Best of the Hightone Years

Album Review

If you're thinking this might include "She Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)" or tracks from the wonderful Your Place or Mine, you're going to be disappointed. This is the post-rehab, dried-out Gary Stewart, somewhat mellower, with the vibrato in his voice more apparent than ever. Taken from the three albums he recorded for Hightone between 1988 and 1993, there are still some good songs on here — "Brand New Whiskey" approaches the real honky tonk rowdiness of his best work — but there are also some stinkers; except for the vocals, "An Empty Glass" could almost have come off an Eagles album, something that could never have been said about Stewart's earlier work; in fact, it stands as a condemnation, and "Nothin' Cheap About a Cheap Affair" never rises about cheap country cliché. But when Stewart doesn't sound like he's simply going through his paces, as on "Delia," which might have all the accouterments of old country (chiming steel, etc.), but is performed with a little passion, and "Let's Go Jukin," co-written with Dickie Betts, which is pure rock & roll (all that's missing is the Chuck Berry guitar riff) in a honky tonk disguise, and proof that at the times old Gary Stewart does still shine through, even if, on the evidence of this set, he's really just a shadow of his former self.