A Conversation with Kinky Friedman – HuffPost 8.28.14

Mike Ragogna: Kinky, apparently, Texas still is resisting the legalization of marijuana while you’re a pretty strong proponent. How are you feeling after the election results?

Kinky Friedman: I think it’s something. Had I been elected, I probably could’ve really expedited. We certainly should, I mean, having arguably the best cancer hospital in the world, M.D. Anderson in Houston but no medicinal marijuana program is really not common sense. Also we’ve been spending a lot of time making criminals out of people who aren’t really criminals. And Texas is doing a lot of other things that don’t make sense, like not having gambling when all the heathen States around us do. [laughs] We’re just hemorrhaging money every day and we’re building roads and schools in Louisiana and Oklahoma and New Mexico.

MR: Is the resistance purely political?

KF: On pot? Yeah, it’s just ignorance. Colorado is a shining example with whatever mistakes they may make it’s a financial pleasure for the state, and it’s a spiritual pleasure. They’ve become sort of a healing place. If you’re a family with an autistic child you appreciate a place like Colorado. Not only that but I was talking about Colorado being a financial pleasure, if Texas were to legalize you could multiply their huge windfall by about seven hundred and ninety times. You’d see the revenue that Texas could have. That’s actually a way to fund education, and that’s exactly what Colorado does, they fund healthcare and education. The whole thing makes sense, not to mention the fact that it would effectively castrate the Mexican drug cartels and the people of Texas would become the new cartel.

MR: What do you think the fear is from?

KF: If I knew that I probably would’ve been elected. It’s also possible that I’m such a visionary that I’m unelectable.

MR: [laughs] Might be!

KF: And sadly, the democrats of Texas have been losing for so long and so badly and so completely, so comprehensively, I like to say for about twenty-two or twenty-four years now at every level of state government that they don’t even have a voice there. So the Democratic party did me in. A handful of people forced this. I campaigned in a concerted way, complete with emails and robocalls and that’s the party that I was running with. I’ve never heard of the State Chairman of the party and one of the candidates running ganging up on another candidate. I thought that’s what a primary was for. In fact, I’m sure I was right that the purpose of a primary is for the people to decide who they want to represent them against the other party.

MR: Maybe they just had a poor strategy.

KF: But wait, Mike, if you and I are fellow Democrats and you’re running for sheriff and I’m running for mayor, I should not be emailing people not to vote for Mike in his race. I’m not running against you, we’re on the same ticket. I understand their message, which is, “Kinky’s not serious, don’t vote for him.” Now they’ve got a serious slate of candidates that are walking right into the apocalypse.

MR: But isn’t it also because democrats are basically unelectable in Texas at this point?

KF: Well, yeah, most of them are unelectable. I would not have been. In November I would’ve been a real threat because I’d say I have a very strong base amongst independents and libertarians, and about an equal number of republicans as democrats. But anyway, politics’ loss has been literature’s gain, and I’m back to writing again for the first time in about eight years. I’m doing The Victory Tour on the East Coast. This is an interesting thing, Mike, it’s a solo type of thing. I started doing it with this Bipolar Tour business that I did in Europe last year. A Bipolar Tour is an idea that Willie Nelson gave me, which is very practical. You never take a night off. You push yourself until you’re running on pure adrenaline. I did thirty-four shows consecutively in seven different countries.

MR: Kinky, I get the sarcasm, but with The Victory Tour, what are you feeling victorious about?

KF: That’s a very good question. I did not want to call this The Victory Tour. We’re feeling liberated. Liberated from politics. The people have spoken, the bastards. Texas will have to deal with their situation, this would’ve been a win for the Texas Democrats. They could’ve had a win and now they’re not going to.

MR: Well, Texas and democrats don’t seem to get along right now. Ann Richards seems to be the last great Texas Democrat on the national scene.

KF: Nope, Ann Richards represents a kind of Democrat that was prominent in Texas, very influential. Ann is one of the last ones, yeah, but Barbara Jordan was one, Molly Ivins was certainly one, Sam Rayburn was another incorruptible guy, Speaker of the House for thirty-nine years. A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one. That’s what I told the Democrats and they did not respond to therapy. Actually, this was not the Democrats, this was the primary. In the primary, Rick Perry always beats Jesus Christ.

