Stepping on a rainbow
At some point in 1993, I went to the Todt Hill-Westerleigh branch of the New York Public Library in Staten Island with the intention of borrowing a copy of Elvis, Jesus, & Coca-Cola. I think read a review of it in the Daily News, and I’m pretty sure the title was enough to pique my interest. And if I had any reservations at all, the name of the author removed all doubt that this was a book worth checking out. Kinky Friedman sounded like someone I needed to know..
Three decades later, on the day after Kinky Friedman left the world, I am writing this in a room with almost an entire bookshelf of signed Kinky Friedman books.
Libraries really can change your life.
It goes without saying (but I love nothing more than saying things here; hence, it is being said) that I really liked Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola. I had read, I think, one mystery/crime novel before it (Tony Hillerman’s Skinwalkers, which was one of our summer reading choices in high school), and I had liked it, but it didn’t really compel me to dive any further into the genre. But something about Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola flipped that switch you sometimes don’t know you needed to be flipped. Up to that point, if I had to name a genre I liked, I probably would have gone with “books about baseball” (a genre I still like quite a lot). Fiction was something I had to read for school but didn’t really have any strong feelings about, other than the two John Steinbeck books I’d read were pretty cool.
But Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola was not much like John Steinbeck. For one thing, there are not a ton of guffaws in The Grapes of Wrath. Kinky’s book, on the other hand, was really funny. And it read so fast and clean, with an easy-to-follow plot, characters that got your attention, and an engaging story. But it was really the laughs that got me. I didn’t even care all that much about figuring out the mystery in the book. I just liked the nonstop humor, often irreverent at a time when I was starting to figure out what that meant and why I liked iit. This was some fiction I could really get behind, something I was genuinely happy to be reading and sad when it was over, standing in marked contrast to, say, Billy Budd.
I needed to know more about this Kinky Friedman guy. And so, however one found out about things before everything you ever wanted to know aboiut everything was at your fingertips, I found out more. I learned from the book, in which the Kinkster and his real-life compadres are characters, that he was also a musician. And that seemed like something worth looking into, though I surmised I would be unlikely to find any Kinky CDs at the Staten Island Mall.
I had started going into Manhattan by this point, though, and there were a lot more record stores with a lot more choices there. I can’t remember which one I wound up buying From One Good American to Another at, but I owe a debt of gratitude to whichever store it was. Because if Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola opened up a literary world I had known very little about, From One Good American to Another blew my still-forming mind and showed me a world of glorious weirdness full of even more irreverence than the book had. And the best example of that is “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” which I am going to give you a link to in a minute. But let me first warn you that if you recoil at the sound of ethnic slurs, even if intended to point out the small-mindedness of others, this would not be the song for you. And if you are a person who hates the Randy Newman song “Short People” because you think that song is mean toward short people and not actually a satirical song meant to point out the stupidity of racism, this would also not be your thing. And if you are a person who likes to listen to music without headphones at work but would still like to be employed, you should let this pass. OK, we good? It’s a funny song.
It is one of several Kinky songs I do my best to stop myself from singing out loud, even when I am alone in my apartment. There is also “Waitret, Please, Waitret” (line immediately following: “come sit on my face”), “Asshole from El Paso” (self-expalantory, no?), “Get Your Biscuits in Your Oven and Your Buns Into Bed” (which has the excellent rhyme of “So damn emancipated in your mind and your body/You’re gonna have to cancel all your lessons in karate”), and “Ride ‘Em Jewboy” (which is really a lovely song about the perseverance of the Jewish people, but it doesn’t feel great to just belt out “jewboy”). But those are all songs I love quite a bit (I’ll leave it to you to go seek them out rather than provide links and be accused of leading you down a path you’re not ready for). And there are many more in the Kinky canon. Some of them are downright beautiful.
My favorite is probably the last song on that From One Good American to Another album, titled on that CD as “God Bless John Wayne (People Who Read People Magazine)” but as just “People Who Read People Magazine” on the Under the Double Ego record. I’d say it’s Kinky’s best (I just did!).
There’s not a wasted word in there, and little gems all over the place: “Chasing trends like rainbow ends,” “The good Lord made the heavens but he never made a star,” “I’m 21 in Nashville and 43 in Maine.” Just so good, and an early indication that he was well-suited to be an author. And I think songs like this and “Sold American” and “Highway Cafe” show that Kinky was so much more than a writer of funny songs. He was simply a writer of good songs.
As I became more and more of a fan of the Kinkster, I naturally wanted to meet him in person and maybe see him perform (it wasn’t clear to me at the time if he still performed). But he wasn’t coming to Ithaca, New York, which is where I was attending college at the time. He was, however, doing a book signing in Manhattan while I was getting my education, and it seemed silly that my education was getting in the way of meeting him. But I abided by this sad fate.
