Album Review: Mike and the Moonpies- Touch of You: The Lost Songs of Gary Stewart

It didn’t seem extraordinary at the time, but Saturday, October 19, 2019, was one of the best days of my life.  While my life partner attended to work in Austin, Texas, I hit a day show at Independence Brewing.  Mariachi Las Coronelas was particularly charming.  I continued honky-tonking at a matinee show by the Cornell Hurd Band at the Continental Club.  My subsequent peregrinations up and down Congress Avenue included an avid discussion about the exorbitant pricing in a rare book shop and refreshments with new friends at Güero's Taco Bar.

My wife joined me at a Rodney Crowell concert when the sun went down.  We danced in the aisles to hits including “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried”.  Inspired by liquid courage, we dared to spend the remainder of the evening doing the Texas two step on the crowded dance floor of the Broken Spoke.

“Bottom of the Pile,” the opening song of Mike and the Moonpies’ Touch of You: The Lost Songs of Gary Stewart, revived the memory of that glorious day.  The tribute to a bar “where the air is stale from the smell of beer” and patrons entertain themselves by “dancing on a hardwood floor” is one of ten previously unreleased songs written by the late Gary Stewart.  The Texas band led by Mike Harmeier sounds uncannily like vintage Stewart.

The unapologetically grim “Drinkin’ Thing” and “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” were among the Stewart classics in heavy rotation in my childhood home.  The cautionary cheating and drinking songs scared me then.  They terrify me now.  The material on Touch of You: The Lost Songs of Gary Stewart isn’t top-shelf Stewart, but listening to one of my favorite country bands rendering second-rate but still memorable Stewart compositions significantly increases my odds of having a day to remember.


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I last attended a performance of live music on March 7, a devastating setback for a guy who shoots for catching 365 sets each year.  I partly offset the deprivation by contributing to a The Kansas City Star feature about the state of the locally based live music industry.

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After I take in a stream of Handel’s “Rodelinda” tonight, I’ll have seen 85 operas in 84 days.  I’d pledge to stop at 100, but I began to really get into the form around #65.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)