HUMO Magazine interviews Kinky

Dutch magazine HUMO interviews Kinky while on tour in Europe

As I arrive at Paradiso for my audience with the Kinkster, I am told he's still in the hotel taking a nap. I watch Little Jewford and Washington Ratso bring the sound up to speed and as we stroll out towards the hotel I guide them safely'round the Amsterdam tramway and the multitude of cyclists, as they're a little intimidated by them. We meet a sleepy-eyed Kinky, cowboyhat firmly on the frizzled hair, a cigar, which he will be putting out and firing up a gazillion times during the interview, firmly planted between the lips. I'm wearing my best cowboyboots hoping this true southern gentleman will warm up to me and he kindly notices them: "Nice boots. Elephant foreskin, are they?"

-Mr Friedman, you're the first Jewish cowboy/country singer I'm interviewing. But then they're probably quite the exclusive club.
KINKY:
Could well be. The cowboy and the jew are vanishing breeds; they're not getting stronger, they're getting weaker...
You know a cowboy, the definition really is a man who can ride, shoot straight and tell the truth and of these three the most important is to tell the truth.
And there's very few cowboys left. Also, there's two kinds of people that wear cowboy hats: cowboys and assholes. I always say: it's OK to think you're a cowboy as long as you don't run into somebody that thinks he's an indian.

-Remarkably, the two traits work very well together: there's the poor lonesome cowboy-thing being far away from home and being jewish roughly translates into being always on the run, longing for home and enduring hardship from time to time. When did you first put two and two together?
KINKY: I was in Borneo, in the Peace Corps. That's where the idea of ‘Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys' came to me. In the jungle.

- Was that the attraction for you: forming the smallest possible club...
KINKY: Yeah, and make that club grow. So today, when I send a book to someone like Dwight Yoakam, from one Texas Jewboy to another, he knows exactly what it means and he's very honored. He gets it.
And the Texas Jewboy: it's really someone on the outside looking in. I guess that's what it is. I mean there's all kinds of people that see something in themselves that's similar.
Which is really what I think writing is about. If you look deep enough into yourself, I think you will find everybody else. And I think that's at the heart of good writing, writing that people can relate to. Which rarely sells, they usely die in the gutter.

-Well, at least you were the best at what you were doing, as you were the only ones doing it. Who else would have written a song like "Ride em jewboy", probably the first and maybe last country song ever written about the Holocaust?
KINKY:
Well, we were the only country band with a social conscience, yeah. We were the only ones writing that kind of song and then later when I got into politics, they certainly came back and got us with that. Because the mainstream really doesn't understand satire at all. You just can't explain it. Why does Kinky say the word ‘nigger' on stage? What are you, a racist or what? But what do you tell them: you fucking idiot? Everybody's a racist, the song is a satire?

-You wrote songs like ‘Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed' and ‘They ain't makin jews like Jesus anymore'. You obviously like to offend a little.
KINKY: Yeah.
-Why is that? Is it to stun people into thinking?
KINKY: I don't think it ever hurts to stir the pot. I think if you're not offending people today, you ain't living. It's important but it's gotten harder to do. I mean today you can do anything you want. Get up on stage, piss on the audience. They'd all be offended and then just forget about it 10 seconds later.

I think it's Bob Dylan. Dylan said: art should not reflect a culture, it should subvert it.
So if you think that way how can you be a politician, it's a big problem for me.
How can you keep being a truthteller with music and books and stuff and then be the opposite of that and be a politician. That's a big problem.

-Equally unorthodox was your music publishing. At age 29 your parents sent a flyer around which read: "Dear friends, have we got news for you. Our son the recording artist, will have his first album released. Written and sung by Kinky Friedman (Richard's stage name); it's the new sound of the 70s. Coridally, Min & tom, the parents." That's fantastic publishing.
KINKY: Yeah, the folks were great. They're my heroes. And of course most of my heroes, most of the people I love are dead.
That becomes a problem. I think that's why I seek out younger and younger people to be with. I don't like young people in general, but...
You know, I can't believe I'm 63 now. Too young for medicare, too old for women to care. I'm old enough to hide my own easter eggs. Dennis hopper must be 70 or something and he's saying he can't believe it. It is sick...