I saw that Kinky was doing an online Q&A, which, in the mid-1990s, meant someone asked you to send questions to an email address by a certain date and then there would be an interview at some point and maybe your question would be answered. I submitted a question and tacked on a request at the end that probably sounded a little desperate about my desire to get his autograph and my frustration that I would be missing his book signing in Manhattan. And when the Q&A was published, there was my question (I forget what it was; it was probably just a means to get to the autograph request), and Kinky included an address where I could send a letter to. And then a little while later, my CD cover was signed, and he sent a guitar pick too! The power of this new thing called the Internet! It could make our dreams come true! What could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, I was very excited to have this little interaction with Kinky (and probably the only person on my college campus who would have had such a reaction; I suppose everybody else was busy trying to get laid or something). And, as I probably could have figured out at the time, I’d likely have other chances to meet the Kinkster after college. And I sure did. I think the tally of Kinky autographs I have is: 24 signed books, 6 signed CDs, 3 signed albums, 1 signed DVD, 1 signed poster, 1 signed magazine, and 1 signed photo of the two of us at a CD signing at J&R Music World. I think I have more autographs from him than from any other human being. Take a few seconds to be impressed.
I got to see Kinky perform a bunch, both in concert and at book signings, where he would usually do a song or two. And they never failed to bring me genuine joy. Sure, it was often the same jokes and the same songs. But they were good jokes and good songs, so I didn’t mind at all. And the shows he did with Little Jewford were the best. I don’t know if it can be found anymore, but if you can get a hold of the Classic Snatches from Europe CD (maybe don’t Google it), you can hear for yourself. Kinky also did a live album with Billy Joe Shaver that is similarly entertaining.
It wasn’t until I was a few years into my Kinky fandom that I realized how his career intertwined with Bob Dylan’s for a while, when Kinky joined the Rolling Thunder Revue. Kinky’s close friend, Larry “Ratso” Sloman wrote what is still the best book about Dylan (On the Road with Bob Dylan), and there is plenty of Kinky in there. The Rolling Thunder era is probably the part of Dylan’s career I find most interesting (though I’ve been developing a strong fascination with the gospel years recently), and it would have been wild to see one of the Rolling Thunder shows with Kinky. I’m not saying that’s the first place I’d go if given access to a time machine, but I’m not saying it isn’t either.
But perhaps even more fascinating is the time Kinky and Dylan appeared on the Chabad Telethon. If you are not familiar with Dylan’s Chabad appearances, you should make yourself familiar. I’m not sure the Kinky and Dylan appearance tops the one with Dylan and Harry Dean Stanton, but it is still something to see. And today I discovered Max Gail (Wojo from Barney Miller) was there too! What a time to be alive! (For more on Kinky’s thoughts of this bizarre moment in time, as well as other stories of his time with Dylan, check out this interview with Kinky from Ray Padgett’s excellent Flagging Down the Double E’s Substack, and buy Ray’s book of interviews with those who have played with Dylan; it’s second only to Ratso’s!)
Kinky certainly led an interesting life, and a life that made mine more interesting too. I had no way of knowing that going to the library that day in 1993 was going to lead me down a path of reading dozens of books and listening to dozens of songs that would bring me such happiness. Every time a new Kinky book would come out, I would buy it immediately (sometimes I’d even be lucky enough to find an early copy on the shelves at The Strand) and consume it as fast as I could. And when I’d find out about a book signing or a concert, all other plans were off. The laughs those signings and shows brought to me were true medicine for the soul. If things were going bad and a new Kinky book came out, things were decidedly less bad.
Much like Mojo Nixon, Kinky taught me the value of being weird. And not simply weird for the sake of being weird. It’s probably not even fair to call Kinky “weird.” He was probably weird to others, but he never seemed that weird to me. He was funny, smart, sharp, irreverent, and, OK, maybe a little tough to sing along with at times. But not weird. He was someone I connected to and admired and all that. I could have lived my life without ever knowing Kinky Friedman, and it might have been an OK life. But it would not have been nearly as fun. I would not pause every time I walk past Vandam Street in Manhattan (where the fictional Kinkster lived) and smile thinking about the Kinkster throwing down the puppethead with the key in it to one of his Village Irregulars on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t know of all the great British treats at Myers of Keswick in Manhattan, which was founded by Pete Myers, who frequently popped up in Kinky’s books. And I wouldn’t say “Thank you very much!” in that Kinky growl every now and then (along with Little Jewford’s “You’re welcome, Kinky!” accompanying it silently in my head).
So, as Kinky steps on that rainbow (a Kinky phrase) into the Great Beyond, I salute the happiness all those books and songs brought and offer up my gratitude.
Thank you very much!
“Let it roll, let it roll
Let it roll one time for me
When it gets too kinky for the rest of the world
It’s getting just right for me”
(“Kinky” by Ronnie Hawkins, covered by Kinky Friedman on his Lasso from El Paso album)
History lesson taken as I hadn't known he'd been part of the Rolling Thunder Review.