Kinky Friedman, 39 Years Down the Road

Some would call Richard "Kinky" Friedman a renaissance man, while others would see him as a guy who has spread himself a little too thin. I am somewhere between both camps. Kinky Friedman has accomplished a lot in his lengthy career, but I wonder how much more of an impact he may have had if he did not go from one pastime to another with the attention span of a youngster desperately in need of some Ritalin.

Since coming onto the music scene as the front-man for the outrageous group, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, he has been a performer, a novelist, an entrepreneur, an animal rescue activist and a would-be politician.

His political ambitions crested with his 2006 run for the Governorship of his home state, Texas. It was a campaign that started with considerable buzz and a lot of promise, but, as almost always happens with independent candidates for office, Friedman got trounced. More about that later.

My first introduction to the artist and his group came in the mid 1970s, and it was interesting, but viewed through an altered reality, which, perhaps might have been the way the band most preferred to be heard.

I had come back to Ohio for my best friend's wedding (And, I'm glad to say that thirty-five years later, he is still happily married to my best-friend-in-law). The bride's sister and husband-a most gracious couple in their own right-met me at the airport and put me up for the night at their place. The lodging included some of the most entertaining weed I ever smoked (Done with that pastime, by the way.) and the musical stylings of the aforesaid Texas Jewboys.

One song in particular I remembered from that early album of theirs was "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," whose chorus carried the refrain, "Who are we to say the boy's insane?" Hello, he stayed in the University of Texas tower, banging away at any stranger he could draw a bead on until the cops climbed up there and shot him dead, point-blank. If that isn't cookoo for coca puffs, then it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime. Yes, of course I understand the irony, though I may have been a little puzzled by it at the time.

I must say, it was a little surprising that my friend's in-laws had such an album. Back then, the group was not all that popular. Most people saw "country music" as a homogeneous thing and someone like Friedman, who was country, but, obviously did not "fit in," was somewhat of a jar to the system.

"Kinky Friedman was alt-country in 1975," said Miranda Lambert of EW.com, "but no such term existed then, so he was just considered a failed mainstream artist."

I do not for a moment want to leave the impression that this band is only fit to listen to if you are addled. Though I am no longer a stoned wedding guest, ten years into his twenties (ahem), I still enjoy listening to the group's two compilation albums, Old Testaments and New Revelations and From One Good American to Another.

When the band disbanded, which strikes me as a singularly appropriate way for musicians to part company, Friedman started and enjoyed a moderately successful career as a writer, both of detective fiction and children's books. Then he got bitten by the political bug.

His run for the governorship of Texas in 2006 enjoyed an important initial success, He managed to collect the required large number of signatures in the required very short time to do it to get on the ballot. That was the good news. And, though he ran a very colorful campaign for the "De-wussification of Texas," an example of which was this ad, he lost quite decisively.

Now it is four years later. Friedman has talked about another run, but his doing so is extremely unlikely. First, he probably managed to draw a lesson from the 13% of the vote he pulled in the last time. Second, it is almost certainly too late in the process to be idly talking about another run for office, with none of the groundwork yet laid.

Finally, while Friedman's anti-establishment message might seem to resonate with the tea partiers, it actually does not. I do not think those people are anti-Semitic. I'm sure if a Jewish candidate came along saying all the things they wanted to hear, they would certainly give him or her their earnest consideration.

The thing that would keep most of that crowd from supporting Friedman is, not his religion, but his sense of humor. These people-right or wrong-are in no frame of mind to embrace tomfoolery, which would be a major plank in the Friedman platform, just by the very nature of the candidate.

On the other hand, The Kinkster (That's not just me being sophomoric. He frequently refers to himself by that title.) does have some definite plans for the near future that have nothing to do with getting his name inside a voting booth.

Years ago, when I stopped in to a Colonel Sanders to hurt some chicken, the chucklehead behind the counter tried to fob their new "extra crispy" stuff on me. "Do what got you here," I told him. I bring that up, because Kinky Friedman is about to do just that.

In about a month, he will go on what he has billed as The Go West, Young Kinky Tour of 2010. It will be his first such excursion in about twenty years. The tour dates (available on his web page) run from July 26^th through August 7^th. The tour will start in Vancouver, then go to Seattle and Portland before coming to California to play in a number of different locales. If you yourself are contiguous to the left coast, you may want to check it out. It is not the entire original band, but Friedman has managed to recruit two of the members to join the tour.

And, regardless of who is backing him up, Kinky is still Kinky, little changed in his 60s from the artist who entertained us in his 20s.

Sources

EW.com, Miranda Lambert

Ruth Ellen Gruber

kinkyfriedman.com (The artist's website)

YouTube

Own collection