A cat with 9 lives

-Early on in the 80s you retreated in your Texas trailer with a couple of cats and dogs and you started writing your first novel "Greenwich killing time".
KINKY: 28 books I've written so far. I say it's an index of an empty life. If I'd heard you'd written 28 books, I already wouldn't like you to start with.

-Did you lose interest in muic or do you think it's important to reinvent yourself from time to time?
Well, it's important to pay the rent from time to time. So when music runs out and there's no record deals...
So I took a hand at writing. I see them mostly as existential novels by the way, I don't see them as mystery novels... One could start right here, you and me doing this interview and it's really what's written between the lines that's important. That's where all the great writing is done, I'm convinced. You and I could read the same book and I could get a lot more out of it.

You know, nothing's better than writing. That's a great life. I guess that's what I enjoy most. And you're right: there's a big difference between just writing and performing. As a writer it really is a monastic kind of thing and it's great. It's a beautiful thing, to be surrounded with animals and have somebody pay for that and you write what you feel what you wanna write. And sometimes you hit it right.

Performing is another matter. I'm enjoying that right now, ‘cause that was my first passion: music and I really neglected it for 20 or 30 years. So far it was good and I'm good at it, there's a little bit of Judy Garland in me.

But I don't know if it means anything. I really don't know. Luckily, I've a young audience. Abbie Hoffman said nostalgia is a symptom of an illness in a person...

-You have some remarkable fans, one is President Bush who apparently plays your music while taking off with Airforce One; then there's Bill Clinton who read all your novels, "because he really needs the laughs"...
KinKY: Yeah, Bill's the literate one of the two. Well, Laura sometimes gives George some books to read.

-Between us: who's the more fun of the two?
KINKY: Well, I think George is trying to resist the image of being a partyboy, so he tries to be more serious. But he can't help himself. He's a good man, trapped in a Republican's body. And he's made a few bad mistakes... and that's enough to sink you if you're president. Bill's very kind, very smart and a very interesting man to be with.

But George is no dunce, he's not stupid as they're saying. He's just going out on a banana peel and now everybody hates him. Nobody has any use for him. And it's part because he made a fucking mistake. He attacked the wrong country.
He should have attacked... any other place that begins with an i would have been ok.
But not iraq. He could have attacked belgium and he'd be more popular.

Said Ghandi to his barber

-You've tried your hand at politics. Earlier, when you ran for justice of the peace you had the slogan "if you elect me, i'll reduce the speed limit to 54,95."
KINKY: Yeah we had a few funny slogans.

-But isn't it hard to be taken seriously with slogans like that?
KINKY: Do you know Jerry Springer? I did a radio interview with him during the campaign, he was very nice. I mean, I've never admired him, he's a crazy guy that's earned a million dollars being an idiot, but he said something, he said "Kinky don't you understand: you can't tell the truth and succeed in politics. You cannot. I thought you knew that." I said: "I hope you're wrong, I really do." I don't know if he's right or not, but I'm beginning to think he might be.

If you look at the people that have told the truth throughout history, you'll see they haven't fared too well. Starting with Socrates and Jesus and that bunch there...
Jerry Springer is probably right. You shut up and eat hot dogs or tamales or whatever the people are eating, go to black churches, do things like that, you'll be very popular.

-In one of the campaign spots you posed as a shepherd of the flock. Is there a messianistic streak in you?
KINKY: Well, I like Jesus and I like Moses and I say they're two good jewish boys that ran into a little trouble with the government.
That quote of Ghandi really struck me, the one that Ghandi told his barber (he didn't reslly tell his barber, but...), where he said: " I like your Christ, I do not like your christians. They're so unlike your Christ." That's what we have in Texas and in America.
We've got christians who are as far away from Jesus as they can get, and they don't know it. How can you be for the death penalty and call yourself a christian? How do you work that out?

-You have a statue of Father Damian on your desk. We Belgians elected the guy as greatest belgian of all time, before Jacques Brel, Adolphe Sax and French Fries.
KINKY: And rightly so. Damian's great. He was a carpenter, he embraced the lepars, he didn't get along with his church, all christlike aspects. As a result the church hated him. It's taking a hundred years to make him a saint... We're still waiting.

-Do you have any advice while we wait?
KINKY: Yeah, find what you like and let it kill you.

JM