Jimmy McDonough "Gary Stewart: I Am from the Honky Tonks"

Join us at The Book Cellar for Jimmy McDonough in discussion for his book Gary Stewart: I Am from the Honky Tonks, in discussion with Dale Lawrence.

Music stylings with Margaret Dollrod.

RSVP HERE

About the book:

In the mid-seventies, Stewart's crazed hits, including "She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)" and "Drinkin' Thing," rocketed him to the top of the charts, earning him the admiration of Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, and Tanya Tucker. 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 double-wide Stewart was hiding out in, beginning a nearly forty-year obsession with the musician.

GARY STEWART: I AM FROM THE HONKY TONKS--the ninth and final biography from Jimmy McDonough, New York Times best-selling author of Shakey: Neil Young's Biography and America's greatest chronicler of the weird, the wild, and the wondrous--is the outrageous tale of a true country outlaw.

This is a story of sex, drugs, and honky-tonk, told in McDonough's inimitable, two-fisted style, the unique combination of oral history, vivid prose, and personal experience. It's an epic tale of a wild Kentucky family who surfed success and rearended disaster in drug-soaked, seventies Florida. At its core is the tempestuous, tragic love story of Gary Stewart and his wife, Mary Lou, that will leave you haunted long after you turn the last page.

This is the definitive telling of the life of the late, great honky-tonk legend, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Gary, his wife Mary Lou, family members, band members, producers, cohorts, dealers, and fellow stars such as Tanya Tucker, Willie Nelson, Dickey Betts, Dean Dillon, and Charley Pride. This intense and exhaustive 544-page book, filled throughout with rare and unseen images collected by McDonough, and an exclusive cover image by Grandal Stewart, Gary's brother, reveals the complete, untold, and torrid history of a man who lived life as if "the plane could crash tomorrow."

About the author: 

JIMMY MCDONOUGH is a New York Times-bestselling author who's written definitive biographies on Neil Young, Tammy Wynette, Russ Meyer, Al Green and others. Rolling Stone calls GARY STEWART: I AM FROM THE HONKY-TONKS “one of the most adventurous and daring books about a popular musician to come in a long time” while Kirkus said it’s “a monumental biography of an artist who pushed everything to the limit, by a biographer who does the same."

About the moderator: 

DALE LAWRENCE is singer/guitarist for the legendary VULGAR BOATMEN. He also led Indiana's first punk band THE GIZMOS. And he’s the author of the highly collectible Hoosier Hysteria Road Book: A guide to the Byways of Indiana High School Basketball. 

About the musician:

MARGARET DOLLROD will be performing a solo set of Gary Stewart songs. An iconic figure in Detroit garage rock, she's a founding member of the incendiary Demolition Doll Rods.