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Review Quotes:
"A mesmerizing story of a man born to sing and suffer." -
Country Music Hall of Fame
Review Quotes:
"One of the most adventurous and daring books about a popular musician to come in a long time." -
Rolling Stone Magazine
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"Intimate, raw, and often heartbreaking... one of the finest books ever written on a country music singer" -
Travis Kitchens, Wall Street Journal
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"A fascinating, hard-bitten, uncompromising portrait of a man at odds with the world. It is, like Gary Stewart's life, a wild ride" -
The Times (UK)
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**** -
Mojo
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"McDonough's book, 40 years in the writing, doesn't stray from the tragedy, but also celebrates the intensity of [Stewart's] life." -
Uncut
Review Quotes:
"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."
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Ken Tucker, NPR Fresh Air
Review Quotes:
"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."
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Karly Hartzman (Wednesday), Stereogum
Review Quotes:
"Feels like one of those epic music biographies, like Shakey, that demands to be read whether you're a honky-tonk devotee or not."
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Dale Shaw, The New World
Review Quotes:
"McDonough's latest biography, Gary Stewart: I Am From the Honky Tonks makes the case for his subject as one of the greatest talents in country-music history... It's not just a great read, but a deeply fascinating look at an under-appreciated talent."
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Greg Kot, Sound Opinions
Review Quotes:
"For McDonough, Stewart's musical legacy 'needs to be exalted to the place in history it deserves.' The book earns its length, as it also does double-duty telling the Southern-Gothic saga of the Stewart clan."
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Eddie Dean, The Washington Free Beacon
Publisher Marketing:
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."
Review Citations:
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Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2026 (EAN 9798990579910, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
Contributor Bio:McDonough, Jimmy
Jimmy McDonough is the author of the New York Times bestseller
Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. He is also the biographer of Russ Meyer (Big Bosoms and Square Jaws), Tammy Wynette (Tragic Country Queen), Al Green (Soul Survivor), and exploitation filmmakers Andy Milligan (The Ghastly One) and the Ormonds (The Exotic Ones). His writing has been published in The Village Voice, Film Comment, and Variety. "To paraphrase a quip Jerry Lee Lewis made about interpreting songs, I like to give great artists what they've got coming to them," says Jimmy.
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