Kinky Friedman more than mere musician

Kinky Friedman.

They would seem to have about as much in common as a rattlesnake and a teddy bear, but Richard "Kinky" Friedman, the acerbic, irreverent Jewish singing cowboy from Texas, and Donny Osmond, the affable, earnest Mormon entertainer with the pearly-gates smile, have found some common ground of late.

Friedman, who as part of the eclectic résumé he has built since his '70s musical heyday operates an animal shelter on his family's Echo Hill Ranch an hour outside of Austin, featured Osmond and his dog Spike in his 2009 book, "Kinky's Celebrity Pet Files." But to hear Friedman tell it, the pair bonded over much more than their love of animals.

"Donny has become kind of a friend of mine. We've hung out a few times," Friedman says. "He was saying that really the trick of a show or any performance is not in the music or in the costumes or having an orchestra or a band or anything else. What it is is giving the audience a glimpse of who you are, who you really are. I thought that was really interesting."

Friedman says this as if it's a revelation to him, but one suspects that he's always intuitively known it. Whether as a country singer, a writer of mystery novels, a politician, or a hawker of his own line of cigars, Friedman has always sold himself. Whether the character he affectionately refers to as "The Kinkster" is the real Friedman is anybody's guess, but if it is a mask, he's successfully kept it from cracking for nearly 40 years.

"It's very close to performance art because you've got a combination of an actor, a singer-songwriter, a politician and an activist all rolled into one," says Louis Meyers, executive director of the Memphis-based Folk Alliance, which is bringing Friedman and his acoustic "Hanukkah Tour" to town for an intimate "house concert" fundraiser at Memphis Studios. "To me he's kind of Hunter S. Thompson with a guitar. He's a really good stream-of-consciousness entertainer. Some of the jokes I've heard for 34 years, and they still make me laugh."

Tickets for the fundraiser cost $50. A $100 VIP ticket includes special seating, admission to a post-show cigars and wine gathering with Kinky, and a gift from the Folk Alliance and Memphis Studios.

In addition, the entire concert is being streamed live for free online by music startup DittyTV at dittytv.com.

Friedman, 67, was born in Chicago, but his family moved when he was just a year old. "I couldn't find work, so I moved to Texas," he likes to joke.

He spent his summers at Echo Hill, which his parents built in 1952 as a summer camp for the region's Jewish children. Meyers, a native of Austin, recalls his older brothers attending the camp and knew the Friedman family as a young boy.

Friedman attended the University of Texas, where his musical proclivity first showed itself in the mock surf band King Arthur & the Carrots. It was also at university where Friedman acquired the nickname "Kinky," for his "Jewish Afro." After graduating, he spent two years in the Peace Corps in Borneo, an experience he has described as far more beneficial to him than to the people of the Indonesian island.

Upon his return, Friedman moved to Nashville and began assembling his band, the Texas Jewboys, the name a play on Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. With the patronage of country-rock pioneer Commander Cody, the group released its first album, the classic Sold American, in 1973. The record got attention for snarky tracks like "Top Ten Commandments" and the controversial "Ballad of Charles Whitman," about the University of Texas tower sniper, but alongside the more shocking songs were finely wrought tunes like the title track, about a dying alcoholic singer, and even "Ride 'Em Jewboy," a surprisingly serious examination of faith.

"The first record to me was a true masterpiece," Meyers says. "It was an incredibly well-produced and -played album. They say you've got your whole life to write your first album, so the song quality was extremely high on that record."

Friedman and the band made two more records, appeared on "Saturday Night Live," and toured with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. But not every one appreciated Friedman's unique sense of humor. The tongue-in-cheek anti-women's-liberation song "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" earned him the National Organization for Women's male chauvinist pig of the year award. And even in his hometown, public television's "Austin City Limits" refused — for the only time in the show's history — to air his performance. (It was finally released in 2007 on CD and DVD as Live From Austin, TX.)

By the end of the decade, the Jewboys had broken up. Friedman, then based in New York, continued on without them, but by the mid-'80s drug abuse and the loss of his good friend, actor and Jim Morrison associate Tom Baker, and his girlfriend, Kacey Cohen, had taken their toll. When on a trip home to Texas in 1985, his mother died suddenly of a heart attack, Friedman decided to stay and clean up.

Ensconced at Echo Hill, Friedman began his second chapter as a writer. He published a series of well-received mystery novels featuring a thinly veiled version of himself as protagonist. More recently, he has branched out into other forms, including children's books, memoirs, history and political tracts.

Currently in the works are upcoming publishing collaborations with actor-director-musician Billy Bob Thornton and with Nelson.

On his current tour, Friedman interrupts the music and jokes to read from his most recent book, "Heroes of a Texas Childhood," spotlighting 23 figures who have been inspirational to him, including Davy Crockett and Barbara Jordan.

"I haven't written a song in 25 years," Friedman says of his life as an author. "Really what I'm doing is rotating the crop as far as the audience is concerned."

In 2006, Friedman branched out into politics, becoming the first independent candidate for governor of Texas since Sam Houston in 1859. (There were actually two that election, the other being Carole Keeton Strayhorn.). Claiming that he would sign anything but bad legislation, he ran a highly public campaign — Country Music Television made a reality series of his campaign — but ultimately came in fourth to eventual winner Rick Perry.

"We won that race everywhere but Texas," Friedman says.

Kinky Friedman

Wednesday at Memphis Studios, 508 S. Main. Doors open at 6 p.m.; performance starts at 7 p.m. Tickets: $50 and $100; available in advance at the Folk Alliance headquarters at 510 S. Main, by phone at (901) 522-1170, and online at folk.org.

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