Kinky Friedman

Still Kinky After All These Years

Richard Kinky “Big Dick” Friedman is a man of many talents. Over the course of the past 40 years or so, Friedman has been a singer/songwriter and the bandleader of the legendary Texas Jewboys – shocking the world with satirically unhinged numbers like “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” “The Ballad of Charles Whitman” and “Ride ’Em Jew Boy.”

He’s also been a best-selling mystery novelist, magazine columnist, actor, and animal rights activist. He has his own line of cigars and recently launched a new brand of premium tequila. And in 2004, he famously began a campaign to become the Governor of Texas, losing to none other than Rick Perry in 2006.

Friedman is currently on what he calls his “Southern Discomfort” tour, stopping in Atlanta for a solo show at Smith’s Olde Bar this month. Before he hit the road, I caught up with him by phone at his Texas Hill Country spread, where some 60 dogs are sheltered at the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, along with the likes of pigs, donkeys, and a one-eyed horse named Shalom.

The conversation rambled through the past and the present, the sacred and the profane, and it seemed there was almost always a droll or dirty punch line to punctuate his point.

“I am the second next most popular Jew in Texas, next to Jesus, which ain’t bad,” Friedman said at one point.

“This may help me achieve my youthful ambitions,” he said, by way of getting the interview off to a surreal start. “Many years ago my goals were to become fat, famous, financially fit and a faggot by 50. Some of those goals I’ve achieved. Some I’m still working on.”

Here’s more of the wit, wisdom and weirdness of Kinky.

White Bitch: “One of the dogs here, named Sofie, was dropped off by a homeless woman who was living in her car. The lady went to a shelter in San Antonio and Sofie was left here with us. That was a year ago, and she is doing very well now, except she wants to be Miss Texas. She wants to go to twirling camp. She’s a white cocker spaniel and she kind of looks like she should be Laura Bush’s dog.”

Rick Perry: “Things are really strange in Texas now. All the blondes and all the Aggies are telling Rick Perry jokes. His run for president certainly did boost my image. People used to stop me and say, ‘I voted for you, Kinky.”’ Now they say, ‘You should have won, Kinky.’ Of course, Perry has made George W. look like Thomas Fuckin’ Jefferson. Perry has been good for George W. and Kinky Friedman and bad for just about everybody else.”

Being Kinky: “I became the last nail that wasn’t hammered down. It’s pretty uncanny that I’ve lived a life that’s pretty much an imitation of Christ. I have eschewed money. Never cared about it. I’ve always said, ‘Find what you like and let it kill you.’ I like playing the slots in Vegas. I’m a gambling addict, which I’m sure is a transfer addiction from the Peruvian marching powder. I like animals. And I like pissing away money on them. So I’m not a good Jewish business man. But now it looks like I’m going to have money whether I like it or not.”

Spiritual Tequila: “The new Kinky Friedman Man in Black Tequila, which you will love, is some great Mexican mouthwash from Jalisco. It salutes Zorro, Palladin and Johnny Cash. What do these three guys have in common, other than wearing black? These guys all had a moral clarity and spiritual integrity that’s absent in our country today, particularly in Washington and Nashville and Hollywood.”

Obama’s Behind: “We’ve got a whole bunch of politicians, with Obama as the leader, who are desperately and perpetually behind the curve. The inspirational quotient in leadership has become more important than anything, and Obama rates very low. He may be the smartest guy in the room but he certainly can’t inspire anybody. If Obama gave a fireside chat, the fire would go out.”

See A Geezer: “My songs are older than most of the people in the audience. But the show’s not nostalgia, like Jimmy Buffet or the Rolling Stones. There is something to people like Levon Helm or Willie Nelson or Merle Haggard or Bob Dylan or Kris Kristofferson. You’ve got to see a geezer like that if you want be inspired these days.”

Why Nashville Sucks: “A lot of good music came out of Nashville at one time. Now you have these corporate publishing whorehouses. You know, three people in a room all down the hallway, having songwriter appointments. These obviously work or they wouldn’t do it. It has to be a financial pleasure for Tim McGraw’s publisher or somebody like that. But in 20 years, with this corporate whorehouse method, nobody has written ‘Hello Walls’ or ‘King of the Road’ or ‘Me and Bobby McGee.’”

Willie’s Words: “Willie says, ‘If you ain’t crazy, there’s something wrong with you.’ I consider myself crazy. Willie and I are working on a book together, called The Trouble Maker. I asked Willie what happened to Nashville. Willie thinks that we’ve changed – the culture has changed. We wouldn’t know a ‘Hello Walls’ if somebody wrote it today.”

God Knows: “What I think is that Willie Nelson and Roger Miller and Kris Kristofferson weren’t living at their parents homes playing with their iPads. I’m not putting those people down, because that’s frustrating, too. But the times were harder for those guys. I may have been the only country singer who was a college graduate from an upper middle class Jewish home. That was a big handicap. If I’d been born on a dirt farm in Arkansas, like Glen Campbell, God knows what I could have done.”

To Be Misunderstood: “Townes Van Zandt said, ‘To live is to fly.’ I say, ‘To live is to be misunderstood.’ If you’re not misunderstood, you ain’t doing it right. That’s the greatest people. That’s where the crowd picks Barabbas. The crowd says, ‘Pick Barabbas and kill Jesus!’ Since then, every fucking time, the crowd tries to kill Jesus.”

Billy Joe: “Billy Joe Shaver probably has more of an attachment to Jesus than I do. As he says, ‘If you don’t love Jesus, go to hell.’ He gave me that one when he was my spiritual advisor during the campaign. And he also gave me, ‘May the God of your choice bless you.’ That’s a good one.”

Billy Bob: “We are just wrapping up this book together. It’s going to be an eye-opener. It’s called The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts. It’s pretty much his take on life – very honest and angry at times. He says in the book that he’s unhappy, worried and lonely all of the time. He’s also done this movie called Jayne Mansfield’s Car that was filmed around Atlanta. It’s very irreverent and it’s brilliant. As Robert Duvall says, ‘You don’t want to take your preacher to this one.’”

The Internet: “Neither Billy Bob nor I have email. I don’t have the Internet. I describe the dark side of the Internet as a 57-year-old pedophile who’s in New Jersey pretending that he’s 27-year-old surfer in San Diego, and he gets in touch with a 15-year-old girl in Montana, who’s really a middle-aged vice cop in Miami. That’s the Internet.”

Heroes and Scrotums: “Of course, for people who still read, we will have my new book, Heroes of a Texas Childhood, at the show. That’s my latest. It’s 23 heroes of mine from when I was a kid. After the show, I will sign anything but bad legislation. I once signed a man’s scrotum in Scotland. And I signed a man’s penis in Sydney. Not just any man, mind you. This was Fred Negro, the famous underground artist and musician.”