MR: Why is that?

KF: There was one percent of the people voting in this runoff and we lost the thing, which is just fine. That does not give the Independents, Libertarians and Republicans the chance to have crossed over, which they would have done in November, which is fine. That’s God telling me, “All right, stay out of politics.” And remember, there was a guy in the State Department in Pakistan that contacted me when I lost the race for governor in 2006 and he said, “Don’t feel bad, the crowd always picks Barabas.” That’s a biblical reference, the crowd always says, “Free Barabas, kill Jesus.” I think Willie Nelson is probably correct again when he says, “If you fail at something long enough, you become a legend.”

MR: But beyond politics, you have a lot of victories, Kinky.

KF: Well, I am hard at work on this book, Mike. I’m on page one hundred and thirteen using the last typewriter in Texas. It’s a mystery, and I think the Kinkster was killed in the last one, which was ten years ago, Ten Little New Yorkers. This is kind of bringing him back, and it’s working out really well. It’s called The Hardboiled Computer. As you may know, I don’t have a computer, I don’t have internet or email, I can’t text or any of that stuff. People that I look up to for wisdom and advice who are older than me, like Willie Nelson and Don Imus and, well, everybody is telling me it’s not cool not to have it, it’s not a thing that I should be proud of, that I should learn this s**t. Actually, there’s one other person I know that does not have any of these technological things and that’s Billy Bob Thornton. But I don’t know, is Willie right?

MR: Kinky, I’ll get you a computer, dude.

KF: Yeah, but I’m a very good typist, and The Hardboiled Computer is really coming along very well. I think it’s got it. I’m writing in a fever. It feels very good. I don’t have any other obligations, I don’t have a wife and kids, I don’t have a job, really.

MR: That’s not what I hear. You’re also protecting animals.

KF: Yeah, I’ve got that, I am a defender of the strays. The Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch is doing really well. That’s doing great.

MR: You have four dogs and two feral cats, but do you have any others living on your property?

KF: Yeah, three donkeys. Mine is Little Jewford, he’s a small Bethlehem donkey, he’s got a cross on his back. He’s named after my friend Little Jewford who played in the band for many, many years. As I point out to the audience he’s a jew and he drives a Ford. Little Jewford.

MR: [laughs] The band member or the donkey?

KF: That’s both of them. Jewford also runs a cigar company. The cigar company is doing well. I think KinkyFriedman.com has his stuff on cigars and the tequila, which is doing very well in Texas. We’ve just got to meet somebody with a billion dollars who wants to expand it nationally, I guess. But it’s doing so well in Texas that we could probably just keep doing that. That’s Man In Black Tequila. It’s the best Mexican mouthwash you ever gargled. It is great. We like to say that Man In Black Tequila is not your father’s tequila, it’s your grandfather’s gardener’s tequila. We salute Johnny Cash and Zorro and Paladin.

MR: That’s awesome. What’s going on in the musical front?

KF: I was going to tell you guy, as well as The Victory tour, which there’s no point in not having–what are you going to do, sit here and grouse about losing? Big deal. It tests a man more to lose than to win. Anybody can be a gladhead poiltician. So we’re doing this victory tour beginning at the end of this month, but in mid January I’m doing a tour of Australia in a way that I haven’t done before, it’s three shows in Sidney at the same venue, the Vanguard, and two shows the following weekend in Melbourne at the Caravan club. That one is called the Kinky Friedman, The Misunderstood Genius Tour. I think that is the kind of person that reads Churchill, for one thing. I’ve been reading Churchill excessively over the past few years. I think everyone who really gets into Churchill considers themself to be a misunderstood genius. Churchill certainly did.

MR: But he was a genius. I think everybody knew it, no?

KF: Oh, I don’t think everybody knew it. I think everybody threw him out on his ass. The man who saved their country at the time had every right to feel totally rejected by the people. To this day, Mike, find yourself a British intellectual and he won’t hesitate to twist the knife into Churchill even though he is the man who saved their country. There’s no question about it.

MR: He’s also probably the most revered Brit in America.

