"Stewart may portray a 'flat, natural born good timin’ man,' but he also remembers 'Rachel,' whose body and spirit are starving for someone to love her, not use her."
By Kenneth Pobo
Gary Stewart, perhaps the best honky tonker in country-music history, died in 2003. He didn’t always get the big chart records. Only three reached the country Top 10, including his chart topper with the immortal title, “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles).”
Chart positions don’t tell the real story. Stewart was an original. Few singers in any genre could sound as desperate as he could, his voice slipping from quaver to growl in a few notes. He has a macho-outlaw stride in songs like “Little Junior,” but it fades away in the heartache of songs like “Quits” and “A Cactus and a Rose.”
It is aggravating that so few country albums have come out on CD. Even the most popular pre-Garth singers are often poorly represented on disc. I wonder if the corporations that have the rights to this music even know what they own. Fortunately, much of Gary Stewart’s work is available on CD, though not all of it—for instance his brief stint on Red Ash Records when he put out two cookin’ singles in 1984. Try trolling eBay or GEMM, or find a local record convention and keep your eyes open.
Not much of a honky tonker, I prefer a chilled martini to beer and would rather be in the garden than in a juke joint. Yet as a gay man, I'm delighted by Stewart’s portraits of rednecks, roadhouses, and roily romances. He often evokes compassion for those who feel their only outlet is getting smashed and hearing loud music. He may portray a “flat, natural born good timin’ man,” but he also remembers “Rachel” (on his fantastic 1977 Your Place or Mine album) whose body and spirit are starving for someone to love her, not use her.
Drinking is the one thread that holds his music together. It’s easy to get tipsy just listening to Stewart’s many songs pouring booze into the listener’s glass. Honky tonk has taken some heat for its often alcohol-drenched lyrics, the rap being that the songs glamorize drinking. In Stewart’s case, though, boozing doesn’t seem at all glamorous. It is more the last option when one feels utterly trapped, when solutions don’t exist.
Tang Dynasty poet Li Po often portrays a happy sot, the alcohol freeing him from what is bitter and unsettling in daily life. He would never have written a poem like Stewart’s “She’s Got A Drinking Problem,” in which the woman’s problem is himself. His alcoholism traps his woman as it traps him. In “I Get Drunk,” Stewart pokes fun at his fallin’-down-drunk males. The alcohol makes them feel empowered when they’re not. The song’s protagonist thinks he can sing, but he can’t.
One of Stewart’s best songs, “Single Again,” tells the story of a man whose marriage has gone kaput. He’s got divorce lawyers on his back and has returned to the bars which “ain’t changed much/just a new face or two/when you’re out of touch.” He goes from bar to bar. Married life may have been a trial but single life offers nothing more—or, as Stewart sings in another song, life becomes “An Empty Glass.”
He had a long marriage which evidently was happy, yet he highlights the pain of divorce and separation in many songs—most notably in “Ten Years Of This,” where the married couple have been together a decade but it adds up to “a million nights alone.” The man wonders if his wife’s discontent stems from getting married too young, resenting him for the opportunities she lost by marrying him when she did. He asks, “Whose mistake is it? What do we blame it on?”
In “Quits,” written by Danny “Good Time Charley’s Got The Blues” O'Keefe, the man claims that “It isn’t marriage anymore,” and it doesn’t matter if one calls it “divorce,” “independence,” or “separation,” the relationship is cooked. The joy-of-the-juke-joint persona sounds broken, as if he could call it quits not just to the marriage but to life itself.
In Stewart’s songs, lovers are often poison for each other, defeated not just by drinking and carousing, but by an inability to get outside of themselves enough to be vulnerable to another person. He sings of a “stone wall around your heart,” and that he “dared not drink backslider’s wine” but will most likely backslide again and again. Jealousy, too, only strengthens the poison as in “Williamson County,” where the man and woman are having a charming picnic by the river, but then she speaks another man’s name and “now the same hands that catered to her/are clutching at her throat.” He puts her under the river, but, in a scene reminiscent of Poe, the dead woman vows to haunt him. Love becomes death in a few seconds.
In “I Got A Bad Attitude,” Stewart growls, “Honey, I am a dangerous man.” That persona carries a razor in his pocket and has steel-toed shoes. He doesn’t “love nobody,” and, naturally, he’s been “drinkin’ all night.” “Attitude” never appeared on an album, only on a 45. Flip it over and Stewart is in a much mellower mood, claiming that “Life’s a Game” and if you lose, try again. It’s hard to want to try again if you know your opponent has a razor in his pocket.
Legend suggests that Li Po, drunk on a boat, died trying to catch the moon’s reflection on the water. Stewart ended his own life by suicide three weeks after his wife died of pneumonia. Hearing Stewart’s version of “You’re The Reason I’m Living” is poignant in the light of his horrible grief over Mary Lou’s death. His son, Gary Junior, had committed suicide in the 1980s.
One of his most cheerful songs, “Easy People,” celebrates redneck life, downin’ some brews, enjoying the hot women. The easy people seem to have it made. But don’t go to the river on a picnic with them. Easy becomes desperate pretty quick.
