The Good Book: The True Story of Y'All

by James Dean Jay Byrd

INSPIRING, HILARIOUS, based on actual events, The Good Book: the true story of Y'ALL is the autobiography of a very out-of-the-ordinary singing duo. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0967254205
• ISBN13: 9780967254203
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Lucky Green Dress Co
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A Double-Barrel Coming of Age True Love Story

The Good Book: The True Story of Y'ALL is a double-barrel coming of age true love story and an epic mythic classic odyssey told in an engagingly down-to-earth home-spun way that practically propels the reader directly into Y'ALL fan-dom. OK, so I don't actually know that it would do that, because I was already a fan, years before I read it. But, I'm sure that if I hadn't been, that it would make me at least curious about their music. It's so filthy rich with warm, luminous descriptions of people and places that one can practically smell the celluloid of the film this is bound to become.If Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, had been made by Jim Henson, in collaboration with resurrected cinematographers from the Wizard of Oz and the crew of Babe, and Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, it would almost approach the sweet magical warmth of the mental movie this book inspires. But this story has few or no villains. It has obstacles and calamities and uncertain situations, but the lens through which this journey and the people encountered along the way are seen makes the reader want to run to the optometrist to order the narrator's prescription; not a rose-colored one, but clear, hopeful and bathed in light with everything in perfect perspective.Between its beautiful covers is a variety pack of every kind of actual love, made from concentrate, naturally flavored and vaccuum-sealed for freshness with no expiration date in sight.The plot? I won't spoil it for you by telling you anything that happens; just read it. Now! Before I have to put you over my checkered apron!

Good Book Book Report by Bob Day

Plot: Two young men, each wondering what they should do when they grow up, set out on separate journeys without knowing where they are going. Jay Byrd is following a cloud he saw in a vision during one of his father's tent revival sermons. Steven keeps leaving home and coming back and leaving again, haunted by the words of his quasi-grandmother that he must go out into the field and be a farmer: till the soil, plant the seeds, water the young plants, talk to them, and then harvest the crop. With enough creative serendipity to make Deepak Chopra proud, the two wind up meeting in the middle of a violent rainstorm. After they meet, they follow the rainbow to the Big Apple Pie, New York City, and become a singing duo known as Y'all.What I liked best: My favorite story was the one about Ruther Jean's closet. It was a turning point in Jay Byrd's life because he realized he needed to wear the Lucky Green Dress every day.What I liked least: It read too fast. I couldn't stop reading, and then it was over, and then I didn't have any more to read. It was good, though.My opinion: I would recommend this book to anyone who needs proof that miracles can happen.

Simple Hillybilly Tastes, Utmost Professionalism

Well, they said they were going to do it. And, with their undying sense of pluck, the simple country boys of Y'ALL have finally told their tale in a hardback book. And what a gorgeous production it is, too. The members of this backwoods cabaret act have always aspired to mixing their simple hillbilly tastes with the utmost professionalism. Anyone who writes about performers in this town is swamped with self-published projects, and it's only natural that Y'ALL gets it right. Even the actual writing is fabulous. They're living in Nashville now, but Y'ALL occasionally returns to remind us that New York City's best gay act of the 1990s was all about a simple love story. James Dean Jay Byrd and Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer wasted too much time here trying to get attention with their touching songs and funny stories. Frankly, they deserved all the acclaim that ended up going to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. They never had a chance here, though. They refused to be decadent, and they didn't know how to be victims. That's what makes The Good Book such an inspirational read. These two lovers come from a country background that isn't nearly as fantastical as it seems. The fictionalized history is still based on the special backwoods indulgence of eccentricity. Jay gets his lucky green dress from his crossdressing uncle, and Steven's grandmother--who crochets hotpants on the side--explains to the struggling musician why he was never meant to take over the family farm. It's really a shame that a book this wonderful was rejected by so many publishing companies. But then, publishing companies rely on victimization to sell books. They wouldn't know what to do with a simple saga about determinedly happy gay men celebrating their family and heritage. Fortunately, there's an untapped audience out there--both straight and gay--who would love getting a gift this simple and sentimental.

I Read the Good Book and Got a Free Bumpersticker!

Okay, I have to admit that when I started reading The Good Book getting the 'I Read the Good Book' bumpersticker was foremost in my thinking. I bought my copy at a release party, so I figured I'd be one of the first to read it, the first to write a report and the first to get a bumpersticker. Thing is, I got so into reading it I forgot all about getting the bumpersticker. (Later I forgot to write the report. So it turns out the only thing I managed with any amount of urgency was the reading -- but that I did quickly.)I think what got me was the characters. Not Jay and Steven so much as the people they encountered: fun, funny people who seemed almost entirely not quite real. The people and the stories in The Good Book are like a good Texas yarn: outlandish and phoney, but also so real that you want to second-guess yourself. Who was Steven's phantasmal lover? An allegory or a real person? Did Jay really go from a tent revivalist child to winning rodeo beauty pageants? Did Jay's lucky green bedazzled dress really catch Steven's eye during a midwest thunderstorm? Why not? Who knows? As anyone who's been to a Y'all concert knows, trying to figure out what's truth and what's stretched is not nearly as engaging as just hearing the stories flow.So, yes, I recommend The Good Book. It may not be quite as famous as that other 'Good Book', but it certainly has more men wearing dresses, and hey, that's something.

Country Boys (One in a Dress)

Y'ALL isn't so much a band as it is a world unto istelf: eight years of making music in a relationship has inspired the pair to metamorphose into an impressive home industry with its own product line (calendars, pamphlets, hand-painted rhinestone T-shirts and six albums with a seventh on the way); vocabulary (with words like "bedazzled" for their rhinestone fashion); original holiday recipes; and most impressive, a good back story, which is lovingly chronicled in a 300-page hardcover autobiography they just published."The Good Book: the true story of Y'ALL," a Product of Mr. Byrd's hyperactive imagination and boundless energy, tells the half-true story of Y'all's wacky preacher relatives, their fated meeting during a thunderstorm and the lucky green dress given to them by an uncle who advised, "You can't never tell what might happen to you if folks have a reason to stare."