If you like Neil Young, you read Jimmy McDonough. The guy\u2019s <\/span>Shakey <\/span><\/i>biography is an unpleasant, drugged-out, heroic fever-dream recital of a blowhard rock and roll genius\u2019s life. McDonough himself called the book a \u201cshotgun blast of buckshot fired by a blind man. With Tourette\u2019s.\u201d In a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz hurrying along a California highway, he found it choice to rake an already skeptical Neil over the coals for \u201cSugar Mountain.\u201d I\u2019d say it takes a real whacko to sketch out the ungodliest hours of an artist loved by millions. Writing any book is psychically demanding, let alone one about a complicated celebrity\u2014especially the dead ones, like Tammy Wynette. Spending more than an hour with some of those loons would make any sane journalist put a gun in their mouth. Luckily for us, McDonough is certifiably deranged himself. He\u2019s a raconteur with a colorful deadpan who talks like he\u2019s half-giving a lifetime achievement award speech and half-spinning a yarn of folklore. Some readers may find him as infuriating as Neil, call him a crank or a perfectionist. <\/span>The Times <\/span><\/i>said he was a \u201cliterary terminator.\u201d I\u2019d reckon he\u2019s all of that. Nonfiction breathes and buckles beneath his pen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For decades, McDonough has kept out of the public eye, turning up out of the blue now with a 500-page homily about the greatest country singer of his era: Gary Stewart. He wants as many people in the world to know about this story as he can, hence the interview agreements and podcast appearances. I\u2019m thankful for an hour of his time, even if he did show up with a stack of research on <\/span>my writing<\/span><\/i>. But McDonough is a hound vomiting out snappy language and cross-eyed prose, which I admire. Out of respect for his subjects, he studies every detail about them before the tape recorder turns on. As a Lincoln-obsessed kid, he went to Ford\u2019s Theatre and asked questions until the museum replaced his tour guide with someone who could answer them. McDonough sports a fedora and never takes off his sunglasses, even indoors. He says uncomfortable things that most people would fold in front of.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n An ex of McDonough\u2019s called him \u201cMr. Good Ear\u201d before she got sick of him. She thought he\u2019d have made a good, if not great, detective. \u201cI like listening to people,\u201d McDonough agrees. \u201cI could probably write a book about my mail carrier. I find life, in all of its various forms, utterly fascinating. Everybody\u2019s got a story to tell.\u201d He doesn\u2019t write just to gig. His biographies are kamikaze missions, not epiphanic tabloids. Reading a Jimmy McDonough book is like watching someone thrash around a mosh pit with a bomb strapped to their chest. It\u2019s life or death for the guy. He\u2019s a character in the stories he writes too, ribbing Neil Young over the songwriter\u2019s dogshit \u201880s records or getting accused of \u201cpeddling flesh\u201d by Andy Milligan. I\u2019m sure his use of \u201cI\u201d in biographies about <\/span>other people<\/span><\/i> drives the journalism school windbags plum psychotic. But that\u2019s just the place McDonough comes from, which he assures me is a place of love. Most of the folks who\u2019ve read his books would disagree, but McDonough is dead serious. That\u2019s the kind of love he has to give, and it comes by way of affection and admiration for men and women swallowed by tragedy and synthetics. \u201cI\u2019m not kidding around,\u201d he says, his words tightly-wound like a fist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His new book, <\/span>Gary Stewart: I Am from the Honky-Tonks<\/span><\/i>, is probably the last biography he\u2019ll ever write. Someone along the way got the idea that it was McDonough\u2019s \u201cswan song.\u201d He\u2019s an old geezer now, no doubt about it, but he\u2019s got a story or two left to tell. \u201cLike many other fools, I\u2019ve dreamt of writing a novel,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI want to do a collection of all the articles that I\u2019ve had everywhere in one book. There\u2019s still an autobiography to do.\u201d The autobiography is about and written by Jack Nitzsche, who \u201ctrusted\u201d McDonough with his life story. Nitzsche was Phil Spector\u2019s rotten former right-hand-man who worked on the best Stones and Neil Young records, scored <\/span>The Exorcist <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/span><\/i>, and was married to Buffy Sainte-Marie for a time.He also dated Neil\u2019s old flame Carrie Snodgress and was charged with threatening to kill her and pistol-whipping her. McDonough doesn\u2019t pick the easy ones. Unfortunately, the demand for a book about Nitzsche in 2026 simmers at a low hum.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1980 McDonough\u2019s friend Dale Lawrence, who later played in the Gizmos, played him Gary Stewart\u2019s \u201cI Had to Get Drunk Last Night,\u201d but the \u201870s production didn\u2019t hit him all the way, though now he\u2019d probably describe it as something like \u201ca beer-stained telegraph from a honky-tonk foxhole.