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.)

August Recap

Top Five Performances
1. Lauryn Hill- Kauffman Stadium
My review.
2. Jupiter & Okwess- 1900 Building
My Instagram clip.
3. Mary J. Blige- Starlight Theatre
My review.
4. Brian Scarborough Quintet- RecordBar
My review.
5. Zakk Sabbath- Midland theater
My Instagram clip.

Top Five Albums
1. Raphael Saadiq- Jimmy Lee
Soul exorcism.
2. P.P. Arnold- The New Adventures of…
My review.
3. Shannon Lay- August
My review.
4. Brockhampton- Ginger
Pray right.
5. Merlin- The Mortal
Dark magic.

Top Five Songs
1. Mike and the Moonpies- “Cheap Silver”
That high and lonesome sound.
2. Rapsody featuring D’Angelo and GZA- “Ibtihaj”
Trying to catch a wave.
3. Pusha T featuring Kash Doll- “Sociopath”
Charcuteries.
4. Channel Tres- “Raw Power”
As in Iggy.
5. PJ Morton featuring Jazmine Sullivan- “Built For Love”
An homage to Donny and Roberta.

I conducted the same exercise in July, June, May, April, March, February and January.

(Original image of Jupiter & Okwess by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Mike and the Moonpies- Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold

I’ve long thought of Mike and the Moonpies as a likeable Texas honky tonk band that’s coated in the same red dirt as dozens of interchangeable ensembles.  The group’s new album Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold elevates Mike and Moonpies from the slag heap to the showroom. 

As someone who was raised on countrypolitan albums by the likes of Charlie Rich, the woozy songs of three-named Texas outlaws like Jerry Jeff Walker and cheesy country radio hits by cornballs including Conway Twitty, listening to Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold feels like going home.

The accents provided by the London Symphony Orchestra are likely to elicit comparisons to the occasionally ornate work of Sturgill Simpson, but the 31-minute Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold moves me in ways that Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music never did.

While they engage in country clichés, songs like “If You Want a Fool Around” and “You Look Good in Neon” transcend the genre.  And the opening lines of the title track- “I think I'll buy us all a round/We can toast the cheapest silver/That high and lonesome sound/The nights we don't remember” buckle my bum knee.


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My audio feature about the Kansas City blues artist Heather Newman aired on KCUR this morning.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)