Kinky Friedman first rose to fame in the early 1970s for his satirical country music act, which he performed with his band Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jew Boys. Since then, Friedman, 65, has authored 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction, founded an animal rescue organization, run for governor of Texas, and created his own line of cigars. This summer, he is returning to his roots with a West Coast music tour — his first in almost two decades.
JTNews caught up with Friedman a few days before he departed for his first gig in Vancouver, B.C. He will be in Seattle at The Triple Door on Tues., July 27.
JTNews: After 20 years, what made you want to do another tour?
Kinky Friedman: It’s the same thing that Willie says in “On The Road Again,” I just can’t wait to get back out on the road again. Politics and books is what kept me off the road. Now I’m excited to get back.
JT: Are The Texas Jewboys coming along with you?
Friedman: Two of them are. There’s Little Jewford. He’s a Jew and he drives a Ford. And there’s Washington Ratso. He’s a great bluegrass and rockabilly guitar player, and he’s the little Lebanese boy in the band. We’ve been playing together about 35 years. We consider ourselves to be the last hope for peace in the Middle East.
JT: Who is this tour for? Is it for fans who have been with you all along or are you trying to reach new folks?
Friedman: I think there will be an eclectic audience. There will be the literary types who have read the books but don’t know much about the music. There will be the music types who don’t know much about the books. And then there will be the political, cultural types who know I ran for governor in Texas in 2006.
I think the audience will be young. In fact, I think they’ll be younger than the songs in a lot of cases. That was true in Dublin and in London when we toured Europe last year. They were very young audiences and they knew every song.
JT: A lot of your music is very Jewish-centric. Does your fan base tend to be primarily Jewish as a result?
Friedman: Fans seem to come from all walks of life. There are a lot of people who are Jewish by inspiration, certainly. Evidence of that is in Australia and in Texas, where in a lot of places there aren’t many Jews but they still kind of get it. Just speaking culturally, Judaism represents being on the outside looking in. And politically, that’s a very important place in our country today.
JT: You’re kind of a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to music you’re also an author and have dabbled in politics, and you’re now selling your own line of cigars.
Friedman: Yes. It’s the curse of being multi-talented. Sometimes I wish I did one thing well and that was it. It probably would have been more of a financial pleasure for me.
JT: Do you feel like all of these projects are connected for you? Or are you just someone who needs to have a lot going on?
Friedman: I think that’s it. It’s enough to make your head explode. It’s really going off in different directions that have nothing to do with each other. But that’s the way it goes. If you fail at something long enough, you become a legend. I’ve never really considered myself a celebrity, but more of a folk hero here in Texas. It’s a natural thing. I don’t have a big media machine making my stardom — record companies and movie studios. So it’s all just sort of been word of mouth, underground, sort of like Robin Hood or Jesus.
JT: What led you to run for governor in Texas?
Friedman: Nobody takes good advice. The good advice was stay out of politics. But I got into politics because I didn’t like what was happening in Texas. I didn’t like being 49th in education, 50th in health care coverage, and first in executions. So that was quite the colorful campaign — we won that race everywhere except Texas. I got 600,000 votes. I’m only the second man to ever get on the ballot as an Independent in the state. The first was Sam Houston 160 years ago.
JT: In your campaign you used a lot of humor and it sort of seemed like you were poking fun at the whole process. If you had been elected would you have had to suddenly shift gears and be very serious about everything?
Friedman: You could talk about some people like former governor Ann Richards or Winston Churchill or Mark Twain or Will Rogers, whose humor was a very important part of their lives and to take that out is to take out part of who they really are. I think I’m the same way.
Now Texans find themselves with a terrible choice: Paper or plastic. Politics is the only field where the more experience you get, the worse you are. That’s why I think term limits are so important. I think politicians should only be able to serve two terms: One in office, one in prison.
JT: Where did the name Kinky come from?
Friedman: I got it in college. At the time, I had a pretty big Hebrew Natural going for me.