Larry Schwartz
NOT just anyone gets an invitation to the White House. Kinky Friedman, however, has been summoned twice.
The country singer-turned-bestselling crime writer – now touring Australia in his musical guise – spent a day there with the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, a few years back. Late last year he was called again by his old pal George W. Bush.
Before accepting the invitation, Friedman dictated his terms. “I told him I had four dogs, four women and four editors, and could I sleep with the four dogs and the four women in the Lincoln Bedroom,” he says. “It’s really ridiculous, a President taking the time to do this shit. But he wrote
[to] me back from Camp David that he didn’t know about the four women, but the four dogs, maybe.”
In his speech as much as in his writing, Friedman likes to spice fact with fiction. Picking the dividing line can be tricky.
As we speak, Friedman pauses to light up a cigar. Is it a Jamaican A, I wonder? After all, that’s the brand once favoured by the wisecracking country singer-turned-amateur detective Kinky Friedman, the protagonist of his novels; a cigar that, the Friedman character claims, “has more breeding than some people I know”.
The real Kinky Friedman says his “full Christian name” is Richard Kinky Big Dick Friedman. He calls himself The Kinkster (the nickname is derived from a college friend’s description of his tangled hair).
Whatever, he first came to prominence in the ’70s as a country performer with chutzpah. The New York Timescalled him “the world’s funniest, bawdiest and most politically incorrect country singer turned writer”. He delights in having been “the first full-blooded Jew” to grace the stage of
Nashville’s shrine of puritanical country, the Grand Ole Opry.
Yet he hasn’t written a song in 15 years. Recently, he says, he had to decide whether to come up with new material or a new audience, and chose the latter.
Though he insists there are more Jews in Texas than one might imagine, he has made a career of portraying himself as some exotic blend of opposites. “I’ve always said the only thing Jews and cowboys have in common is we both like to wear our hats indoors,” Friedman says. “We attach
a certain amount of importance to this. I call myself the oldest living Jew in Texas who doesn’t own any real estate, which is true.
“Texans are like Israelis,” the self-described “renaissance Texan” continues. “They’re very John Wayne spirit. That’s a good thing to have in a country that’s becoming increasingly homogenised and exporting this homogenisation to the world.”
Jewishness is a major part of the Friedman schtick. While many other American-Jewish entertainers have adoped Anglicised names, Kinky brazenly called his band The Texas Jewboys. With titles including Asshole from El Passo, Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns In the Bed, They
Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore and Ride ‘Em Jewboy, his co-religionists were among those keen to take offence.
“You know, in New York we got bomb threats from the Jewish defence league,” he says. “Of course, today I do think people know the material is coming from a good place.”
Not that it was all just a joke. Willie Nelson covered Ride ‘Em Jewboy on a late-’90s Friedman tribute album, Pearls In The Snow, that renewed interest in his music (Nelson shared disc space with the likes of Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark and Dwight Yoakam). The song has a poignant
lyric about a lone rider with a yellow star of the kind the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.
“Not only is it not a joke,” Friedman says, “but of the Jewish performers – Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen – to my knowledge none of them have done a western version of the Holocaust or anything like that. They all like it. Bob Dylan sings Ride ‘Em Jewboy in the
shower and he asks me to sing it from time to time. But none of these people have written anything like that or tried to.”
Despite his achievements as a lyricist, Friedman decided he’d rather be a novelist. The reason? He wanted “a lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence”. Now, though, he’s forced to concede that he hadn’t reckoned on the demands of book promotion.
He has “churned out – pause – carefully crafted” 14 crime novels so far, populated with friends “all really happy to pass into the casino of fiction”. His books have been translated into 16 languages, including German, Hebrew and Japanese.
Among his admirers are Joseph Heller, the celebrated author of Catch 22, whose praise is emblazoned on the cover of an early book: “Kinky, Mozart, Shakespeare – with what could I equal them?” His good friend Willie Nelson calls him “the Mother Teresa of literature”. Whatever that means.
He has a new novel, Back At The Ranch, out this year. It is, he says, “about a three-legged cat called Lucky who disappears from the (animal) rescue ranch at the same time as an autistic child disappears from New York City”. Friedman runs (in real life) a refuge for animals.
He hopes to release the new book simultaneously with another tome, Kinky Friedman’s Guide To Texas Etiquette: Or How To Get To Heaven Or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth. To pull that coup off, he says, would be “a sure sign of an empty life”.
Not for want of trying, though. When not touring, Friedman is holed up on a ranch called Utopia outside the Texas town of Kerrville. In 1986, he stood, unsuccessfully, for public office.
Though he didn’t make it to the seat of power (he was standing for Justic of the Peace), some of his friends have. George W., for instance, who is cited in promotional guff describing Friedman as “a Texas legend”.
“I met him at the Governor’s mansion one night when I was pretending I was (novelist) Larry McMurtry,” says Friedman. “And I liked him. He was just thinking of running for President at the time and I was just thinking of having another Chivas Regal and we hit it off really well.”
The friendship has endured. Friedman enjoyed last December’s sojourn with the Bush clan. “I stayed overnight there (at the White House) and I did a reading before George and a family Christmas dinner, about 40 people. I also met his dad. Forty-one, we call him. Forty-three is George W.
He’s the 43rd President.
“Forty-three took me into the Oval Office, late at night after the dinner, took me and the two dogs, Spot and Barney, and showed me around the War Room and all this stuff. Very nice. I felt they’ve got a big family and I really felt a part of it. The only other family I felt a part of, of course, is
the Willie Nelson family. And of course the Manson Family.”
Friedman’s political allegiances are not set in stone, though. “I’m not a Republican and nor am I a Democrat any more, probably. I don’t know what the hell I am. But I’ve seen something in George that I never saw before and I think he does have a little bit of this Teddy Roosevelt in him. A
little bit of Harry Truman in him. I think that comes from Texas. I really do.”
As it happens, the outfit Friedman is bringing to Australia comes from Texas, too. His “little Texan tune-up tour” sees him lining up with Billy Joe Shaver and a host of backing musicians, including Jeff Jewford Shelby on keyboards and kazoo, “the last surviving member of the Texas Jewboys
who’s still ambulatory”.
Revered among his peers and among the most respected country songwriters, Billy Joe Shaver and his band (called simply Shaver) last year released a remarkable album, The Earth Rolls On. But critical acclaim was overshadowed by personal tragedy. Shaver’s guitarist son, Eddy, died, aged
38, of a heroin overdose.
“We met on the gangplank at Noah’s Ark a long time ago in Nashville,” Friedman says of Billy Joe, “When Eddy went to Jesus, we hit the road. That was more of a therapeutic kind of deal.”
Now, rather than play separate sets, they flip a coin before each show to decide who goes on first and alternate songs. “Billy Joe and I are really different walks of life,” Friedman concedes. “Different approaches to things. He’s a Christian, I’m a charismatic atheist. I try to keep Billy Joe from
turning our show into a prayer meeting. But he’s been through a Shakespearian tragedy of just immense proportions and he is connecting with his audiences and so am I. And somehow it really works.”
The Sunday Age, 03rd of February 2002
Larry Schwartz Writer 