\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div><\/div> \n\tThe wind rustled through the palms as I sat in the dark with the driver. \u201cBoy, if Gary could get off that shit, he\u2019d be bigger than ever.\u00a0Bigger than Hank Williams.\u201d This from the guy who gave him the funds to cop. Gary and Fort Pierce was a doomed union. It seemed half the town enabled him.<\/p>\n \n\tEventually we made it back to Rialto\u2019s. Stewart had a bad time getting a handle on the keyboard, although near the end of the night he slipped into a slow, mournful version of \u201cIn the Pines\u201d that nearly had me weeping. The Rialto\u2019s crowd chatted all the way through his anguish. \u201cIn the Pines\u201d wasn\u2019t ZZ Top.<\/p>\n \n\tGary was dejected when we returned home. Silent. He had a bit of a cold from running himself ragged. He barked at Lou to return the keyboard and ambled off to the bedroom. I wouldn\u2019t see him for another five days. Lou tried to entertain me; Jimmy Smith came by and we whispered jokes in the living room. But mostly I sat and waited. Do all celebrities do this sort of thing? I\u2019d of course find out they were capable of much crazier, but at the moment I was stressed. A friend had given me the money to make this trip and I was envisioning returning home empty-handed. There were still questions to ask.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEvery once in a while Stewart would stumble out to the refrigerator to chug some cola and grab a little candy, muttering a sentence or two as he returned to his crypt. Madness. At one point I stood outside the trailer with Donnie Coleman, pontificating on Gary\u2019s fate as he lay comatose mere feet away. \u201cI guess it\u2019s like Elvis,\u201d he mused, invoking a clich\u00e9d comparison that seemed inevitable but apt. \u201cYou can\u2019t save a man from himself.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut it was actually Gary who\u2019d shortly utter the most ominous line in reference to Presley. \u201cHe needed to escape. I know how he felt, \u2019cause I\u2019ve felt the same way and gone through some of the same things. I just haven\u2019t lost my wife. That would kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n \n\tIn the middle of this graveyard quiet I had noticed a few worn boxes of 1\/4\u201d tapes and cassettes peeking out from a box in one corner of the trailer. Inspecting them, I deduced they were Gary\u2019s session recordings and outtakes. Well, if that motherfucker isn\u2019t coming out of the bedroom, I\u2019m going to imbibe. I found a nearby friend of Stewart\u2019s to loan me a reel-to-reel machine, strapped on some headphones, and took the plunge.<\/p>\n \n\tTalk about a revelation. Piles of outtakes, each more compelling than the last. By 5 a.m. on the fifth day in the double-wide gulag, I\u2019d listened to everything but a box labeled \u201cLenny Dee.\u201d\u00a0 Having little else to occupy my thoughts, I threaded it up. Might as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI was unprepared for what came next. Here was the Rosetta stone \u2014 perhaps the most spellbinding and mysterious recording Gary ever made. His anguished vocal soars over a raggedy four-piece band, the piano anchoring a distorted, howling guitar and a weird, twitchy mandolin that buzzes around like an out-of-reach mosquito. So otherworldly \u2026 it took me a second to recognize \u201cWilliamson County.\u201d There\u2019s a fine Music City rendition on Stewart\u2019s first album \u2014 polished, jaunty, Nashville-perfect. This was something else entirely. It sounded like a Kentucky murder ballad from another planet, with Gary, who might be a little high, setting out on a long lazy march toward Hades after strangling his lover \u2014 a working girl who\u2019s fallen for another. \u201cNow the same hands that catered to her\/Are clutching at her throat.\u201d The killer is damned for all eternity for what he\u2019s done. \u201cAnd I ride this nightmare all over Williamson County\/The devil waits on my soul for his payment\/I await the hunter of my bounty.\u201d Gary practically screams the \u201cdevil\u201d line, then pulls back, accepting his fate, making way for a long, keening guitar coda, like a junkyard ghost whistling down the tailpipe of a dead Plymouth Duster. The song evokes the chaos, tragedy, and soul of the Stewart clan like nothing else, the performance an unholy hybrid of rock, country, bluegrass, blues, and even psychedelia. Sitting there alone in the dark, I felt the full measure of Stewart\u2019s talent for the first time, and reckoned with how deep that well was, how he\u2019d been in the right place and time to absorb all that had come before him. It coursed through his veins completely and authentically, enabling him to alchemize all those genres into something utterly new and completely his own.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBy the end of it I was in a trance. This bleak, unsettling hill country drone was a glimpse into the abyss equal to Dylan\u2019s \u201cNot Dark Yet,\u201d the 13th Floor Elevators\u2019 \u201cMay the Circle Be Unbroken,\u201d or Reverend Julius Cheeks and the Four Knights\u2019 \u201cThe Last Mile of the Way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJust then Gary shuffled out from the bedroom yawning. I ripped off the headphones. \u201cListen to this!\u201d Stewart seemed just as shocked as I was. Who played on it? He couldn\u2019t tell me. When was it recorded? He didn\u2019t know, although he thought it had been done during his tenure at Bradley\u2019s Barn, before RCA. He listened intently, traveling back there in his mind. The tape ran out, the loose end flapping around on its plastic spool as we sat in silence. Gary, staring into space, said softly, \u201cI thought we were going to make records like that all the time \u2014 y\u2019know, round up some pickers and play.