Mehr
"Five hundred pages on the life of an addict hillbilly musical genius who spent years hiding out in a trailer sounds like a dream reading vacation to me"
John Waters
"I Am From The Honky-Tonks is a lot more than the biography of a cult artist. It's a vast, tumultuous portrait of 20th-century, Southern, working-class life"
Ken Tucker
"One of the most adventurous and daring books about a popular musician to come in a long time"
Rolling Stone
"McDonough accomplishes in this biography what any true fan of a songwriter and performer yearns for, creating a hunger in its readers for more of their music"
Karly Hartzman (Wednesday)
"Intimate, raw, and often heartbreaking… one of the finest books ever written on a country music singer"
Travis Kitchens
"A mesmerizing story of a man born to sing and suffer"
Country Music Hall of Fame
"A monumental biography of an artist who pushed everything to the limit, by a biographer who does the same."
Kirkus Reviews
"****"
"A fascinating, hard-bitten, uncompromising portrait of a man at odds with the world. It is, like Gary Stewart's life, a wild ride”
Will Hodgkinson