\u201d McDonough was just a 20-year-old hooligan from Hoboken who claimed to \u201cknow a thing or two\u201d then, and Lawrence took him to the Lone Star Cafe in New York City to see Stewart sing and strum. \u201cI entered that show as a fan,\u201d McDonough writes in <\/span>I Am from the Honky-Tonks<\/span><\/i>, \u201cand left a cult member.\u201d There are, as he puts it, \u201cmoments in life where you discover something and you want to find out everything about the person or thing.\u201d There was something at the heart of Stewart\u2019s music that spoke directly to him, pretentious as that may sound. Stewart tore off a real piece at Lone Star 45 years ago, regaling 13th Street patrons with brief chart hits and country-music fundamentals. Fast-forward a half-decade and McDonough was in Fort Pierce, Florida, knocking on Stewart\u2019s trailer door, looking to write a profile on the reclusive country singer for the <\/span>Village Voice<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Stewart grew up in a Kentucky cornfield, singing at talent shows and in church pews. His dad was disabled from a mining accident. His mother sold coke, cosmetics, and whatever else she could swindle just to make a buck for the family. In Fort Pierce, Stewart\u2019s parents found \u201canother Appalachia already there waiting.\u201d His siblings married drug dealers and escaped the law. Gary himself would live and die on the Treasure Coast, in a blacked-out shanty of manatees, citrus trees, sabal palms, and lagoons, his Hawaiian shirt and ladies\u2019 cowboy boots still on. He married his muse, the raven-haired Mary Lou Taylor, when she was 17. By the time McDonough found him, Stewart was an outlaw hiding out in hillbilly heaven with Mary Lou, snorting speed off album covers. \u201cI have no limits in my mind,\u201d he told McDonough. \u201cI\u2019ve done it all, y\u2019know? I am everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But Stewart didn\u2019t actually care about stardom or accomplishments. He was the only musician that McDonough has written about that just didn\u2019t give a shit about publicity. Sure, it was nice when the money was flowing, but Nashville never <\/span>got <\/span><\/i>Stewart. He wasn\u2019t \u201ctheir guy,\u201d as McDonough approximates it, though he\u2019s a bit more colorful about it in the book, calling the city a \u201cbland, generic, tasteless, pop-rock gumbo seasoned with whatever the popular flavors of the moment are.\u201d Stewart was more bootlegger than Opry kissass. \u201cHe just wanted to make music, and Nashville has a lot of other ideas when you want to make music. And that\u2019s fine, they\u2019ve done it well. But Gary just didn\u2019t fit into that.\u201d It\u2019s not like Stewart made it easy for others to understand him. He was a complete original in a weird timeframe, the type of guy you have to take on his own terms only. After working in Charley Pride\u2019s touring band and opening for Dolly Parton, Stewart went solo and flamed out after a handful of records, including <\/span>Out of Hand <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Your Place or Mine <\/span><\/i>back to back around the bicentennial. His vibrato, emotive like a pedal steel, was a link to the past, McDonough says, but wrapped in a brown-paneled rumpus room. \u201cThere were a lot of factors working for and against him, which I quickly latched onto once I saw him live and then, a little later, was on the prowl to meet him.\u201d <\/span>Out of Hand <\/span><\/i>producer Roy Dea concurred a long time ago. \u201cYou get hooked on Stewart,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s like a damn drug.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n MCDONOUGH HIMSELF WAS FULL <\/b>of fire and brimstone when he muscled his way into Stewart\u2019s double-wide with an obscure Wild Bill Emerson 45 single in-hand in 1986. Stewart had requested it in exchange for an interview, and McDonough\u2019s buddy (and short-time Feelies percussionist) Charlie Beasley tracked it down for him in Pittsburgh at a store with \u201ceight miles of records.\u201d Back in that trailer, a feeling pierced the air. McDonough had never written a profile or interviewed anyone, let alone traveled a thousand miles to talk to a washed-up, skunk-drunk junkie singer. But I reckon Stewart was game for the adventure. Here was this Jersey spitfuck talking a good ol\u2019 Kentucky boy\u2019s ear off about bar songs long covered in dust. They connected over music, especially Gary\u2019s own, and Stewart could tell that McDonough was serious as a heart attack about it, even if he couldn\u2019t play an instrument himself. \u201cThat allowed him to forgive a lot of my bad behavior. It\u2019s a wonder he didn\u2019t clock me sometimes. Jesus Christ, the things I said to this guy\u2026,\u201d McDonough says. \u201cHe only threw a knife at you,\u201d I say. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t connect, you know?\u201d he replies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Stewart, mercurial and high as a kite, had patience with the young journalist, because he was \u201cfar more sophisticated about human behavior\u201d than McDonough at the time. Stewart let McDonough be irritating, because he recognized <\/span>something <\/span><\/i>in that kid\u2019s soul. \u201cI wanted to know about it all. I just loved it all. I loved hearing him talk about Kentucky. I gravitated to all this stuff that he represented, and he was sharing it with me. The generosity was just off the charts.