KF: He should be, and he should be a shining example of what the American politician is not today. The American politician and elected official is zero when it comes to inspirational value. I can think of a few living politicians I respect, but one that inspires? No. Those are all dead. Also the idea that humor can sometimes be profound and has a place in politics, that is gone. Will Rogers wouldn’t make it today. They would just see one dimension of him. There’s no question about it, there’s no place for a guy like Will Rogers. Of course a lot of these people like Winston Churchill were extremely funny. Ann Richards was funny, JFK had a great sense of humor. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton does and Dubya do. You’re talking to the guy who slept at the White House under two presidents, I like to say. Those guys are both very funny and kind of edgy. You might suspect that Bill would be that way, but George is, too. Most people have only seen him on television which is just a deadly medium for most of us. It’s like having to defend yourself in a courtroom. If you’re a totally inexperienced person who hasn’t been in there and you’re innocent, you’re going to look very awkward and you’re going to look guilty.

MR: That’s an interesting way to put that.

KF: You’ve never met Dubya, you haven’t been with him in humorous times, but he’s a jokester. Not to mention he’s a pretty damn good artist. I’ve seen some of his work, have you seen any of that stuff?

MR: I’ve seen a little on talk shows. Not a fan of the artwork or the man though, sorry.

KF: He’s not without talent, as much as Democrats may hate to give him that.

MR: Yeah, including this Democrat. And there are a lot of Republicans who are not too thrilled with his eight years.

KF: Oh, time is going his way, believe me. I think Dubya’s only guilty of one thing, and it’s not even clear at this point, whether the whole Iraq thing was a mistake or not. It certainly can’t be laid at his feet, that’s an Obama problem right there.

MR: Well, no, Obama has to take care of it now, cleaning up Dubya and his cronies’ mess. Don’t get me started, but okay, he didn’t create the situation we’re in right now.

KF: None of us create a f**king thing in this world. The only ones who create anything are the ones who are completely miserable, and that’s what I strive for. I know what I’m talking about here. The artist’s friend is misery, and if you don’t have it, you are never going to do anything great, Mike. If you tell me you’re going to sit down and paint your masterpiece, or you’re going to go and write the great American novel, you’ll never accomplish that. You can’t, because you have to do it accidentally. It has to be done by a guy like Van Gogh who was just trying to pay the rent for his prostitute girlfriend and her three year-old kid, who was starving to death and disowned by his own family and couldn’t sell any of his work. There must have been a Justin Bieber back then, don’t you think, who was successful and selling his work for a lot of money, and we don’t even know the name! We don’t even know the name of that successful person but we do know Van Gogh.

MR: I definitely agree with that, and I also agree with you that they don’t make Brits like Churchill anymore.

KF: I’ve suggested limiting elected officials to two terms: One in office and one in prison. I think that would go a way toward helping out the problem. But the problem is that the people who really have the decency and the talent and the concern, the people like JFK are gone. I know this because I was in the Peace Corps, I wasn’t in the earliest group of ragtag volunteers standing out there on the White House lawn and JFK pointed at them and he said, “You are important people.” We all know exactly what he meant. There are guys who are the governors of state who are doctors or lawyers or whatever the hell they are who think they’re important. Yeah, it is important to be Barry Manilow or to be Justin Bieber, it’s important to a record company or to a publisher or to the fan base or whatever the hell, but it’s not significant. That is not the same as being Barabara Jordan. And “significant” I would also extend to people like Gram Parsons or Warren Zevon or Levon Helm in the field of music, people that I think are significant. There’s a difference there.

MR: Kinky, here’s a non-sequitur for you. What advice do you have for new artists?

KF: Well, for one thing I’m going totally f**king deaf, which is a good thing. I only care about two things, and they are Libya and Charlie Sheen. Also, if you’re going deaf and you’re imaginative, you can think of more interesting things for people to say rather than what they’re really saying. But what I mean to say is I missed last part of what you said. Giving young people advice?

MR: [laughs] Yes, Kinky. What advice do you have for new artists?

KF: Oh, find what you like and let it kill you. That’s excellent advice for any young person today. There’s not a lot of people like me who can wander in the raw poetry of time and do these concerts in Australia and this thing I’m doing on the east coast this month. On my birthday, November first, I’m playing at the Jewish community center in Denver, that’s going to be great. This is all fun. Enjoy yourself. As Frank Sinatra said, “Live a little.”