Kenneth Pobo teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Pennsylvania. He is also a poet and, starting next month, will be host of the “Obscure Oldies” radio program at WDNR.com each Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. EDT.
Gary Stewart, perhaps the best honky tonker in country-music history, died in 2003. He didn’t always get the big chart records. Only three reached the country Top 10, including his chart topper with the immortal title, “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles).”
Chart positions don’t tell the real story. Stewart was an original. Few singers in any genre could sound as desperate as he could, his voice slipping from quaver to growl in a few notes. He has a macho-outlaw stride in songs like “Little Junior,” but it fades away in the heartache of songs like “Quits” and “A Cactus and a Rose.”
It is aggravating that so few country albums have come out on CD. Even the most popular pre-Garth singers are often poorly represented on disc. I wonder if the corporations that have the rights to this music even know what they own. Fortunately, much of Gary Stewart’s work is available on CD, though not all of it—for instance his brief stint on Red Ash Records when he put out two cookin’ singles in 1984. Try trolling eBay or GEMM, or find a local record convention and keep your eyes open.
Not much of a honky tonker, I prefer a chilled martini to beer and would rather be in the garden than in a juke joint. Yet as a gay man, I'm delighted by Stewart’s portraits of rednecks, roadhouses, and roily romances. He often evokes compassion for those who feel their only outlet is getting smashed and hearing loud music. He may portray a “flat, natural born good timin’ man,” but he also remembers “Rachel” (on his fantastic 1977 Your Place or Mine album) whose body and spirit are starving for someone to love her, not use her.
Drinking is the one thread that holds his music together. It’s easy to get tipsy just listening to Stewart’s many songs pouring booze into the listener’s glass. Honky tonk has taken some heat for its often alcohol-drenched lyrics, the rap being that the songs glamorize drinking. In Stewart’s case, though, boozing doesn’t seem at all glamorous. It is more the last option when one feels utterly trapped, when solutions don’t exist.
Tang Dynasty poet Li Po often portrays a happy sot, the alcohol freeing him from what is bitter and unsettling in daily life. He would never have written a poem like Stewart’s “She’s Got A Drinking Problem,” in which the woman’s problem is himself. His alcoholism traps his woman as it traps him. In “I Get Drunk,” Stewart pokes fun at his fallin’-down-drunk males. The alcohol makes them feel empowered when they’re not. The song’s protagonist thinks he can sing, but he can’t.
One of Stewart’s best songs, “Single Again,” tells the story of a man whose marriage has gone kaput. He’s got divorce lawyers on his back and has returned to the bars which “ain’t changed much/just a new face or two/when you’re out of touch.” He goes from bar to bar. Married life may have been a trial but single life offers nothing more—or, as Stewart sings in another song, life becomes “An Empty Glass.”
He had a long marriage which evidently was happy, yet he highlights the pain of divorce and separation in many songs—most notably in “Ten Years Of This,” where the married couple have been together a decade but it adds up to “a million nights alone.” The man wonders if his wife’s discontent stems from getting married too young, resenting him for the opportunities she lost by marrying him when she did. He asks, “Whose mistake is it? What do we blame it on?”
In “Quits,” written by Danny “Good Time Charley’s Got The Blues” O'Keefe, the man claims that “It isn’t marriage anymore,” and it doesn’t matter if one calls it “divorce,” “independence,” or “separation,” the relationship is cooked. The joy-of-the-juke-joint persona sounds broken, as if he could call it quits not just to the marriage but to life itself.
In Stewart’s songs, lovers are often poison for each other, defeated not just by drinking and carousing, but by an inability to get outside of themselves enough to be vulnerable to another person. He sings of a “stone wall around your heart,” and that he “dared not drink backslider’s wine” but will most likely backslide again and again. Jealousy, too, only strengthens the poison as in “Williamson County,” where the man and woman are having a charming picnic by the river, but then she speaks another man’s name and “now the same hands that catered to her/are clutching at her throat.” He puts her under the river, but, in a scene reminiscent of Poe, the dead woman vows to haunt him. Love becomes death in a few seconds.
In “I Got A Bad Attitude,” Stewart growls, “Honey, I am a dangerous man.” That persona carries a razor in his pocket and has steel-toed shoes. He doesn’t “love nobody,” and, naturally, he’s been “drinkin’ all night.” “Attitude” never appeared on an album, only on a 45. Flip it over and Stewart is in a much mellower mood, claiming that “Life’s a Game” and if you lose, try again. It’s hard to want to try again if you know your opponent has a razor in his pocket.
Legend suggests that Li Po, drunk on a boat, died trying to catch the moon’s reflection on the water. Stewart ended his own life by suicide three weeks after his wife died of pneumonia. Hearing Stewart’s version of “You’re The Reason I’m Living” is poignant in the light of his horrible grief over Mary Lou’s death. His son, Gary Junior, had committed suicide in the 1980s.
One of his most cheerful songs, “Easy People,” celebrates redneck life, downin’ some brews, enjoying the hot women. The easy people seem to have it made. But don’t go to the river on a picnic with them. Easy becomes desperate pretty quick.
Kenneth Pobo teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Pennsylvania. He is also a poet and, starting next month, will be host of the “Obscure Oldies” radio program at WDNR.com each Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. EDT.