\u201d Drugs, comatose in his bedroom for days on end\u2026 Yeah, that was Gary Stewart. But when the tape machine was rolling, he was present with McDonough, thoughtful. Off the cuff. \u201cJust lay it on me pal,\u201d McDonough told him. Stewart reciprocated with the good, bad, and ugly. Pills, booze, death, sleeping around. Guitars and gigs in-between. A man from the honky-tonks. A man who loved his wife and daughter. A man always on the edge but never going over. A man who slipped through the cracks of country music and is still out of sight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Not even Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts could save <\/span>Cactus and a Rose<\/span><\/i> in 1980. Getting busted for coke around the same time didn\u2019t help either. McDonough felt a responsibility to read Stewart the riot act over his bad albums, just as he would do with Neil Young over <\/span>Trans <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Everybody\u2019s Rockin\u2019<\/span><\/i>. He dogged on <\/span>Brand New <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Battleground<\/span><\/i> so much it made <\/span>Out of Hand <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Your Place or Mine <\/span><\/i>sound like <\/span>Rubber Soul <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Revolver<\/span><\/i>. Did McDonough cross a line? \u201cI look back on that as folly,\u201d he shares. \u201cI wish I had spent more time investigating things I wasn\u2019t aware of until he was already gone.\u201d After the book was done, questions lingered and roiled around in McDonough\u2019s brain. Did he convey how he really felt about Stewart? Did he do the man justice? Was he fair? Those answers are up to the readers. \u201cBut I loved the guy,\u201d McDonough confirms, \u201cand he moved me on a level that no artist did. I\u2019m not saying he\u2019s better or worse than this one or that one but, for me, he just got to me. He\u2019s getting to me now, as I talk to you.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2003, Stewart put a bullet through his own neck less than a month after his beloved Mary Lou died of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. A toxicology report showed that Xanax, oxycodone, and highly disastrous amounts of the sleep medication doxepin were in her system. Stewart\u2019s own autopsy showed similar levels of the latter. Doxepin, when consumed in higher quantities than the recommended therapeutic dose, can increase suicidal ideation. Gary and Mary Lou had a fatal love story: one was always meant to go after the other, with or without drugs. When they both passed away, everyone around them was left devastated. Those things always shake out that way, but these were two very special people who had dark corners. \u201cYou can\u2019t be afraid to go to the dark corners,\u201d McDonough assures me. \u201cGary was a lot about the dark corners. You hear it in the music, it\u2019s unavoidable. I felt like, if I truly respected who he was, I had to present it all. I want you to be driving down the road in an old jalopy with them like I did, and for those feelings to be legit.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And in that, we feel Shannon more than anybody else. She is the best parts of Gary and Mary Lou made into one person, as McDonough puts it. The two of them grew close while he wrote <\/span>I Am from the Honky-Tonks<\/span><\/i>, because she got all of Gary\u2019s living family members and friends in rooms with McDonough and his recorder. What first seemed impossible to McDonough became feasible\u00a0 when Shannon entered the picture. She\u2019s been a steward to her father\u2019s legacy, carrying a torch for him and Mary Lou, doing whatever it takes for Gary to get his due. And McDonough is right there with her, calling her a couple times a week to catch up. Shannon was the only person McDonough worried about reading the book. After finishing the manuscript, she called McDonough and told him, gladly, that it was the \u201cfirst whole book\u201d she\u2019d ever read. \u201cThere are no words I can manufacture to convey my love and respect for this person,\u201d he gestures to me, all this time later, noticeably choked up. \u201cShe ain\u2019t kidding around, and I think Gary would really appreciate that. She\u2019s <\/span>got it<\/span><\/i>. I know we\u2019ll be in each other\u2019s lives for the rest of our time on Earth. When you do what I do, to have a person go\u00a0 out on a limb for you that\u2019s a rare event. And she never asked for anything in return. She knew how her parents felt about me.\u201d On the back of a picture of herself she gave to McDonough, Mary Lou wrote: \u201cWrite a book about me and Gary. Love always, Mary Lou Stewart. You touch me where I live.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Despite Shannon\u2019s best efforts, there\u2019s not much stock in Gary Stewart these days. Roadhouse Band honcho Ryan Davis digs him, Wednesday put a cover of \u201cShe\u2019s Actin\u2019 Single (I\u2019m Drinkin\u2019 Double)\u201d on their <\/span>Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling \u2018em Up<\/span><\/i> album, and that\u2019s really about it. No one I know is wearing themselves out on \u201cDrinkin\u2019 Thing\u201d or \u201cPretend I Never Happened.