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tGary Stewart and his band\u00a0the Honky Tonk Liberation Army outside Marlow\u2019s Country Palace in Pikeville, Kentucky, circa 1980: Tuck Robinson, Stewart, Ralph Profetta, Howard \u201cBingo\u201d Folcarelli, \u201cBoogie\u201d Bob Melton, John Whalen, Tommy Ray Miller, and Darrell Dawson (from left)<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Grandal Stewart<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThat night Gary spun some Chuck Willis records as I wasn\u2019t too familiar with his oeuvre at the time. He excitedly paced around the trailer, offering me any album I liked for keeps. Then we headed off to Rialto\u2019s, where Gary closed his set with a Willis medley \u2014 \u201cBorn to Lose,\u201d \u201cBetty and Dupree,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s Too Late.\u201d Stewart had been a little obsessed with that last one all the while I\u2019d been down there, and when he got to it in the medley, he just erupted. \u201cShe\u2019s gone, she\u2019s gone \u2014 where can my baby be?\u201d he screamed, bringing the medley to a violent close. He poured everything we\u2019d discussed back in the trailer into the performance, and left the stage breathless, bathed in sweat. A crowd of sixty or so had been mulling about the club. Some of them even clapped.<\/p>\n \n\t* *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n \n\tMy last day in Fort Pierce, Stewart was in a foul mood. I was pissed off from being cooped up in the motionless trailer, and as I provoked him with more questions, resentment oozed out. I mocked him, calling him Moleman and Howard Hughes, and informed him that he was a drug fiend, a shut-in, and just plain nuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor a moment he looked at me like he was about to fly across the room and pull my eyeballs out with his fingers. \u201cI\u2019m forty-three years old an\u2019 still a child \u2014 ain\u2019t that great?\u201d he snarled. \u201cI\u2019m a musician, a singer, a songwriter, a husband, and a human being \u2014 music ain\u2019t the only thing in my life. I don\u2019t owe my life to a damn guitar!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFoolishly, I asked what value he offered to his family \u2014 or anyone else \u2014 by being conked out for days on end, telling him he didn\u2019t care about anybody but himself. His long face, which on this particular day shone with the embalmed elegance of a Jerry Lee Lewis, got cloudy. \u201cI tell you what \u2026 why don\u2019t you stay a few more days and I\u2019ll go back there and I\u2019ll get down and then I\u2019ll come out here and be with you when I\u2019m down like that and you will never want to come back here. I stay away when I can\u2019t do any good.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShortly thereafter Gary threw the knife in my direction, then scuttled off for the scroll he angrily read aloud, declaring his allegiance to the hills of Kentucky. All I knew was that I wanted to slither out of that trailer and run for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd just like that, the storm passed. I had to catch a train home, but Stewart was going to leave a gift on my recorder first. Lording over me with his acoustic, practically on fire, Gary sang\u00a0\u201cWilliamson County.\u201d Boom. \u201cI\u2019ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages.\u201d Boom. \u201cSilver Cloud.\u201d Boom. Then \u201cThere Ain\u2019t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,\u201d the Brother Claude Ely song he learned as a kid. As if sensing my anxiety over my friend\u2019s travel loan, he laid down a Dickey Betts song in her honor \u2014 \u201dNancy,\u201d the icing on the cake being a spoken thank-you to her for getting me to Fort Pierce.<\/p>\n \n\t* *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n \n\tGeorgia tagged along when we headed off to the station, Gina Stewart at the wheel. Gary and Georgia sang mountain songs as the car flew down the highway. Outside the car window a vivid tropical sun set on Florida, Gary\u2019s craggy, sunglassed profile standing in relief. \u201cThis was the time of day I\u2019d get real homesick out on the road,\u201d he murmured. Before we said goodbye Stewart gave me the cheap gold bracelet he\u2019d had on his wrist (\u201cGypsy,\u201d it said) then encouraged me to write the story as I saw fit. \u201cDon\u2019t puss out on me, bud. Tell it the Jimmy way,\u201d he said, giving me my identity in those last five words. It took me many years to realize the significance, and Gary would no longer be around to thank when I did.<\/p>\n \n\tAlthough it was by no means easy for him, Gary had invited me into his life, and shared it all, good, bad, and ugly. I\u2019m ashamed to say I took much of it for granted at the time. Only now, nearly 40 years later, do I recognize the extent of his kindness.<\/p>\n \n\t* *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n \n\tA week later I called. Mary Lou had left. For good, Gary informed me. He was in great pain, and muttered about an open whiskey bottle by his side. Stewart admitted he had no clue how to change his ways at this late stage of the game. He also let me know how much shit my interrogations had stirred. \u201cI need a friend who\u2019s not a reporter,\u201d he said, begging me to find Lou.<\/p>\n \n\tFour days after that, Lou called. Seeing the Elvis and Me<\/em> TV movie had sparked her to call Gary. She was giving him one last chance, provided they exit Fort Pierce forever. They were going to leave in one week.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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