the Memorable Kinky Friedman

The first time I saw Kinky Friedman was at Max’s Kansas City, a seedy, storied music club in New York City. That night was also the first time I ever saw Billy Joel — Kinky’s opening act. Both had just released debut albums, but it was Kinky and the Texas Jewboys that we left excited about and wanting to see again. (And Billy Joel? Meh.)

When I heard the news that Kinky had died June 27 at the age of 79, I was saddened but also stunned. Kinky’s songs had been part of the soundtrack of my life since my mid-20s, and with his death it somehow felt like a part of me had just been lost.

The night at Max’s was late 1973 or early ‘74. I was an editor at Country Music Magazine. Growing up in New York, I hadn’t been a country fan, so my tastes tended toward Kinky’s style of alt-country, with its rock and folk influences and socially conscious lyrics, along with “outlaws” like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, Kinky’s fellow Texan singer-songwriters.

I knew my magazine wouldn’t be interested in a piece on him — he wasn’t big enough or on a major label — but I was intrigued and wanted to interview him. I decided to approach him about a possible freelance story.

We did a brief, chaotic post-show interview surrounded by his roadies and maybe another writer. He was “on” the whole time—that is to say, outrageous and pretty obnoxious. Fortunately, he was game to talk again without the audience.

We met a few days later at his hotel, the Chelsea, the then-cheap but legendary hotel on Manhattan’s west side. That’s where the cool-but-haven’t-made-it-yet types and the cooler-still-and-have stayed (think Dylan, Patti Smith).

So, was Kinky really the male chauvinist pig that his song “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven (and Your Buns in the Bed)” would suggest—and lots of feminists would swear? Or was he the serious, sensitive artist who could write “Sold American,” a poignant classic on stardom and the false hope of the American dream or “Ride ‘em Jewboy,” a soulful ballad that uses a country-themed conceit for memorializing the Holocaust?

He wasn’t saying. Also, he didn’t really much care whom he offended—whether rightly or wrongly. Kinky equally mocked conservatives and liberals, Jews and Christians, Texans, southerners, traditional country music, bigots, feminists and so much more. His anti-establishment ethos was a natural fit for the anti-establishment ‘70s and for my growing political consciousness.

But he did let me call and talk to his proud mom.

Mrs. Friedman readily pointed out that a rabbi had told her that “Ride ‘em Jewboy” was the best pop culture take on the Holocaust he’d ever heard.

Kinky and I talked on the phone periodically, as I continued to tried to pitch a piece on him.

Opinions may differ on the extent of Kinky’s talents as a singer or guitarist, but there can be little doubt that he was a helluva songwriter both lyrically and musically. He was also a memorable performer, and his onstage banter could be hilarious (“Are there any soldiers in the audience tonight? Any MIAs?”).

Besides his in-your-face songs such as “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” or the pointedly clever ones like “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You,” a small sample of Kinky’s lesser-known gems must include “Wild Man of Borneo” (he spent two years there in the Peace Corps); the raucous “Ballad of Charles Whitman,” about the 1966 University of Texas sniper; and “Rapid City, South Dakota,” a pre-Roe take on abortion.

Perhaps the best testament to Kinky’s songwriting talents is a great tribute CD released about 25 years ago featuring cover versions by top artists that included Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Delbert McClinton, Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett: Pearls in the Snow.

Kinky and I met for bagels a few months after our initial meeting, probably soon after he’d signed with ABC Records. Before we sat down, he said “hey, do I owe you any money?” Apparently, he’d gotten so much into the habit of borrowing money that the possibility seemed reasonable. I assured him that he didn’t.

For a long time my husband, Neil, and I enthusiastically tried to introduce Kinky’s songs to friends at every opportunity, not always successfully. We both cringe now when we recall the time we played the “Ballad of Charles Whitman” for a colleague and her boyfriend, who had lived through the terrifying shooting spree and had a friend injured in it. The memory was still too raw for him to appreciate the song.

Kinky’s chosen response to the horror, in typical Kinky fashion, had been to dilute it by owning it.

I think I wrote a short piece on Kinky for Newsday, but I never did do the long piece we both envisioned. Many others later would, of course. Just a couple of years after, Kinky was touring solo with Bob Dylan, as part of the Rolling Thunder Review, and a lot more music fans were meeting the Kinkster, as he called himself.

Sometimes Neil and I find ourselves nodding knowingly to each other as we quote an apt, insightful line—“We come to see what we wanna see; ah, we come to see but we never come to know” (“Wild Man of Borneo”); and sometimes one that seems eerily timely—“Time to resign from the human race, wipe those tears from your lovely face, wave to the man in the old red caboose, before all hell breaks loose.”

Kinky’s memorable music career was relatively short. In the 1980s he turned to writing humorous detective novels, starring himself. I read one of them and enjoyed the in-jokes as much as the actual story. When he later tried his hand at politics, eventually even making a serious run for governor of Texas, I remember sympathizing with how frustrated he felt. His satire had often been taken seriously, and now here he was being serious and the world thought it was a joke.

I liked Kinky and loved his music. I read in one of his obituaries that the incomparable late Democratic governor of Texas, Ann Richards, did, too. She called him “one of Texas’s greatest natural resources.” I fully agree.