Out of Hand

Stewart had already abandoned Nashville when RCA's producer Roy Dea heard him on a demo tape and approached him about making the album.[3] Dea partnered Stewart in the studio with a number of well-established country musicians, but focused them on the honky tonk Southern rock that Stewart preferred.[3] The resultant album, Out of Hand, was released in 1975, Stewart's RCA debut.[4]

The album launched three charting singles.[1] The titular song, "Out of Hand," reached #4 on the "Country Singles" chart. "Drinkin' Thing" and "She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)," two tracks penned by Grammy Award winning Wayne Carson, reached #10 and #1 respectively. The album itself was a strong seller, climbing to #6 on Billboard's "Country Albums" chart.[1]

In addition to being commercially successfully, the album was, like all of Stewart's early work, critically well received. The year after the album's release, Time said that "all three of his albums have been gushed over by critics".[5] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said "the wild urgency of Stewart's voice reminds me of both Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis, communicating an unrestraint that feels genuinely liberating even when Stewart himself sounds miserable."[2] Rolling Stone gave it high praise as well, stating at the time of its release that "[w]ith practitioners like Stewart around, honky-tonk—and rockabilly—may not be dead yet" and, in a later review, describing it as a "formidable deadpan triumph".[6][7] AllMusic in its review declares it "indispensable for roots music fans of any stripe."[1]

The album is particularly prized within the honky tonk genre, regarded as a classic by a master of the genre.[3][8] A year after its release, Stewart would be dubbed by Time "the current king of honkytonk".[5] AllMusic calls it "the separate but equal third element" — with Back to the Barrooms by Merle Haggard and Honky Tonk Masquerade by Joe Ely — in forming "honky tonk's unholy trinity".[1] Rough Guides' volume on country music declares the album "a brilliantly conceived chunk of country that stands as one of the finest honky-tonk records ever cut in Nashville",[9] while country music critic Bill Malone went broader in calling Out of Hand "one of the greatest honky-tonk country albums ever recorded."[10]

The album, like Stewart's live performances, had crossover appeal. Christgau characterized the album as "the best regular issue country LP I've heard in about five years", which he noted "may just mean that it's barely a country record at all."[2] According to Nashville Scene, Stewart "updated the hillbilly existentialism of Hank Williams for the rock ’n’ roll era."[11] The Encyclopedia of Country Music attributes Stewart's appeal to rock critics, as well as to younger music fans, to his "loud and wild" albums and concerts, but adds that these "made the Nashville establishment wary",[12] with the country music industry at the time of the album's release focused on musicians like Olivia Newton-John and John Denver.[3] In its obituary, CMT staunchly declared him "simultaneously more country than most country artists of his time and more of a staunch, down-and-dirty Southern rocker than almost all of the Southern rockers."[13]