KINKY SHIT
Horse sex, David Hasselhoff and Canadian motherfuckers
are just a few of the topics KINKY FRIEDMAN is likely to bring up, as SAMUEL J.
FELL finds out
“I’m going deaf, but I enjoy
going deaf,” says Kinky Friedman, seconds into this interview, “because you can
make up more interesting things that people are saying, than what they’re really saying.”
He rounds that comment off
with a laugh – it’s vintage Friedman, the long-time satirist and songwriter,
political aspirant, general raconteur. As you’d expect, it doesn’t stop there.
“Although I’m 71, I read at a 73-year-old level,” he deadpans at one point. A
few minutes later, talking about his recent successful tour through Germany,
“I’m kinda the new David Hasselhoff.”
I mention that still touring at
71-years-old is no mean feat. “I got that from Willie Nelson, Willie’s my
shrink,” he responds. “Willie says that if you fail at something long enough,
you become a legend. Of course, the other advice he gave me, when I was running
for Governor (of Texas, in 2006), was if you’re gonna have sex with an animal,
always make it a horse. Because that way, if things don’t work out, at least
you know you’ve got a ride home.”
Friedman wasn’t elected
Governor, although whether or not that was because of Nelson’s advice remains
to be seen. Regardless, the man in the hat with the big cigar will grace our
shores once more this month, promoting the release of his latest record, The Loneliest Man I Ever Met. Not
unusual until you consider it’s his first record in some thirty-two years,
thanks again in part, to Willie Nelson.
“Willie advised me to keep
writing, because I’d stopped writing about forty years ago, at least songs,” he
explains. “They just seemed to be going up in the ether and disappearing. I
wanted to wait until the record companies were dinosaurs, which they just about
are, and until the charts and the radio stations became meaningless… when the audience
becomes the show. For better or worse, that’s kinda what we have today, so I’m
writing songs that are different than what you’re hearing on the radio.”
The Loneliest Man I Ever Met is a gem, a clutch of songs delivered in Friedman’s
trademark dry style, albeit a little more subdued than previous releases, a
little more subtle perhaps. Nelson makes an appearance, as do Mickey Raphael
and Little Jewford, from Friedman’s Texas Jewboys, the band he fronted through
the 1970s. He covers a number of tracks from the likes of Tom Waits, Nelson
again, Warren Zevon. He’s back in the saddle.
Talk, of course, turns away
from the record and towards touring, where he’s now attracting a much younger
audience, something he really enjoys. “They look at America in a different way
than Americans do,” he muses on the younger crowds in places like Europe. “They
seem to really relate to, say, Hunter Thompson maybe, Gram Parsons, Shel
Silverstein, people like Tom Waits, Kinky, Iggy Pop – they go outside the
mainstream, they’re not interested in that motherfucker from Canada… what’s his
name? Justin Bieber. And it’s pretty cool, it’s a smart audience and very
savvy. And that’s true pretty much all over Europe, and I think in Australia
too.”
