Kinky Friedman, the firebrand literary figure, musician, author and one-time political candidate with a penchant for self-mythologizing and a deep lover of animals whose music and writings were beloved by everyone from Bob Dylan to Bill Clinton, died Thursday at the age of 79.
Born Nov. 1, 1944, Freedman first came to the music world’s attention in the early to mid-1970s with his band, Kinky Freedman and the Texas Jewboys, featuring absurdist, folksy, cowboy-inspired satire with shocking titles like “Put the Biscuits in the Oven, the Bun in Bed” and “The Ballad of Charles Whitman.”
Freedman signed with Vanguard Records in the early ’70s after being introduced to the label by Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, whom he’d met in California through George Frain (aka Commander Cody). Vanguard released Freedman’s first album, Sold American, in 1973, which featured the songs “Ride ’em Jewboy” and “High on Jesus.”
The eccentric Friedman opened for Benson’s Western Swing Band in Berkeley that year, standing onstage at that hotbed of feminism, wearing red, white and blue cowboy chaps, smoking a cigar, holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a guitar in the other, and performing “Put the Biscuits in the Oven and the Bread in Bed.”
Benson recalls that women in the audience were outraged, some of whom stormed the stage and called the performers pigs. The show was typical of the provocation that characterized Friedman’s musical career.
“That was his life,” Benson said, “but he was a virtuoso. His songs were great. He was a great writer and his books were fascinating.”
After becoming an influential figure in Austin’s Cosmic Cowboy scene of the 1970s and touring with Bob Dylan in the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976, Friedman integrated himself into the Manhattan music scene of the 1980s, playing at the Texas-themed Lone Star Café, where the Kinky world expanded and included creative misfits like High Times’ Larry “Ratso” Sloman.
“Kinky just fit in there, but the reality is he was a Texas Hill Country kid,” Benson said.
Friedman’s extreme performance life was tempered by kindness: He was committed to the plight of animals, founding Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in the Hill Country and caring for thousands of stray, abused and elderly animals.
Freedman’s lyrics and performances have audiences on their knees, jaws dropping, fists pumping and eyes rolling. After a decade in the music industry, he turned to novelism, penning hard-boiled Raymond Chandler-style crime novels, usually starring an eponymous character.
In 2001, Texas Monthly editor-in-chief Evan Smith asked Friedman to write a column for the magazine’s back cover titled “The Final Roundup.”
“A magazine cover is traditionally a front door, a gateway,” Smith told the American-Statesman. “I wanted readers to have a second door into the magazine. He was someone who flew along his own axis. He was an incredibly complex character; extremely talented and unapologetically inept. All great media push boundaries at the right time and in the right way, and I thought he would push boundaries and really give us an opportunity to expand our readership to his, or at least to reach people who had never read the magazine before.”
“Yes, that happened,” Smith continued. “I think he upset some people. His sense of humor wasn’t something that everyone had. It was totally mine. Overall, I loved what he did.”
Friedman has written 18 detective novels as well as a book packed with true stories from his life, including the 2017 memoir “Everything’s Bigger in Texas,” in which he recounted partying with the likes of Jack Nicholson and John Belushi.
“He was a master of self-mythologizing. There was a degree of bullshit in everything he said, and you had to take that into account every time you interacted with him. He was an original,” Smith said of the man who appeared on the cover of Texas Monthly three times, twice cross-dressed.
Friedman’s performance-heavy intensity was sometimes tempered with surprising tenderness, such as in his tear-jerking 2001 column “The Navigator,” about his late father, a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal during World War II.
Friedman’s column was put on hold after the musician, author and provocateur ran as an independent for Texas governor in 2006, running on the slogan “Why not?”
He came in fourth with 12.45% of the vote in a crowded race that included Republican incumbent winner Rick Perry.
His plan was to garner support from Texas voters disillusioned with the two major parties, but Friedman was realistic about his chances of winning in the state.
“Part of the appeal of my fantasy campaign is that it may be seen by some as a joke and by others as a creed,” he wrote. “To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, my opponent has experience, and that’s why I’m running.”
This is a developing story, check back later for more.
Additional reporting by John Moritz.