MR: What are some other things you want to do or work on?

KF: I think without wasting my time in the fucking vineyards of politics I’m freed up to do a lot of other things. Let us see, I wanted to tell you one little story, Mike. This is something that I’ve incorporated into the show that I do. It’s something that happened in 1996, the year I published God Bless John Wayne. The following year, I went to South Africa. I haven’t talked about this until fairly recently, although it’s really well documented. I don’t know if you’re familiar with my oeuvre, musically.

MR: I am!

KF: Then you would know that Joseph Heller’s favorite song of all songs was “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” Bill Clinton’s favorite Kinky song was always “Waitress, Please, Waitress, Come Sit On My Facebook.” I’ve changed it to Facebook. I’m tweaking things like Bob Dylan does with “Maggie’s Farm,” he changes slightly the same f**king song for fifty-five years. But here is a story, and I’ll make this brief, I’ll bring it in in one and a half minutes. Nineteen-ninety-six was when that came out. The following year, I did a tour of South Africa. I was doing a national talk show with a guy named Dali Tambo. Dali Tambo’s father was Oliver Tambo who was Mandela’s mentor. Oliver Tambo died while Mandela was in prison on Robben Island. Anyway, I’m on this show and there’s another guy on the show called Tokyo Sexwale. Tokyo says, “Kinky, I want to talk to you during the next break.” I already knew who he was because the host Dali Tambo was talking about him, saying that Tokyo Sexwale was Mandela’s right hand man and has been or like forty years, and also spent seventeen years on Robben Island with Mandela.

So I talk to him during the break and Tokyo says, “You know, Mandela is a big fan of yours.” I said, “You’re kidding, man, which book?” He said, “It’s not the books at all, it’s the music. I was in the sell next to Mandela the whole seventeen years, so I know what I’m talking about. We could not get current music, so we had to have stuff smuggled in.” I also have met Helen Suzman, and she was the only woman in the South African parliament during the entire apartheid movement. She was also the only jew. She was also the only person from the government who ever visited Mandela in prison, and she visited him on a fairly regular basis. I believe she smuggled my first tape casette from 1973, Sold American, in to Mandela. Now, Tokyo says, further that just about every night for months and months and months Mandela would play this one song, “Ride ‘Em Jew Boy.” I’m telling you something, Mike, there is no fucking way Tokyo would know this unless it’s true, and Helen Suzman later came to a book signing of mine in San Antonio, Texas. She’s a charmer, she wrote me a little note saying, “From a little South African Jewgirl.” She’s quite famous–not just famous, she’s very revered in South Africa, as she should be.

I read Mandela’s book Long Walk To Freedom some time ago, when I was over there. Remember, he was a lawyer but he could not get into a law firm because he was black. No white law firm would take him. Finally the Jewish law firm took him. These Jewish guys were radicals. They were just about communists, might have been, very left. But they loved Mandela and they told him, “All you’ve got to do, Nelson, is stay out of politics, don’t be a troublemaker, and you’ll be the most famous and successful black lawyer in the entire nation. You’ll be a huge success. That’s all you need to do,” and of course he couldn’t do it. His little five year old girl hugged him one night and said, “Daddy, why are you always gone?” and Mandela told her, “Because there’s millions of little boys and girls just like you all over this country and I’ve got to look out for them, too.” That was his answer, which is not what a yuppie would tell his kid, probably. What struck me is when you look at the song Heller liked, which I think is an important song, and of course Clinton picked a predictable one, I think Mandela missed his last group of friends and peers, the lawyers in that Jewish law firm, and I think that’s part of why he liked that song, beyond its obvious universal appeal. I would just say that this story sounds fantastical, and I’ve never really talked about it until this year. I don’t know why, but now I’ve realized what it means. It means that in 1973 when I made this record in Nashville I was wondering, “Will the disc jockeys play this? What cuts will they play? What could be a hit here?” I had no idea then that Nelson Mandla would be listening to this song in a prison sell on Robben Island. That’s about as far into the firmament as you can go. That’s like Anne Frank having pictures of American cowboy stars on the walls of the secret annex.

