DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Our rock critic, Ken Tucker, has something new and something old for us. There's the new album from one of country music's biggest stars, Kacey Musgraves. Ken thinks the best songs on her new album, "Middle Of Nowhere," have the dramatic detail of good fiction. He's also here to praise a recently published book, Jimmy McDonough's biography of the 1970s-era singer Gary Stewart, called "I Am From The Honky-Tonks." It's a lengthy portrait of a gifted but tragic performer - something old, something new. Let's start with Kacey Musgraves.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MIDDLE OF NOWHERE")
KACEY MUSGRAVES: (Singing) Out there on the edge of the world, way past common sense. Past the Dairy Queen, the county line, where there ain't any fences. Going to find my own peace, I want to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I think maybe...
KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: The conventional framing of Kacey Musgraves's recent career is that she went pop for a few years on a couple of albums and now is returning to country music with "Middle Of Nowhere." But the Texas twang in her yearning, searching voice has always remained rooted in country's deep melancholy. One of the best moments on this album occurs on the song "Back On The Wagon," whose lyric is upbeat and optimistic. The guy she loves has gotten sober and responsible. The two of them are planning a new cloudless future. But Musgrave's vocal carries all the feelings the lyric suppresses. You can hear the worry and doubt in her voice. She wants to believe he's changed, but she can't help but wonder, has he really? Can I go through all that pain again? The tension between voice and words creates an entire, vivid short story in under four minutes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BACK ON THE WAGON")
MUSGRAVES: (Singing) He was out of his mind on the Fourth of July, and I knew that I should let him go. And he spent all our money, and he thought it was funny, but he came home with nothing to show. Oh, my God, it hurt me that time at the derby, when I found him passed out on the floor. But I saw him last night. He said he's found the light. He's different than he was before. He's back on the wagon. He's mine, you can't...
TUCKER: "Middle Of Nowhere" is an uneven album, sometimes succumbing to the kind of false hope that "Back On The Wagon" is too honest to claim. Profound sadness and extravagant schmaltz characterize the music of Gary Stewart - the country cult figure who died in 2003. Stewart's voice was an emotional rumble that rose into a keening high tenor in moments of exquisite pain, as on the title song of his extraordinary 1975 album, "Out Of Hand."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OUT OF HAND")
GARY STEWART: (Singing) I never intended to even know your name. Except for the woman waiting at home, they've all been the same. I've always been true, except for you. Not even a one-night stand. And I never intended for it to get so out of hand. Out of hand, out of hand. I'm a hard-living kind of a man. I need more to keep me going than this gold wedding band. You're my kind...
TUCKER: Gary Stewart's life was out of hand, to put it mildly. The new biography by Jimmy McDonough called "I Am From The Honky-Tonks" spends more than 500 pages chronicling Stewart's wild life and times. Born poor into a large Kentucky family in 1944, Stewart idolized Hank Williams, had quit school and was playing in bands by his mid-teens. Pretty soon, his distinctive voice and the cleverly precise details in his songwriting caught the attention of Nashville stars like Mel Tillis who provided an entree into the industry.
Early on in the book, McDonough sets up what would be the detail that sets Gary Stewart's life apart from so many performers. Time and again, writes McDonough, Gary would stress to me he never went looking for stardom, never went knocking on doors, never begged anyone to listen to his demos. McDonough's book then chronicles the way others pushed Stewart to record the wonderfully agonized balllads he wrote and insisted that he submit to the Nashville star-making machinery. For a short while, it worked.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHE'S ACTIN' SINGLE (I'M DRINKIN' DOUBLES)")
STEWART: (Singing) I've seen men look at her before, and they think I don't see. I'd like to think it makes me proud, but I'm only fooling me. I know she'll be looking back the minute I'm not there. While she pours herself on some stranger, I pour myself a drink somewhere. She's acting single, I'm drinking doubles. I hide my pain, I drown my troubles. My heart is breaking like the tiny...
TUCKER: That's "She's Actin' Single, (I'm Drinking Doubles)," Stewart's only No. 1 hit. Stewart liked to play music, but the smaller the crowd, he thought, the better he'd be able to connect to an audience. As the years went by, his ambivalence toward celebrity became a dark resentment. He shunned interviews, lost record contracts. Lots of drugs were consumed to numb it all. Stewart died by suicide at age 59. Here's Bob Dylan's favorite Gary Stewart song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TEN YEARS OF THIS")
STEWART: (Singing) You'd never know by looking, we were ever more than strangers. But we're celebrating 10 years of wedded bliss. She made the rounds as usual while I sit here stoned as usual. Lord, I can't believe we survived 10 years of this, 10 years together, a million nights alone. Whose mistake is it? What do we blame it on? If someone else...
TUCKER: A half-century in the making, "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. I think a history-minded artist like Kacey Musgraves would really like this book. I hope she and you read it.
DAVIES: Ken Tucker reviewed new music by Kacey Musgraves and a biography of Gary Stewart called "I Am From The Honky-Tonks." On tomorrow's show, we speak with actor Josh O'Connor. He won an Emmy playing a young Prince Charles in the crown. Now he's the lead in Steven Spielberg's new film "Disclosure Day." We'll talk about his approach in this new blockbuster and Spielberg's decadeslong exploration of the idea that aliens are among us. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR PLACE OR MINE")
TUCKER: (Singing) The band just stopped playing. They're sweeping the floor.
DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Sevy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR PLACE OR MINE")
STEWART: (Singing) Your place or mine, I really don't care. It doesn't matter as long as we're somewhere. Now we both know I'll stay here right up till closing time. Where are we going? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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