\u201d But I grew up in the northwesternmost part of Appalachia, so I knew Gary Stewart not by name but by voice, when one of his tapes clattered many of my grandparents\u2019 quietest rooms. In my fantasy, I\u2019ve chalked that up to Appalachian telepathy. I don\u2019t know if Kentucky-born hillbillies fading out in a shit-hot Florida tin can is out of vogue now, but McDonough thinks Stewart \u201cmight be a little too much for people, especially these days.\u201d This isn\u2019t an \u201cold man yelling at cloud\u201d moment, but a sincere survey of a strange honky-tonker\u2019s mystique. Stewart, by my count, has more mysteries about him than one could solve, even McDonough, whose book untangles a couple of those pill-dusted, aluminum-covered webs. Most of the artifacts from his life, collected over time by family friend Tommy Schwartz, are \u201canother rabbit always coming out the hat\u201d\u2014a lost recording, little bits of rope he liked to tie, whatever mystery he left by the side of the highway. 40 years and one book later and McDonough is still finding new things Gary touched or played or sang. \u201cTo me, his greatness is assured.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Stewart is a fuller person to McDonough now. The man wasn\u2019t self-reflective, so McDonough had to find all of Stewart\u2019s angles through recollections by his loved ones. McDonough wanted everybody else to flesh Gary out. <\/span>I Am from the Honky-Tonks<\/span><\/i> is an oral history recited by the Stewart family and souped up by McDonough, who approached Stewart\u2019s life with empathy, kindness, wit, and a mess of footnotes. But that doesn\u2019t mean theis book is a puff piece. Far from it. Following Gary\u2019s daughter Shannon as she rids her parents\u2019 house of OxyContin pills, which she says reeked like Cheetos, does not make for a flattering portrayal. McDonough paints a picture of truth at a time when no one has an honest map of the world. These books of his aren\u2019t done lightly. When he wrote the <\/span>Voice <\/span><\/i>article, he left out a story about Stewart\u2019s mother, guns, and death threats, because Stewart begged him to keep it out. \u201cAnd then after the article came out, and I told him what wasn\u2019t in there, he was pissed that I didn\u2019t put it in,\u201d McDonough laughs. He loses sleep over every detail, ugly or heartwarming. Stewart would have wanted the real thing, not some phony advertisement. \u201cMaybe I accomplished it. Maybe I didn\u2019t,\u201d McDonough says. \u201cYou tell me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Between the time of the <\/span>Village<\/span><\/i> Voice <\/span><\/i>article\u2019s publication and Stewart\u2019s death, McDonough still crossed paths with him here and there. Other projects were calling him instead: <\/span>Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green<\/span><\/i>, and especially <\/span>Shakey<\/span><\/i>, which got delayed, denounced by Neil Young, and even taken to court. Plus, he didn\u2019t want to just replicate the <\/span>Voice <\/span><\/i>profile. Whatever book got written about Stewart was going to be a difficult story for the people he left behind. At some point, McDonough told himself, \u201cI have to do this book, and I\u2019m going to do it now.\u201d What he came up with is not quite the \u201cpoison blow dart aimed at the heart\u201d that his book about Andy Milligan<\/span> was 25<\/span> years ago, but a redneck tableau about a \u201chonky-tonk Dracula\u201d born to sing and suffer. The tale of a man who could eat 20 tabs of acid at once, sing a perfect tune, and sleep for days in his \u201cclaustrophobic tomb\u201d of memorabilia and Western bric-a-brac.<\/span><\/p>\n But McDonough has his regrets about where he and Stewart left things. Nothing sour, just gaps he could never fill in about Gary, or never thought to until after he passed. \u201cYou think there\u2019s always going to be another chance, another time,\u201d McDonough says. \u201cAnd that wasn\u2019t the case here. But I considered him a friend.\u201d He thought those ghosts would disappear once the book was finished. When he was working through the pages, he couldn\u2019t listen to anyone\u2019s music but Gary\u2019s. The story, he admits, feels strangely unfinished even after 500 pages. \u201cIt\u2019s all around me all the time. I wish I could take a break, but I don\u2019t know what it is about this one. It\u2019s really got its claws in me.\u201d Stewart, despite his irks and quirks, was kind to McDonough, bargaining with the young writer over his life story and throwing steak knives at his head. But I wonder if that kindness will be obvious to anyone who reads <\/span>I Am from the Honky-Tonks<\/span><\/i>. I imagine it will be, so long as no one gets lost in all the mayhem and \u201cdime-store violence\u201d that colored Gary Stewart, a man undone by his obsessions and put back together by McDonough\u2019s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.pastemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03104401\/049F7A5D-9448-422D-BB1B-E2B46C3B27B7-scaled.jpeg\")
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