MR: Wow. So it still effects you deeply.

KF: Oh, no question. And he picked the right song. A lot of people laugh about if they don’t know it. Willie has recorded the song, I guess you can get it on Amazon on thePearls In The Snow album, he’s got a great version of it, and we have one out too now, on a CD called Lost And Found, a tape from 1971 that has a recording of “Ride Em Jewboy.” Anyway, I’ve got to tell you, it’s just remarkable. it’s as far fetched as you can possible get. And Tokyo told me something else which I know is true, Helen Suzman and Dali Tambo would back it up, Tokyo said I was not Mandela’s number one favorite artist, though, he said I was probably in second place and that his favorite was always Dolly Parton. Do you realize, I bet Dolly Parton doesn’t even know that?

MR: She might now.

KF: She should. You know the old bulls**t about, “You never know who you’re going to reach if you’re an artist,” this is about as far as you can take it. What a cosmic compliment the thing really was. Would I rather have about four hundred millskies in the bank? Probably, but this is a beautiful thying. I never met Mandela but I know about this guy and I am humbled by this experience. I visited Robben Island, before I knew this story. Mandela belongs to that rare fraternity; without Ghandi I don’t think there would’ve been Nelson Mandela or a Martin Luther King. Most of us can’t attain that ethereal fraternity of Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Mandela. Those are what civil rights leaders really are. Those are leaders.

MR: Beautiful. What an achievement for you as well. You could ask a lot of artists, would they trade in their fame and fortune for the moment you just described, and I bet a lot of them would.

KF: Yeah, honest to God, these prison guards were Nazis. They pissed on Mandela, they tried to kill him in the quarries there working him to death and he turned them. Just like Jesus. By the time he was released, the night of the election the prison guards are all watching this at the little pub they go to, cheering, “Viva Mandela.” He had them. It cost him his life, I think he was in prison for thirty one of his ninety years. I think there is something to the fact that Mozart was buried in a pauper’s grave. A guy who was that famous, it tell us something. F**k. But you’re quite right, I should embrace this and I do. I’ve heard of this many times. Johnny Gimble, the fiddle player, told his mother, “Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a musician,” and his mother said, “Make up your mind, son, because you can’t do both.”

MR: The classic line. So I don’t want to take too much more of your time…

KF: …that oughta be a wrap, huh? I recommend everybody go tohttps://www.KinkyFriedman.com and that’ll tell them the tour dates. How is the Misunderstood Genius Tour wearing with you? It’s good, right?

MR: Absolutely! I’ll now have to refresh myself on Churchill. His one-liners are terrific.

KF: Here’s a line of Churchill’s: “History, with it’s flickering lamp, stumbles down the trail to the past.” That’s something he told parliament one day. And one piece of wisdom I really got out Churchill that has nothing to do with this piece itself, but young people and old people ought to know this: Somewhere in the thousands of pages I’ve read by and about him, he was talking about the battle of El Alamein in World War II, which he called “The Hinge Of Fate.” He says it was the first battle that the Brits really won. They beat Rommel, who was the best general in the war, with Monty–Montgomery. This happened halfway through the war and they had lost every other battle, from France to Singapore to Dunkirk to Africa, they had lost them all. Churchill was reflecting on that and said, “I wasn’t a dictator, parliament could’ve given me a vote of no confidence at any time, or the voters could have voted me out,” he was reflecting on what would have happened if he had been thrown out before El Alamein. “If it had happened a few months or a few weeks before El Alamein, then the new guy, whoever he was, would’ve been considered a genius.” After El Alamein the Brits never lost again. Churchill was the guy who architected the war, and he would’ve gone down in history as a complete loser who couldn’t win anything and the new guy would’ve been the genius who won everything. He says, “All of this shows how much luck there is in human affairs and how little we should worry about doing anything except for our best.”

MR: That’s a beautiful story.

KF: Mike, do you ever make it down to Texas?

MR: For Austin City Limits and SXSW every once in a while.

KF: We call Austin “Dallas with Guitars.” If you get a chance, come out to the Rescue Ranch. How many dogs do you want?

MR: Uh… [laughs]

KF: Go to https://www.UtopiaRescue.com if any animal lovers out there are interested.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne